WELLBORN
In Memory

2021
acrylic on framed canvas
35 x 45cm

In reflection of Sovereignty, so many thoughts ran through my head.

As for many First Nations people, this word can carry a lot of dismay with it as Sovereignty has never been ceded in Australia, although people clearly existed and thrived on this land before the colonial invasion.

This is the date of the Eddie Mabo decision and represents the campaign for Indigenous land rights in Australia.

It led to the court’s decision which overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius that had characterised Australian law with regard to land and title since the voyage of James Cook in 1770.

For me this date highlights the very notion of sovereignty in Australia to be an Ideology that is far from accurate.