Presenting themselves as sovereign peoples (and not just as citizens of Australia), Indigenous Australians struggle over therms in which to represent their collectivity. In 2012, I argued that their collective being has come to be rendered in two distinct idioms - 'population' and 'people' - that are both rival and complementary. This discursive problem was accentuated in the debate about constitutional recognition (2012-23). 'Race' became a controversial term; some sought to replace 'race' with 'people', while others eschewed 'people' (as entailing collective rights) and insisted on 'race'. Among those championing sovereign 'peoplehood', were some who envisaged a national representative body (the Voice) and others who asserted that such a body could not be true to the local/regional customary basis of Indigenous sovereignty. The debate leading to the referendum displayed Indigenous political diversity with unprecedented vigor. In this paper I seek to frame that diversity as an episode in the history of Australian Indigenous political thought.            

As an historian Tim Rowse has long been engaged with the anthropology of Indigenous Australia. His monographs include 'Indigenous and other Australians since 1901' (2017). Since 2020 he has been collaborating with Murray Goot (Macquarie) in a study of the Indigenous demand for constitutional recognition - a project that has so far yielded two papers: ‘The rise of Indigenous constitutionalism’ Law and History 9(1): 57-89 and ‘The Debate Over the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians: National Unity and Memories of the 1967 Referendum’
Australian Journal of Politics and History 2023. He contributes frequently to the online current affairs publication 'Inside Story'.