"Sovereignty never ceded" is a phrase often heard at rallies, cultural events and in Acknowledgments of Country.

It signifies that Indigenous people never gave up their sovereignty over the land despite colonisation.

The phrase directly challenges the legal and historical basis of the colonisation of Australia.

Unlike many other colonised countries, no treaties were signed in Australia. The British laid claim to this land under the legal fiction of terra nullius, meaning "land belonging to no one".

This was overturned by the Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) case in 1992, which recognised native title and acknowledged that Indigenous people had occupied and cared for the land alongside maintaining cultural traditions over millennia.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, issued in 2017, also speaks to this truth.

"This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or 'mother nature', and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors," the statement says.

"This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty.

"It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown"

Wamba Wamba man Eddie Synot, an academic lawyer and researcher with the Griffith Law School, explained that the statement is both a reminder and a demand for recognition.

In a piece for The Conversation, he wrote that in Australia there are two competing claims to sovereignty - the Crown and Indigenous peoples.

"But although the case for Indigenous sovereignty seems irrefutable, the reality is much more complicated," he said.

"First Nations have never ceded sovereignty.

"The land was taken by force and has been retained by force."

Mr Synot also notes the legitimacy of the Australian state does not align with any treaty with Indigenous people.

"This is a fact that is hard for many to swallow," he said.

"I don't like it, but it is a fact we must accommodate if we are to give meaningful expression to Indigenous sovereignty."

For many Indigenous people, this means their laws or lore, cultures and traditions remain intact, even if it's not recognised by the state.

"Sovereignty never ceded" expresses a living truth - that Indigenous sovereignty was never surrendered and continues to exist alongside the structures of the Australian system.

It's a central idea in conversations about justice, treaty and the future of this country.