Cartographies of the Colonial/Capitalist State: A Geopolitics of Indigenous Self‐Determination in Australia

‘Indigenous self‐determination’ is a multivalent term that has come to represent various meanings in different political and cultural contexts. Indigenous peoples' strategies for self‐determination have become increasingly prominent in the domestic polities of many ‘first‐world’ nations, and in the sphere of international law and human rights. These strategies have challenged the cartography of the nation‐state with competing claims to land ownership, sovereignty, and self‐governance. In Australia, indigenous strategies for self‐determination are diverse and holistic and revolve around issues including land rights, law, environmental management, and control over service provision. These are evident in a variety of both ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ geopolitical texts. Meanwhile, Australian governments have created new structures that have attempted to encapsulate meanings of ‘self‐determination,’ allowing some indigenous decision‐making control, whilst entrenching the nation‐state's ultimate hegemony over land. The geopolitics of indigenous strategies for self‐determination, and tensions concerning the meaning of the term, are examined, revealing some ways in which discursive trends and material structures interact in locally produced relations of power.