Like many other (non)-Indigenous nations across the globe who were dispossessed from their country or were deported to other so-called promising land, Aboriginal Australian and African American peoples have had an ongoing resistance to (post)-colonial policies. In fact, Aboriginal Australian peoples have experienced both external and internal colonialism: the former signifies “the exploitation of Indigenous lands and waters,” and the latter refers to “the geo- and bio-political management of Indigenous bodies within the borders of the ‘nation’,” to use the words of Aboriginal Australia scholar Evelyn Araluen (2017, 3). African American's sociopolitical repercussions (or “domestic colonialism”) are comparably experienced by any (internally) colonized minority around the globe, including Aboriginal Australians. They not only suffered from the effects of racism, but also were dominated by outsiders, “much as colonial subjects in the Third World, and had seen their indigenous values and ways of life destroyed,” argues American historian Ramón Arturo Gutiérrez (2004, 281). In the aftermath of colonialism, the concepts of the so-called Aboriginality and negroness were imposed upon these peoples respectively in a blatant attempt to manipulate and disempower. Consequently, issues of race and, in the case of Aboriginal Australians, land dispossession were the catalysts that motivated peoples in both countries to engage in civil and human rights activism to gain decolonization, not only on the political level but also on the sociocultural and literary ones. The conquered and deported peoples were obliged to undertake a long and painful quest, for more than two centuries, to assert their identity in opposition to the processes of “identification or annihilation triggered by these invaders” (Glissant 1999, 17). The resistance of these peoples to colonialism and deportation can be traced back to their early contact with the colonists, be it on board of slavery ships heading to the so-called New World, or when the British flag was first raised over Sydney Cove in 1788.

Rather than retelling the chronological historical accounts of these peoples’ ongoing political resistance, certain milestones in the political history of these peoples will be highlighted in this book during which Aboriginal and African American peoples established channels of transpacific political collaboration.