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Precarious subjects : Picturing Indigenous British subjecthood in mid-nineteenth-century Australia
Nettelbeck, Amanda
Nettelbeck, Amanda
Author
Abstract
Recent discussion in Australia has highlighted how Indigenous citizenship remains troubled by the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. This article takes up a pre-history to these discussions, returning to a transitional period (1830s–1850s) in the Australian colonies when governments worked to activate Indigenous people's newly-clarified legal status as British subjects. How, in this period, did settler colonial culture envisage Indigenous people's relation to the law as citizens-to-be of the empire? Focusing particularly upon visual vocabularies of policing and civic order, the article considers how vacillating colonial visions of Indigenous people as ‘new’ British subjects reflected a wider tension between settler culture's non-recognition of Indigenous law and jurisdiction, and its running disquiet about the insecure terms of British sovereignty.
Keywords
Date
2023
Type
Journal article
Journal
Australian Historical Studies
Book
Volume
54
Issue
2
Page Range
330-353
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Arts and Humanities
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
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Controlled