The original inhabitants of the land commonly known as Australia have never relinquished their sovereign rights over their land … I shall reject the terms Indigenous, Aborigine or traditional peoples (and relative adjectives), preferring to them the more appropriate term Tribal peoples. The Tribal peoples of the land known as Australia today challenge all claims by British colonial settlers to any and all forms of sovereignty over the Pacific Island Continent commonly known as Australia. Among other arguments, the Tribal peoples’ assertions to the continuity of their never ceded sovereignty over their own land are based on the legal principles of the British colonial settlers themselves. Yesterday morning Jeremy Geia appeared in the Canberra Magistrates Court after three days in custody following his arrest last Friday morning. Geia—aka Murrumu Walubara Yidindji—had allegedly failed to comply with orders for him to quit his occupation of an ACT government house that he claimed to have established as an embassy for the Yidinji people, an Aboriginal group from the Cairns area in north Queensland. That Geia spent three days in chokey on a minor trespass-related charge—that would normally attract a fine and be the subject of a summons following release on police bail—is explained by this statement from ACT Police. [Geia] was informed that he was entitled to bail under Section 8 of the Bail Act but given he did not recognise the Australian Law System bail was refused under Section 22 of the Bail Act. Watch House Bail was refused as the defendant stated that he would not attend court as per the undertakings required. When Geia appeared before Magistrate Bernadette Boss yesterday morning he refused to cooperate or acknowledge the authority or jurisdiction of the court, telling her not to interrupt him while he was speaking. Geia was removed from court twice before magistrate Boss adjourned his matter. As she left the bench Geia shouted to the court that “He who leaves the battlefield first loses by default. I dismiss all charges.” Magistrates face all manner of strange utterances and conduct in their courts and usually make every effort to avoid disruptions to proceedings so when Geia was bought back before her magistrate Boss ordered that he be placed in a remote witness room and appear by video link. The audio feed from that room was muted. Due to Geia’s lack of cooperation Boss entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf and, notwithstanding his unusual conduct, proceeded to upbraid the prosecution for its conduct of the matter. As Daniel Hurst reported in The Guardian yesterday, Boss: … asked whether the prosecution would pursue the charge and Mansfield said that it would do so. Boss told the prosecutor: “I hope your director [of public prosecutions] is well aware of the course of action you’re taking.” She said she was “very keen” to speed up the matter and adjourned the case to 16 February. “The defendant is released unconditionally,” she said. “I dispense with bail.” Geia, previously a Canberra press gallery journalist of standing and experience, most recently came to attention for his announcement in early 2014 that he had renounced Australian citizenship and: … returned his passport and Medicare card to the Australian Commonwealth, and sent his driver’s licence back to the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, where he then lived. Then Murrumu – who has since returned to live permanently in Yidindji country – quit his job, gave away most possessions and walked away from his bank savings and a superannuation account built up over two decades. As Paul Daley reported in The Guardian before Geia’s arrest last Friday, Geia had been driving—presumably without licence, registration and insurance—around Canberra in a car with registration “licensed to the sovereign Yidindji government.” Geia went on to tell Daley that: The Yidindji tribal people are not bound by any laws created subject to the Australian constitution – they are of superior jurisdiction and Australian citizens, including Australian police, must be very careful when encountering people of our jurisdiction. So the Yidindji police are there to protect the Yidindji people and to uphold the laws created by the sovereign Yidindji government. Geia and the Yidindji aren’t the first to revoke Australian sovereignty. In April 1970 Leonard George Casley—better known as “Prince Leonard”—declared that his 4,000 hectare wheat/sheep farm in western Australia was the “Hutt River Province” (later a “Kingdom” and since 2006 the “Principality of Hutt River”). Casley’s claims have, apart from a few minor glitches, been tolerated with a degree of benign indifference by Australian governments. One point of similarity between the assertions by Geia and Casley are their claims that Yidindji country and Hutt River are independent entities and that no other government can dispute their de-facto legality. You can see Prince Leonard’s claims at his quaintly clunky website here. The Yidindji claims are more sophisticated than Casley’s but nonetheless difficult to comprehend. The Yidindji Tribal Nation website contains a number of references to “Determinations” by the Yidinji Council of Elders – “we have deliberated the matter, we have spoken” – and refers to the establishment of a Yidindji Police Force and claims that the waters off Cairns are part of a Yidindji Marine Economic Zone. blogs.crikey.au/northern/2015/01/13/when-bad-cases-make-bad-law-jeremy-geia-the-yidinji-and-tilts-at-the-windmill-of-indigenous-sovereignty/
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 09:07:59 +0000
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