THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

Abstract

Abstract In this article I reveal how texts produced by Aboriginal women scholars signify a racialised and gendered body that functions discursively, as an immediacy of racism in the form of white patriarchal epistemic violence (Lloyd 1991, 74). I demonstrate how this dominant racialised and gendered form of violence is an assertion of power that involves or arises from racialised knowledge by examining Dirk Moses' analysis of ‘Indigeneity’ via the Northern Territory Intervention (Spivak 1988).

Notes

I thank Dr Fiona Nicoll, Associate Professor Jane Haggis, Associate Professor Brendan Hokowhitu and Associate Professor Chris Andersen for their incisive comments, as well as those provided by the anonymous reviewers.

1. Associate Professor Maggie Walter (University of Tasmania) coined this term in reference to Moses' work during question time, after I had presented a version of this article at the inaugural South Australia Women's and Gender Studies Annual Public Lecture, 2 July 2010, University of South Australia, South Australia.

2. The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia whose borders are shared with the states of Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia. The Northern Territory occupies most of the central part of the Australian continent and its central northern regions. The territory was colonised later than other parts of Australia and has the smallest population out of the eight states and territories. The majority of Aboriginal people do not live in the Northern Territory they reside in the other states and territories.

On June 2007, the Federal government sent military and police into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory on the premise that sexual abuse of children was rampant and a national crisis. The Northern Territory Intervention, initiated and implemented by the former Howard-led Liberal government, continues as government policy. Since its execution, the Intervention has been criticised by Aboriginal women and men as well as non-Indigenous human rights advocates, church leaders, lawyers, former judges and some academics. The Northern Territory Intervention received a great deal of media attention leading up to and during the first year, though this gradually diminished after the Rudd Labor government assumed office. The measures imposed on communities include: restricting alcohol; auditing computers to detect pornographic material; leasing Aboriginal land and changing land tenure to allow for private purchase; removing customary law as a mitigating factor for bail and sentencing; putting business managers in control in remote communities; quarantining income support payments for basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter; implementing compulsory health checks for Aboriginal children; changing the permit system for access to Aboriginal lands; and abolishing the Community Development Employment Program which is a work for welfare payments scheme. In order to implement these measures through legislation, the Federal government suspended the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. On the 12 June 2010, Jenny Macklin, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, announced she would be seeking the Greens’ support in the Senate to ensure that the quarantining of welfare payments would be applicable to white welfare recipients in the Northern Territory. If successful this would mean that the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 would not have to be suspended because the Intervention would no longer be racist (ABC News 2010). Since the election of the Gillard-Labor government in September 2010 there has been a resounding silence about the application of welfare quarantining for Aboriginal welfare recipients in the Northern Territory by white welfare associations. In contrast they have been very vocal about the rights of their non-Indigenous clients protesting against the government's proposal to make quarantining applicable to all welfare recipients. The projection of white injury by these associations is predicated on the normative assumption that white bodies are rarely subject to such overt government control and surveillance, unlike the racialised bodies of the Aboriginal women, men and children (Moreton-Robinson 2009). There has also been a shift in media focus from child sexual abuse to the bureaucratic ineptness and the historical under-resourcing of service provision and infrastructure to Aboriginal communities. A commissioned report by the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (2010) shows sexual abuse is not as prevalent as first portrayed and the measures introduced by government are not working to improve living conditions. Instead they are having an adverse affect on the mental health of Aboriginal people.