Sovereign Subjects: Review of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, Allen & Unwin, 2007

Abstract

Introduction:In 1999, the prominent historian of Australian race relations, Henry Reynolds, wrote a semi-autobiographical book titled Why Weren’t We Told? This title is somewhat disingenuous and a question that would more adequately reflect the character of Australian race relations past and present might be instead ‘What is it that we Know but are Afraid to Tell?’ I see the publication of the long-awaited collection, Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, edited by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, as a book that removes the non-Indigenous defence of not knowing Indigenous views about this nation’s past, present and future. At the same time, it undermines our privileged capacity to indefinitely defer consideration of the issue of sovereignty as one on which only legal academics are qualified to comment. In so doing, it provides us with an informed basis on which to articulate our support for the recognition of a different kind of governmentality in Australia.