blak sovereignty

This can also be spelled black sovereignty but the use of the blak spelling links it more closely with Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal English.  I made the assumption that this change was initiated in the US and that we had followed suit.  The reclaiming of Black with a capital B was certainly a Black American movement. But it turns out that blak is an Australian spelling. It was the idea of Indigenous artist and photographer,  Destiny Deacon, who persuaded the curators Hetti Perkins and Claire Williamson to call their 1994 urban Indigenous exhibition Blakness: Blak City Culture.  Destiny explained that she had grown up with her Indigenous community constantly referred to as ‘black c..ts’ and she wanted to take the c out of black.  It was a powerful way of taking control of this word that had been used against her and reshaping it as a badge of pride.  It caught on swiftly.

The blak sovereignty movement asserts that the sovereignty of Indigenous people was never ceded to the British government and that the raising of the British flag in Sydney Cove in 1788 was an illegal act. The British concept of Australia as terra nullius has, in the case of Eddie Mabo vs Queensland (1992), been determined to be incorrect.  They therefore believe that a treaty is needed before anything else to establish what the relationship will be between the Indigenous people who still have sovereignty over this land and the Australian Government.  They also fear that establishing a Voice to Parliament might diminish the claims of the Indigenous people, because it implies acceptance of the Australian Government.  Senator Lydia Thorpe has presented herself as the champion of this movement.