Thanks for attending!
Thank you for tuning in to the sixth webinar of our 2022 series, Critical Public Conversations: Undoing Australia. This webinar titled ‘Aboriginality and Alienage: Legal Pluralism at the Australian Border’ featured University of Melbourne academic Professor Kirsty Gover discussing the possibilities of legal pluralism with regard to the Australian High Court case Love-Thoms (2020).
Themes raised
In the Australian High Court in the case of Love-Thoms (2020) the Court accepted that an ‘Aboriginal Australian’, even if a non-citizen, could not be an ‘alien’ and so could not be placed in immigration detention or deported from Australia.
Judges have been asked to decide whether it is ‘traditional law and custom’ that makes a person an Aboriginal Australian, and if so, whether Indigenous law can confer Aboriginality on persons who are not (or cannot show) that they are the biological descendants of Aboriginal ancestors.
What should we make of claims about ‘uncertainty’ and ‘difficulty’ in a legally plural settler-colonial state?
Why is ‘sovereignty’ still, after all these years, operating as a dead weight on judicial recognition of legal pluralism in Australia?
This presentation attempts to reframe of the problem and propose a way forward.
Some questions from the audience
Nations like Yadinji have been attempting to have the conversation with the settler legal entity are they on the right path?
If drawing on other legal authorities can be an act of sovereignty as you say, is there the risk that opening up to Indigenous laws will be used to reinforce, rather than challenge, the legitimacy of the settler state law?
Bonus Collaboration webinar!
Reflections on Indigenous Politics and Settler Colonialism in Aotearoa- In conversation with Associate Professor Lorenzo Veracini and Māori scholar Hemopereki Hoani Simon
Date & Time: Thurs 13th October 12-1 pm AEDT
Final 2022 Critical Public Conversation webinar
Settler Memory and the Pitfalls and Possibilities of a Third Reconstruction - Professor Kevin Bruyneel
Date & Time: Wed 26th October 10 – 11 am AEDT
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The Australian Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples (Parkville, Southbank, Werribee and Burnley campuses), The Yorta Yorta Nation (Shepparton and Dookie campuses) and The Dja Dja Wurrung people (Creswick campus) stand and respectfully recognises Elders past and present. Based on the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne which sits on sovereign Wurundjeri lands, we at the Australian Centre are conscious we have obligations to this place and its people. We are also conscious that the University has not always valued this relationship and indeed still has a long way to go.
