Mining Sovereignties in Courts: Voicing Plural Sovereignties in Juridical Spaces

This article examines how settler courts both facilitate and impede the acknowledgment of Indigenous sovereignty in socio-juridical spaces. Indigenous environmental litigation is a complex category and is characterised by a combination of factors, such as tensions between plural sovereignties and extractivism and an ambiguous relationship with the courts. This article examines two case studies as examples of Indigenous environmental litigation where courts in Australia and Canada have had an opportunity to encounter colonialism and, consequently, allude to plural sovereignties. First, the article examines two decisions from the Federal Court of Australia - Tipakalippa v National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority and Munkara v Santos NA Barossa Pty Ltd. Second, the article examines the Teal Cedar Products Ltd v Rainforest Flying Squad, decided by the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The article also engages with Povinelli's conceptualisation of ancestral catastrophe and its manifestation in the claims made by Indigenous communities in strategic environmental litigation. Through these two case studies, the article argues that the juridical openness to Indigenous knowledge and claims of plural sovereignties may provide courts with opportunities to be both epistemic allies to Indigenous peoples and a force to resist coloniality and oppression of state sovereignty.