Collaborative Creative Processes That Challenge Us as "Anomaly", and Affirm Our Indigeneity and Enact Our Sovereignty

Australian universities are built on land that was deemed\ua0terra nullius\ua0at the time of British settlement.\ua0Terra nullius\ua0translates to a land unoccupied or uninhabited and, in the face of the clear presence of Aboriginal peoples living on the land, established the false pretence for British colonisation and settlement. Moreton-Robinson explains that British settlement became a project in which a foreign “unoccupied” land was claimed and renamed as a reflection of a white British self. She notes that, from the construction of the first fence for the first building, British colonists set about creating an Anglo-centric world that replicated the one they had left behind. In undertaking this process, they dispossessed Aboriginal peoples and eroded elements of Aboriginal culture and history from the land. Through claiming, renaming, and constructing, non-Indigenous people established dominance over the landscapes, backed by the governments and policies they implemented.\ua0In this article, I discuss how the claiming and subsequent re-territorialisation of place has become “normalised” by non-Indigenous people and is continually reinforced through interactions, practices, ceremonies, and events held and perpetuated within places. Positioning my discussion in relation to Australian universities, I consider how such orientations have contributed to a habit of many non-Indigenous people of seeing Indigenous people as seemingly out of place (Fredericks). Indigenous peoples are often presented as an “anomaly” or an “unsettling presence” (Douglas and Besley). However, while the processes of colonisation have dispossessed Indigenous peoples and altered Indigenous connections with place, ownership or belonging is not lost. Indigenous peoples are not an “anomaly” and increasingly challenge false discourses that un-write and mask our very existence. I illustrate practical challenges to the “anomaly” through three examples centred around The University of Queensland’s Great Court