Postcolonial sovereignty in Greenland and Indigenous Australia

This article explores continuities, overlaps and differences between notions of sovereignty in Greenland and Australia. It operates from the premise that sovereignty in the handed-down Westphalian conceptualisation needs to be challenged to better correspond with the vast heterogeneity of colonial a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jensen, Lars
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/a8fbc7b4-71a5-40d9-8954-c5ca8d578995
https://hdl.handle.net/1800/a8fbc7b4-71a5-40d9-8954-c5ca8d578995
http://postkolonial.dk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/10-Lars-Jensen.pdf
Description
Summary:This article explores continuities, overlaps and differences between notions of sovereignty in Greenland and Australia. It operates from the premise that sovereignty in the handed-down Westphalian conceptualisation needs to be challenged to better correspond with the vast heterogeneity of colonial and postcolonial experiences across the globe, historically distorted by colonialism and invasion. The article pursues the question of defining different and locally grown formulations of sovereignty through a comparison of Greenland – Kalaallit Nunaat - and Indigenous Australia. In both cases this search takes place against the legacy of vested interests by the former colonial powers, Denmark, and Britain/settler colonial Australia, in preventing the articulation of a different sovereignty not premised on narrowly defined European views on territoriality as a given and colonialism as having the final say on how sovereignty may be described and circumscribed This article explores continuities, overlaps and differences between notions of sovereignty in Greenland and Australia. It operates from the premise that sovereignty in the handed-down Westphalian conceptualisation needs to be challenged to better correspond with the vast heterogeneity of colonial and postcolonial experiences across the globe, historically distorted by colonialism and invasion. The article pursues the question of defining different and locally grown formulations of sovereignty through a comparison of Greenland – Kalaallit Nunaat - and Indigenous Australia. In both cases this search takes place against the legacy of vested interests by the former colonial powers, Denmark, and Britain/settler colonial Australia, in preventing the articulation of a different sovereignty not premised on narrowly defined European views on territoriality as a given and colonialism as having the final say on how sovereignty may be described and circumscribed