Patrick Lucas Regobert Krüsi explores how Indigenous discourses against colonial violence are coopted and appropriated by a new motley crew of civil disobedience enthusiasts from the ‘Sovereign Citizens movement’ in Australia.
For over a hundred years, the sovereignty battle in Australia was focused primarily on the Indigenous fighting for their rights, reconciliation, and recognition. The Australian Indigenous Sovereignty Movement isn’t a homogenous social movement but contains certain anti-government or establishment aspects. Unfortunately for the rather noble cause of indigenous sovereignty, another movement with sovereign anti-government rhetoric exists, and it’s not a harmonizing movement. The Sovereign Citizens are a relatively new movement in Australia, and the Indigenous Australians must now share the connotation of ‘sovereignty.’
This video captures not only how the Sovereign Citizens movement is tainting the meaning of sovereignty but both movements are hyping each other up to ever-increasing notoriety and anti-social behavior.
The sovereign citizens don’t have a specific definition but could be defined as a loose group of vexatious, militant, litigious civil disobeyers hellbent on resisting government authority based on the idea that the government is an illegitimate corporation with no power over “the sovereign.”
The Indigenous Sovereignty movement and the Sovereign Citizens movement are distinct movements yet have overlapping aspects and aims. Whilst Indigenous Sovereignty movements choose to pursue their aims generally through legal avenues, sovereign citizens simply opt to outright reject obeying authority when prompted. This often results in hilarious police encounters where sovereign citizens find out the hard way that their 15-minute legal degree from the University of Google, stands no chance against established legal institutions. These videos often go viral and unfortunately, only add to the notoriety of any vague sovereign and anti-establishment sentiment. Sovereign citizens around the world are increasingly being added to national security watch lists given their increasingly prevalent violent actions.
The similar rhetoric from both sovereignty movements is likely the biggest driver in both movements co-opting each other’s supporter base but also ending up hijacking each other’s rhetoric. Both movement’s similar rhetoric pertains mainly to the legitimacy of the Australian government and its associated powers and regulations such as land rights, identification, licensing, and administrative authority. With these similarities, it’s understandable how the mainstream somewhat noble cause of indigenous sovereignty rights can be hijacked by the more obscure sovereign citizen movements, especially given its more extreme method of outright rejecting government legitimacy. With the similar anti-government rhetoric, a strange new hybridized rhetoric is beginning to develop, where Indigenous sovereignty campaigners are taking on aspects of the more extreme sovereign citizen rhetoric. This represents a dangerous new development for authorities to filter through in Australia’s pathway to reconciliation, as legitimate land rights discussions are being derailed by this new extreme hybridized rhetoric of sovereign citizenship. These new challenges have created a moving goalpost problem for authorities who must now address conspiratorial claims amongst very legitimate and important sovereignty arguments made by Indigenous communities.
These new challenges raise interesting perspectives, conversations, and problems in political geography, as genuine sovereignty arguments are being taken to an illogical extreme. The geography of this political landscape will become further muddled with these new insidious movements and currently the authorities are unsure of how to respond. Whilst the surface image of sovereign citizens is primarily a hilarious sideshow, unfortunately, they harbor dangerous, violent, and impulsive thoughts.
Patrick Lucas Regobert Krüsi is a Geography Graduate Student at the University of Zurich.