Acting Sovereign' in the Face of Gendered Protectionism (Introduction) (Report‪)‬

In recent years, a number of studies of sovereignty have linked its governmental practices to the reassertion of white Australian nationalism. In her discussion of the consolidation of white Australian sovereignty, for example, Suvendrini Perera states that the Australian state embraces 'crisis as an opportunity for asserting itself on multiple fronts, and for renewing and expanding a sense of racial mission at home and abroad' (2007: 126). In Australia, she argues, 'state projects of maintaining security, peacekeeping, nation building and aid in the region in turn reflect back on and reinforce an ongoing internal project of enacting or reasserting colonial sovereignty over Indigenous bodies and lands' (2007: 126). Aileen Moreton Robinson (2006: 389) has recently suggested that one of the challenges for Indigenous politics in Australia is to extend an understanding of the terrain of sovereignty in Australia as relations of force in a war of races normalized through biopower, contributing to an understanding of how Indigenous sovereignty and its disavowal have shaped Australian nationalism. The arguments that these scholars make indicate the necessity of articulating sovereignty in relation to contemporary colonial and racial politics in Australia. In the case of the current Australian government's announcement to extend its Intervention in remote Aboriginal communities for another three years, sovereignty appears to have been consolidated through the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act in the Northern Territory. But this sovereignty was justified at the end of the regime of conservative Prime Minister John Howard through protectionist discourses in relation to Indigenous women and children based on the reports about child sexual abuse and domestic violence contained in the Little Children are Sacred report (Anderson and Wild 2007). Nicole Watson (2009), in this special issue, suggests that while there is genuine need for programs which will address issues of child sexual abuse or domestic violence, the Intervention's methods and its blanket approach have, in fact, been detrimental to many of the Indigenous communities targeted by this response. Indeed, while the Report's recommendation was for consultation with communities affected and opportunities for Indigenous control of response strategies, the Federal governments' response began with the deployment of military personnel and has continued to sideline existing and proposed community-led programs to combat violence against Indigenous women and children. Irene Watson (2005) has written eloquently on the manner in which a protectionist agenda in relation to Indigenous women and children is an illusion which effects entrapment for Indigenous communities and a feeling 'of being hunted in a confined space' where she fears the 'loss of voice'. 'The image of a black woman in need of rescue, Watson argues, 'works to contradict the call to freedom and self-determination of women, children and men (the entire community)' (2005: 26). Protectionist discourses of saving Australian Muslim women have also been used to target and often discriminate against Muslim communities in the context of the post-September 11 declaration of the 'war on terror.' In the context of reading this gendered strategy against Muslim communities, Chris Ho (2007) has suggested that the portrayal of Muslim men as inherently misogynistic allowed the Howard regime to draw a link between Muslim 'backwardness' and global terrorism. Both Ho and Watson suggest a politics of neoliberal governmentality and control which underpin gendered protectionist discourses in relation to Indigenous and Muslim communities.