Where to After the Voice? Sovereignty as The Path to Autonomy, Respect and Dignity for Aboriginal People

It is a great honour for me to talk here today with you about indigenous sovereignty and what should happen now after the Voice. I should start by saying that I am going to use the term ‘Aboriginal’ out of respect for Mrs Walford, an Anaiwan Elder and Armidale Regional Councillor, as it is her preference.

The point of this paper is to get us to think about what comes next. The Voice Referendum failed, and the news and the Closing the Gap Report tell us that indigenous policy is failing on many fronts. When it comes to the crime and incarceration rates, the health statistics and the number of children being taken away the picture is grim. Aboriginal people are said to be the most incarcerated on the planet. On the other hand, the assertion of Aboriginal identity and autonomy is as strong as it has been in my lifetime, and this is where I see some hope. I believe that the path forward for Aboriginal dignity, respect and autonomy is through an assertion of Aboriginal sovereignty. I should make clear that by this I do not mean an assertion of rights granted by the law of the colonisers, that is a human rights approach. Instead, I mean recognition of a sovereignty that has existed since time immemorial and which has never been ceded.