ABSTRACT
This chapter widens the reading of Indigenous sovereignty by considering how the sovereign warrior woman comes into being in the work of Vivienne Cleven. The character of Mavis Dooley in Bitin' Back is representative of the black sovereign warrior woman, and is situated much closer to reality than literary imaginings and colonial writings. The chapter can be read as a black woman's analysis of Bitin' Back, as an alternative to the one provided by Alison Ravenscroft in which she rereads the novel from location of a white woman. As a Geonpul/Wakka Wakka woman, categorised as Aboriginal woman in the language of the coloniser, it offers a rereading of Bitin' Back that engages with the sovereign Aboriginal woman traditions that Cleven has embodied in Mavis Dooley. The (re)emergence of the Aboriginal sovereign woman in Cleven's Bitin' Back, is not textual fantasy, nor is it a search for authenticity; it is a sovereign exchange.
