Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul woman of Quandamooka and Australia’s first Indigenous Distinguished Professor. Her scholarship fundamentally transformed understanding of how settler states construct and maintain sovereignty through naturalising white possession of Indigenous lands. She articulated Critical Indigenous Studies as distinct field with global reach whilst remaining grounded in Australian Indigenous experiences.
Moreton-Robinson’s work addresses sovereignty, property relations, race and gender across Indigenous and settler contexts. She demonstrates how whiteness operates as unmarked category structuring access to resources, authority and belonging. This makes visible what settler societies work to obscure.
White possessive sovereignty
Moreton-Robinson’s concept of “white possessive sovereignty” represents her most influential theoretical contribution. This framework analyses how settler states construct sovereignty as inherently white through naturalising possession as white entitlement to land and resources.
Possessiveness becomes racialised as distinctly white characteristic. Settlers treat their sovereignty as self-evident natural right rather than historical product of dispossession. This makes Indigenous sovereignty claims appear as threats to legitimate order rather than assertions of pre-existing authority.
The possessive operates through multiple mechanisms. Property law treats land as commodity that can be owned, bought and sold. This imposes Western frameworks whilst delegitimising Indigenous relationships to country. Citizenship constructs national belonging as white whilst treating Indigenous peoples as minorities within their own lands.
Moreton-Robinson demonstrates how possessiveness structures everyday interactions and institutional practices. When settlers assume authority to determine what occurs on Indigenous lands, this enacts white possessive sovereignty. When policies frame Indigenous disadvantage as requiring settler management, this reproduces possessive logics.
Critical Indigenous Studies
Moreton-Robinson articulated Critical Indigenous Studies as analytical framework for examining colonising power. She defined this as field centred on Indigenous intellectual sovereignty and theorising as central to Indigenous scholarly labour.
Her vision emphasises Critical Indigenous Studies as discipline with global reach, multicultural character and multidisciplinary approach. This positions Indigenous Studies beyond national boundaries whilst respecting place-based specificities. The emphasis on theorising challenges Western tendency to treat Indigenous peoples as subjects requiring interpretation rather than as theorists themselves.
Moreton-Robinson argues that Indigenous peoples have always engaged in sophisticated analysis of their circumstances. Colonial structures obscured this intellectual work through representing Indigenous peoples as lacking capacity for abstraction. Critical Indigenous Studies recovers and centres Indigenous theoretical production.
The framework insists on Indigenous peoples determining research agendas, methodologies and knowledge dissemination, representing intellectual sovereignty operationalised through institutional practices. Universities must grant Indigenous scholars authority over Indigenous Studies rather than treating it as subfield of anthropology or sociology.
Indigeno
us feminism and intersectionality
Moreton-Robinson’s Talkin’ Up to the White Woman (2000) provided foundational analysis of how white Australian feminism perpetuated colonialism and white supremacy. She documented how white feminists marginalised, tokenised and sometimes directly opposed Aboriginal women’s liberation projects.
The work demonstrates that white feminist practice enacts new forms of colonising practices. When white women claim to speak for all women whilst ignoring Indigenous women’s distinct oppressions, this reproduces colonial hierarchies. When feminists advocate for gender equality without addressing ongoing land theft, this serves white interests.
Moreton-Robinson developed Indigenous feminist standpoint theory centring Aboriginal women’s knowledge and experience. This differs from Western standpoint epistemology through maintaining ethics of “staying in relation” with communities. Knowledge production remains accountable to collective rather than individual.
Her work influenced subsequent Indigenous feminist scholarship across multiple contexts. The insistence that feminism must address colonialism as central rather than secondary oppression shaped how Indigenous feminists theorise intersecting systems of domination.
Whiteness and critical race theory
Moreton-Robinson contributed significantly to critical whiteness studies through analysing how whiteness operates in Australian contexts. She demonstrates that whiteness functions as unmarked norm structuring social relations, institutional practices and national identity.
Her work examines how white Australians construct themselves as entitled to land, resources and authority. This entitlement appears natural rather than historically produced through dispossession. Whiteness becomes invisible to itself whilst hypervisible in how it excludes and marginalises Indigenous peoples.
The analysis addresses how whiteness operates through claims of innocence and good intentions. White Australians position themselves as having moved beyond racism whilst maintaining colonial structures. Multiculturalism incorporates diverse migrants whilst continuing to dispossess Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Moreton-Robinson shows that challenging whiteness requires more than diversity initiatives or antiracism training. Transformation necessitates returning stolen lands and dismantling structures granting white people sovereignty over Indigenous territories.
Property and possession
Property relations constitute central concern throughout Moreton-Robinson’s scholarship. She analyses how imposing Western property frameworks enabled legal theft whilst making Indigenous relationships to country unintelligible within settler legal systems.
Indigenous peoples understood country through reciprocal relationships involving care, responsibility and kinship. Land was not commodity to be owned but relative requiring ongoing attention. Settler property law treated these relationships as non-existent, declaring lands legally empty through terra nullius doctrine.
Contemporary land rights struggles address ongoing effects of this foundational dispossession. Even when Indigenous peoples achieve limited land rights, these operate within settler legal frameworks privileging private property. This constrains possibilities for recovering Indigenous relationships to country.
Moreton-Robinson demonstrates that decolonisation cannot occur through merely recognising Indigenous cultural connection whilst maintaining settler property relations. Genuine transformation requires restoring Indigenous authority over territories and accepting Indigenous legal orders as equally valid to settler law.
Governance and self-determination
Moreton-Robinson’s work addresses Indigenous governance and self-determination as dimensions of sovereignty. She analyses how settler states constrain Indigenous authority through mechanisms claiming to enable Indigenous control.
Self-government agreements often grant limited authority over specific domains whilst maintaining ultimate settler state sovereignty. This reproduces colonial hierarchies through allowing Indigenous peoples to administer their own dispossession.
Treaty negotiations similarly operate within frameworks presuming settler sovereignty. When treaties position Indigenous peoples as stakeholders within settler states rather than as distinct polities, this denies pre-existing Indigenous authority.
Moreton-Robinson argues that genuine self-determination requires Indigenous peoples exercising authority according to their own legal and political traditions. This means settler states accepting Indigenous law as equally valid rather than subordinate to settler constitutions.
Indigenous knowledge production
Throughout her career, Moreton-Robinson emphasised importance of Indigenous peoples controlling knowledge about themselves. She documented how Western disciplines treated Indigenous peoples as objects requiring study rather than as knowledge producers.
Anthropology particularly received sustained critique for extracting Indigenous knowledge whilst denying Indigenous peoples authority over representation. Museums, archives and universities accumulated Indigenous cultural materials and information serving institutional rather than community interests.
Moreton-Robinson advocated for Indigenous research paradigms grounded in accountability to communities. Research should serve Indigenous aspirations rather than academic careers. Knowledge belongs to communities and must benefit them rather than merely advancing scholarship.
Her institutional leadership enabled building infrastructure for Indigenous knowledge production. Establishing dedicated Indigenous research centres and programmes created spaces where Indigenous scholars determine agendas outside disciplines historically objectifying Indigenous peoples.
Institutional leadership
Moreton-Robinson’s career demonstrates commitment to transforming universities to enable Indigenous intellectual sovereignty. She held numerous leadership positions including Research Professor and Director of Indigenous Research at Queensland University of Technology.
Her appointment as Australia’s first Indigenous Distinguished Professor represented significant milestone whilst highlighting ongoing underrepresentation of Indigenous scholars in senior positions. She used this platform to advocate for structural change beyond individual advancement.
Moreton-Robinson mentored emerging Indigenous scholars and created pathways for Indigenous academic careers. The emphasis on collective advancement rather than individual success reflects Indigenous values of responsibility to community and future generations.
She contributed to developing Indigenous Studies programmes and research centres providing institutional homes for Indigenous scholarship. This infrastructure enables Indigenous-controlled knowledge production outside Western disciplinary structures.
International engagement
Moreton-Robinson’s influence extends globally through participation in international Indigenous scholarship networks. She engaged with scholars across North America, Aotearoa New Zealand, Latin America and elsewhere.
This transnational work enables comparative analysis whilst respecting place-based specificities. Settler colonialism operates through similar logics across contexts whilst manifesting distinctly. Indigenous peoples share experiences of dispossession and resistance whilst maintaining particular histories and aspirations.
Moreton-Robinson co-edited collections bringing together Indigenous scholars from multiple contexts. These collaborations demonstrate possibilities for intellectual sovereignty operating across nation-state boundaries imposed through colonisation.
Her concepts like white possessive sovereignty travel across contexts because they address structural features of settler colonialism rather than merely describing Australian specifics. This enables Indigenous scholars elsewhere to engage her frameworks whilst adapting them to local conditions.
Legacy and ongoing influence
Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s contributions fundamentally shaped how Critical Indigenous Studies understands sovereignty, property and race. Her concept of white possessive sovereignty provides essential analytical tool for examining how settler states naturalise dispossession.
The emphasis on Indigenous peoples as theorists rather than merely subjects transformed expectations for Indigenous scholarship. Her work demonstrates that Indigenous intellectuals produce sophisticated analysis addressing fundamental questions about power, knowledge and justice.
Moreton-Robinson’s influence extends beyond Indigenous Studies into disciplines engaging with race, gender and colonialism. Critical race theory, feminist studies and political theory all incorporate insights from her scholarship. This demonstrates reach of Indigenous intellectual work.
Perhaps most importantly, Moreton-Robinson provided frameworks for Indigenous peoples to assert authority over knowledge production about themselves. Her insistence on intellectual sovereignty as dimension of broader sovereignty struggles connects research to political transformation.
The work ultimately demonstrates that decolonisation requires transforming how knowledge is produced, who controls it and what purposes it serves. Universities cannot genuinely decolonise whilst maintaining extractive research relationships and denying Indigenous peoples authority over Indigenous knowledge. Moreton-Robinson’s scholarship provides both critique of existing conditions and vision of alternatives grounded in Indigenous sovereignty.