Read Part 1 here — Indigenous Sovereignty: Welcome to Country Explained
A 2024 report from the Australian Reconciliation Barometer found more than half (54%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience racism in Australian society. This is an increase from 39% in 2014.
The 2025 Ipsos Indigenous Issues Report reveals 67% of Australians reported hearing racial or ethnic slurs or ‘jokes’ about Indigenous peoples.
In an ABC article, Director of the UTS Centre for Indigenous People and Work Nareen Young said this increased racism is fuelled by ‘the rise of right-wing populism…there’s pockets of it and they’re active. I think that there’s a lot of responsibility there’.
‘Professor Young is an expert on the topic, so I would absolutely believe this to be true’, Western Sydney University’s lecturer in Heritage and Tourism Studies and the Academic Program Advisor for Tourism, Hospitality, and Events Dr Donna James agrees. ‘What we witnessed was the collision of two narratives that many Australians struggle to reconcile: The recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the veneration of settler-colonial history. The response, undeniably racist…reflects broader patterns of right-wing populism and resistance to truth-telling in Australia today’.
Extremist racism and violence faced by First Nations people further confirms Young’s statement. In November 2024, thirteen white supremacists staged a rally at sacred Bundjalung Indigenous site Wollumbin Mountain.
White supremacists at the rally held a sign saying, ‘Mt Warning [Mountain Wollumbin’s former name] for the white man’. On January 26th 2025, Adelaide saw sixteen Neo Nazis crash a Survival Day rally, chanting ‘Australia is for the white man’.
In Melbourne, April 2025, Neo Nazis booed a Welcome to Country speech by Bunurong elder Mark Brown at an Anzac Day Dawn Service. Neo Nazi Jacob Hersant shouted the same slogan said by politicians Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson saying, ‘We don’t want to be welcomed, this is our country.’
The most recent targeted attack occurred in August on Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne. Forty white supremacists led by Neo Nazi Thomas Sewell was seen, according to SBS, ‘shouting abuse, stomping on a sacred fire and physically assaulting those present’, as reported by Bronte Charles and Yasmine Alwakal for NITV.
‘I think that the internet has created convenient echo chambers for these right-wing groups to be able to find likeminded people across the globe…’ Western’s Badanami Student Success Officer Adrian Atkins said. Atkins emphasises the speed at which right wing rhetoric spreads highlighting the need for collective unity.
‘I was very fortunate 25 years ago that I was able to meet Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal people from such different backgrounds who came together and formed alliances, and I think that’s still really valid today with conservatives and these Neo Nazi groups that seek to isolate us. If they do, then they win’.
‘There is strength in numbers and strength in unity like they did in the past… Rather than just be consumed by the enormity of what’s in front of us. People still got up and resisted and articulated in dignified terms what needs to be said. I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind’.
Read Part 3 — Indigenous Sovereignty: Young Australians Pursuing Change | TO COME
