"Land rights is a load of crap," says Kaylah Truth. They are not the kind of words you'd expect to hear from a radical, politically-savvy Indigenous rapper. But Truth, of militant Murri hip-hop group Impossible Odds, says she has learnt from bitter experience to pursue sovereignty instead.

On the band's album, Against All Odds, she raps:

I no longer need my fists to fight
I just write whenever those emotions do arise
I'm 23 and I just got my land rights

But that was recorded two years previously. 

"When I wrote it, I wasn't educated about sovereignty," she says. "But that line in that song, I won't change it because it still represents an important event in my people's history. It brought a lot of people back together again."

Back then, the Quandamooka people had won native title recognition over most of Stradbroke Island. Truth's relatives came from all over the country to celebrate. But the Brisbane Times reported: "Existing usage remains unaffected."

As land rights activist and historian Gary Foley puts it, "native title is not land rights". But Truth says her people should move on from land rights, to sovereignty.

"I'm definitely grateful for all of the past generations who did go through that land rights movement and bring us to where we are today so that now we can think about the next step," she says.

"But it's our turn to educate ourselves on what's next. Younger people, especially in my generation, are becoming more interested in learning about what sovereignty is. A lot of people think that sovereignty is about kicking everybody out of our country and living the way that we used to - but it's not about that at all, and it's not a black issue. It's for everyone, to just learn how to become self-sufficient without living under a government that does nothing for us."

The band's founder, Fred Leone, says: "We've sort of figured out that migloos don't have our best interests at heart. Two hundred and something years, bro, they've had control over us. It's killing us. We're dying out at an extreme rate. If we were an animal, we'd be on the endangered species list."

Fred Leone: "We're dying out at an extreme rate." Photo: Mat Ward

Yet it would appear the odds are stacked against sovereignty. As the "father of international law", Lassa Oppenheim, put it, sovereignty "has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon". But Thomas Hobbes' definition, which said a state could not be thought of as sovereign if it did not act in the best interests of its own citizens, resonates. The modern nation-state, in which totalitarian corporations direct supposedly democratic politicians to lead the human race towards an uninhabitable future, is hardly sovereign in the sense of having people's best interests at heart.

Indigenous sovereignty, which was never conceded in Australia, looks a far more attractive proposition for everyone - and governments know it. In 1998, lawyers advising John Howard's government wrote: "The issue of domestic sovereignty is set to dominate future international discussions of indigenous rights. [It] could potentially change the map of this country. Australians tend to take their sovereignty for granted. That sovereignty is now being contested. We must become more aware of the issues, the players and be prepared to defend our sovereignty if we are to maintain it."

Aboriginal Tent Embassy founder and sovereignty campaigner Michael Anderson has his own interpretation of that legal advice to Howard. Anderson says it meant: "Be very careful of what you're doing, because the Aborigines are coming after us."

The odds for sovereignty may seem impossible, but Impossible Odds are used to playing against all odds. Leone says: "For Indigenous males and females to make anything out of whatever, the odds are just impossible. I don't know that people in the wider community can understand, or get a grasp on, exactly what we're going through as a race of people to even just be able to work a nine-to-five job, live in a house, to try to excel in music, whatever we're doing, we're basically facing impossible odds."

The band are beating the odds. They are sitting in the grand lobby of their plush Cairns hotel, having just played the first date on their "Bring The Sun Out" tour, showcasing their own record label. It's not cyclone season in Cairns, but when the band rolled into town, it seemed like this Far North Queensland port had been hit by a tornado. Fred Leone - also known as Rival MC - was the eye of the storm. Kaylah Truth held in her power like tightly-packed explosive, occasionally blowing up the mic and spraying the crowd with lyrical shrapnel. But Leone leapt all over the stage, a whirling dervish of pure energy, a manic comic, electrifying dancer and magnetic emcee.

After the show, he was still whipping about like a willy-willy, sweeping people up in his effervescent energy and spitting them out, leaving a dizzy, diminishing trail of thrilled and exhausted people all the way back to the hotel lobby. Kaylah Truth walked a small distance apart, the constantly connected activist, tapping away at her smartphone. I pointed at Leone and said to her: "It's like following a whirlwind." She grinned and replied: "He's always like this." Now, back at the hotel, Leone sits, spent, in a deep, wide seat, quietly and pensively reflecting on why hip-hop resonates so well with his people.

"I bang on about this a lot, but there's four elements of hip-hop," he says, gently. 

"Breakdancing, deejaying, graffiti and emceeing. And in our culture, to me, it's just a natural progression that we pick this tool up and use it, because hip-hop has breakdancing, we have shake-a-leg; hip-hop has a deejay, we've got a didge player; hip-hop has an emcee, we've got a songman; hip-hop has graffiti, we've got the oldest graffiti in the whole world with our artwork. So it's only natural that we just pick hip-hop up, gel with it, and be able to use it as a tool to voice our opinions today."

Yet there is a fifth element in hip-hop that is often forgotten - knowledge. Most Indigenous rappers have it in spades, but it is sorely neglected in so-called "Australian Hip-Hop". Fed and watered by capitalism, the genre has branched out so far from its righteous roots that that Leone has rapped: "First release I went political and freaked people out." To what extent were Australians freaked out by politics in hip-hop?

"People were coming up to me and saying, 'It makes me feel uncomfortable - when I listen to music, I just want to have fun,'" he says. "And I was, like, 'Well, sadly this is reality and you have to hear what is the reality of this country."

The release that "freaked people out", a song called "Laugh It Off", was born in everyday Australian reality. "These young fellas who were living in the house next door invited me round to have a drink," says Leone. "So I said, 'Yeah, I'll come over and have a beer.' Rocked over and had a beer, there was a few people there, and one dude lets rip.

"What he said, was, 'You're cool, like, for an Aboriginal, but those others man, they just stink and they just don't work and they're lazy and they just... Man, I hate Abos, eh. But you're all right, you're cool.' I've just gone, boom! Pounded my hand on the table and said, 'Brother, you're lucky you didn't meet me 10 years ago, because I would have knocked you out... Never mind, I'm gonna write a song about you!

"He just stared at me as if to say, 'How could I have possibly offended you?' I said, 'You don't know me, you have no idea who I am, you don't know my past and I'm just THIS far away from smacking you. I actually feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for you and I feel sorry for your parents, who taught you how to behave like that, who taught you everything you know. I feel sorry for your grandparents, because you just brought shame on your whole family. That's ridiculous, man.' I got straight home, walked in, and just started writing."

With "Laugh It Off", Leone had the last laugh - national radio snapped it up, along with another Impossible Odds song.

"Triple J put it on dual rotation. So 'Hey People' was on spot rotation while 'Laugh It Off' was on high rotation and then it went on Qantas International in-flight radio all around the world and I was getting all these messages on Facebook. It suddenly went from, like, 100 friends to 2000. And I was getting comments like, 'that first release made me really uncomfortable' and even friends were like: 'I listened to your release and we never talked about that stuff, growing up, so it made me really uncomfortable. It's so catchy, I just can't get the tune out of my head, but what you're talking about makes me so sick because I know that you're just relaying something that goes on every day, you know, to Indigenous people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.'

"I said, 'Yeah, it is what it is.' I thought I'd just put it in a song, but make it so catchy that people couldn't ignore it, they'd just go 'Whaa-oh, whaa-oh, ya dit-de-dit-de-dit-de Laugh It Off!'. I think a lot of blackfellas do do that, laugh it off, because if you don't just laugh things off, if you don't have a good coping mechanism, it's game over, you're in jail, because you just dropped somebody, you know?" Leone laughs a small, mirthless laugh. "One punch can kill," he says, quietly.

In the song, he raps:

Hey boys and girls, here's a bit about me
Fred Leone, nowadays known as Rival MC
Back in the day growing up I got teased just because
Could never put a finger on just what it was
Till I was told one day, it was because of my skin
'I mean, you're all right, but those others, they're just lazy, smelly and whinge'
I cringed, thinking I should knock this fella's block off
I kept my composure and just decided to laugh it off

In 2013, Aboriginal lawyer Larissa Behrendt wrote a comment piece in the Guardian titled "Aboriginal humour: 'the flip side of tragedy is comedy'". Laughter, she said, is "a powerful antidote to the trauma, harm and hurt that comes with racism". She ended the piece with the following anecdote: "Once, when I was asked what nationality I was, the kindly Australian response to my Aboriginality was 'don't worry, you can’t tell'. I tell it as a funny story. And it sort of is. And sort of isn’t."

Kaylah Truth, whose father is white, can relate to that. "When I tell people that I'm Aboriginal, they say, 'you're too pretty to be Aboriginal', which is like the biggest insult," she says. "Now I just say, 'well, obviously you don't know many blackfellas'. But they say, 'you must be something else'. You know? It's like they're interested in every other thing."

Video: "Everything" by Impossible Odds

Leone agrees. "I've picked this up for years," he says. "I'll introduce myself and people will say, 'What are you... where are you... what's your background?' 'Oh, I'm Aboriginal and South Sea and Tongan.' Almost every time, if it's an Australian person, they'll go, 'Oh, Tongan?' You know, and they'll just ignore the rest. 'Nah, but I mainly grew up with all blackfellas.' 'Ah, OK, yeah.' And they switch off and that's it. I just want to have a conversation about it, but they just avoid and avoid it as if it's going to get political or something."

Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner dubbed Australians' wish to avoid any Aboriginal issues "the great Australian silence". AFL player and Indigenous record label boss Nathan Lovett-Murray has said that he finds interest in Aboriginal people is stronger abroad than it is in Australia. Radical Indigenous artist Vernon Ah-Kee has said the only time he feels like an equal is when he goes abroad.

Fred Leone agrees. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Just the fascination and the directness. I went to New York. 'Where you from?' 'From Australia.' 'You're not from Australia are you?' 'Yeah.' 'You don't look Australian.' 'Well, what does an Australian look like?' 'Well... you must be from Africa or something.' 'I'm Aboriginal, bro.' 'An Aborigine! Woah, I thought you were extinct!' And then it's questions galore, but it's like, they're actually interested, they just want to know the ins and outs of everything.

"It's cool, you start walking around different. We were staying in the Bronx and I was saying to my mate, 'Something's weird, bro, I just feel real good here man, I walk with more confidence, I just feel real at ease, I dunno what it is.' And he turns around and goes, 'You're in the majority, homie. You're not in the minority.' And that's what it is!"

It doesn't help that the mainstream media malign minorities. "Yeah, I can't watch the mainstream media," says Leone. "I can't watch. Just growing up, if all you see is a negative portrayal of your people every time you turn on the TV then that's all you're going to think is your future. They can brainwash you in a way. Even now, it's so frustrating to just hear the rot that they're just spewing out. It's just hard to stomach, so I don't bother turning it on, it's just crap. I just tune out, do what I want to do, pick up whatever I want to read, and find out from whatever sources I can."

On "Take This Message" he raps about the media:

An instrument of hate when in the wrong hands
Freedom of speech can poison even the best of men
I can't watch the news because of all the lies and misconceptions
And misrepresentations of anyone willing to make a stand

But as Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote, when interpreting philosopher Voltaire's views on freedom of speech: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

"Well, that's true, too," says Leone. "It's a double-edged sword. You can't control it, it's an instrument of hate, when in the wrong hands. When I say that, all the journalists on the right will be like 'aaaagghh', but when in the wrong hands it can be a powerful tool for destruction. Everybody has the right to express themselves, but at the expense of other people, it's weird, it freaks me out. I don't know how people can do it.

"There's nothing like a bit of ego or bit of power to make people suddenly think, 'Well, you know what? That's inappropriate, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Because I am who I am and nobody can tell me what I can and can't do.' They could have a good heart, but if it comes out of your mouth, that's what comes out of your mouth. At the end of the day, that's what will be left in the history books, 100,000 years down the track."

Leone talks in epic scales: thousands of years of his people's history; thousands of generations into the future. Yet as Australia is torn apart for its iron, uranium, oil, coal and gas - threatening the future of the planet - he admits the future looks bleak. On "Identity" he raps:

In the past they called us warriors
Now we're militant lyrical activists with intelligence
I don't want your mining millions
And there's no way that we're selling this
We've been living it ever since my great great grandfather's times
He signed with an X and he didn't understand the complexities
Genocidal effects that would happen to today’s generation

"Yeah, it's just about when my great great grandfather came in contact with non-Indigenous people," says Leone. 'What's your name?' Couldn't have his name. 'What's your name? We need a first name.' 'You don't know what I mean.' 'Sign with an X.' They didn't realise what they were getting themselves into by having to conform to what was being presented to them, instead of going, 'You know what? I'm going to fight this.' If only our old people knew actually what was happening, if they could see what was happening today, they just would have said, 'You know what? Take it and get out! Go!'

"No amount of cash is going to bring those sacred sites back. They might build one on my grandfather's land, on our land, Westmoreland Station - uranium - and it's gonna happen, probably. We've gotta try and stop it, but I live in Brisbane. I barely get up there, so what am I gonna do? It's so frustrating. And the elders know, but when they put it to you and pretty it up the right way, take it to the right people in the community, the lines sort of blur."

As if to illustrate Leone’s point, the ABC’s headline on the story reads: "Uranium mine near Mount Isa could create hundreds of jobs”.

Leone shakes his head. “I just think the land will never, ever be the same," he says. “I want my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids to go up to that country and see where their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather's from, know all those songs that that man or that woman passed down, all those generations, thousands of generations. I want them to be able to go there and feel that spirit of that land. Not turn around and there be three-eyed fish and a big rusty metal thing sitting there in sacred places and just killing it. It's a quick buck, it's a quick fix. And sadly I don't think it's gonna change."

The odds don't look good - but sovereignty, rather than land rights, may hold the key, says Kaylah Truth.

"I don't think we really need to be fighting for our land back because we're still here and it's still our land," she says. "We just need to use the tools that we've learnt growing up in this society to take more control of it. Beat them at their own game.

"A lot of people think that blackfellas are disadvantaged, but I think it's the total opposite. If we educate ourselves in everything that we need to know about this society today, and we also have that connection to our land, then we also have that spirit inside of us that Westerners don't have for this land. Those two things together are such a powerful thing..."

She breaks off. Kaylah Truth and Fred Leone are being beckoned by their bandmates to catch up. We say our goodbyes and I order a taxi from their ritzy residence to my modest motel.

When I get in the cab, the taxi driver says: "Did you get taken to the wrong place or something?"

Puzzled, I ask: "What do you mean?"

"This place is called Rydges Tradewinds, but you're staying at Tradewinds Apartments."

"Ah yeah," I say. "There is a bit of a difference isn't there?"

The taxi driver laughs hard. "Just a bit," she sniggers.

Taxi drivers: the world's social barometers. It hits home just how far Impossible Odds have come - by some measures. If they can beat those sort of odds, then Indigenous sovereignty might not be so impossible, after all.