Indigenous media and the countering of the racial insular imaginary in settler-colonial Australia

In the settler colony of Australia, the racial insular imaginary of the state and the law is reconfigured by an uncritical mainstream media that denies Indigenous sovereign knowledges. This insular imaginary has been countered by the ongoing circulation of an autonomous and independent Indigenous media that asserts and territorialises Indigenous sovereign struggles. This chapter provides an overview of how Indigenous media has responded and asserted autonomous Indigenous sovereign knowledge/s across time. It considers the collectivised Indigenous sovereign struggles in The Australian Abo Call (1938) and the racial insularity of the Newspaper Act, 1898 (NSW) that banned its circulation. It demonstrates how current Indigenous media platforms counter a re-occurring racial insularity by reterritorialising Indigenous sovereign knowledges and struggles.