If it happens, & it won't unless Ozzies are as stupid as the yanks, there will be a few hundred jobs, paying in the hundreds of thousands pa for some urban aboriginals, & it will mean sweet FA to all the rest.

A meeting was held last week, I think in Newcastle, with four hundred Indigenous people asked to consider changes to the Constitution. The assembly unanimously rejected 'constitutional recognition' and demanded the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty.

What might Indigenous sovereignty mean ? Sovereignty usually means political control, power, authority, and strictly doesn't have much todo otherwise with land tenure, although I suspect the two are not just confused but that what advocates might mean by sovereignty in this case is precisely 'recognition of ownership of all Australian land'.

As everybody knows, there wasn't just one unified body or authority called 'Aboriginal': with three or four hundred languages and tribes, differentiated into perhaps ten thousand land-holding and land-using clans across the country, each with around thirty people in the best of times - in a very real sense, there were ten thousand 'authorities' holding land.

So the question of 'nations' (i.e. clans), or negotiating a Treaty, or recognising ownership of all land, is: who would be the parties to such an arrangement ? Who would do the negotiating ? And would it be a sort of rhetorical or metaphorical 'ownership of all land', or actual, on-the-ground, taking possession ?

Just trying to unpack declarations that may have major effects on all of us. Whatever is decided, no worries, we've just got to get it past 24 million other people.

Joe

Why not ask the indigenous population if the want Recognition in the constitution ,or $5,000.
The cost of the stupid referendum is the same.
Please give every living Aboriginal $5,000.I am certain they will rather this than what the Green MPs want.
The indigenous community will not gain one cent from this stupid political stunt.

Whatever the decision, it will be based on British law as recognised as pertaining to Australia at the present time, how could those who don't recognise the current laws possibly accept a decision under those laws?

Would seem a bit hypocritical to me.

One problem is that most aborigines today have mixed with the European population, so many have mixed blood.

Also, aboriginals are to be praised for, unlike the British land-grabbers, they never entertained a grand notion of sovereignty over larger areas beyond where their tribe actually lived and sustained itself.

Yes, those who want indigenous sovereignty should have it, but rather than granting an automatic sovereignty over all of Australia, something that never reflected the aboriginal way of life and probably does not suit them, the Australian constitution should recognise the right of every group of people who so wishes, not just aboriginals, to secede and become sovereign on their own land.

If one's land is also subject to a native title, then in order to secede from Australia, an agreement must first be reached between its traditional and modern owners.

Hi Yuyutsu,

I want to give your proposals the attention they deserve.

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Yeah, that should do it.

Joe