12. Conclusions: State of Exception and Bare Life in Criminology and Criminal “Justice”

Colonial relations are reproduced through the “universalisation” of the criminal justice system that excludes Indigenous rights, self-determination and sovereignty. Indigenous scholar Mark Rifkin (2009, 91) argues that Indigenous people exist in a state of exception that legitimates the state’s monopoly on sovereignty and its “exclusive uncontestable right to define what will count as a viable legal or political formulation”. In other words, universalism is normalised through the exception. The dialectic of universalism and exception are constantly at play in the application of penality to Indigenous people, the denial of Indigenous Laws and the suspension of protections for Indigenous lives. Through casting Indigenous peoples’ resistance as criminal, and thus an exception to the norm, the state conceals the illegal colonial land grab, denigrates Indigenous Laws as outside of the recognised judicial order (Stark 2016), and characterises Indigenous justice mechanisms as a sideline, even fanciful, “program”. This fulfils the state’s purpose of excluding Indigenous legality and entrenching the state’s universalist claims.