Settler colonial studies: eliminating the native and creating the nation

ABSTRACT

This important collection of essays gives us cause to reflect on postcolonial and settler colonial studies, their impact and legacies. In this reflection and response, I read this against the recent calls to reconsider the nebulous concept of ‘Australian values’ as a defining principle of belonging in and to the nation-state. Echoing the 1950s ‘Australian way of life’ discourse, these values are overwhelmingly white, European and middle class. The place of Indigenous people in this conversation is both unclear and unsettled. As a settler colony, Australia has struggled to accommodate, celebrate or reconcile the relationship between the nation’s ‘First people’. Settler colonial theory, and what Patrick Wolfe called the ‘elimination of the native’, can be a useful lens for considering these issues. However, it is also clear that settler colonial theory has not attracted Indigenous scholars as it might have been expected to do. I briefly consider the place and role of Indigenous people in these debates and the shifts that have taken place over the past few decades.

KEYWORDS:

• Settler colonial theory
• Indigenous engagement
• absence
• presence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Penelope Edmonds and Jane Carey, ‘A New Beginning for Settler Colonial Studies’, Settler Colonial Studies 3(1), 2013, pp 2–5; Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Introducing’, Settler Colonial Studies 1(1), 2011, pp 1–12; Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, London: Palgrave, 2010.

2 Veracini, ‘Introducing’, p 5.

3 I should note that I am not going to interrogate the idea of ‘settler’ vis-à-vis ‘invasion’ for the purposes of the discussion.

4 Shino Konishi, ‘First Nations Scholars, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous History’, Australian Historical Studies 50(3), 2019, pp 285–304.

5 While there are small pockets of extreme right-wing activity within the Australian body politic, for the most part this is rare. The overall shift to conservativism is amply demonstrated by the re-election of the federal Liberal National Party government in 2019 and the well-documented shift within the Australian Labor Party to the Right. See Mario Peucker and Debra Smith, ‘Far-Right Movements in Contemporary Australia: An Introduction’, in Mario Peucker and Debra Smith (eds), The Far-right in Contemporary Australia, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp 1–17.

6 While in Opposition, the ALP leader Kevin Rudd promised, in his 2007 National Platform, that if elected his government would change the date to a more inclusive one. After his election, Rudd denied the original commitment to change and stated: ‘To our Indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no’. See Dan Harrison and Sarah Smiles, ‘No Change in National Day Date, Says Rudd’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 2009. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/no-change-in-national-day-date-says-rudd-20090126-7q0d.html; Chris Graham, ‘Change the Date: Read This If You Want to Know Why Australia Day Is So Offensive’, New Matilda. Available at: https://newmatilda.com/2016/01/26/change-the-date-read-this-if-you-want-to-know-why-australia-day-is-so-offensive-to-aboriginal-people/ (accessed 26 January 2016). For Labor’s 2007 National Platform, see Australian Labor Party, National Platform and Constitution 2007, Canberra: ALP, 2007. Available at: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/partypol/1024541/upload_binary/1024541.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/partypol/1024541%22. In August 2017 the Yarra City Council (Melbourne) declared they would no longer refer to 26 January as Australia Day, out of respect to Indigenous sensibilities. The Turnbull government responded by refusing the council permission to conduct citizenship ceremonies. See ABC News, ‘Yarra City Council Stripped of Citizenship Ceremony Powers Over Australia Day Decision’, 17 August 2017. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-16/yarra-council-stripped-of-citizenship-powers/8813982. The nearby Darebin Council followed suit a week or so later.

7 The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a document that outlines Indigenous aspirations for recognising Indigenous Australians in the nation’s constitution. Unlike previous statements, it is not addressed to Parliament, but rather to the Australian public. The statement was developed after an extensive consultation process that engaged with more than 1200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives across the country. Available at: https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF.

8 See Jesse John Fleay and Barry Judd, ‘The Uluru Statement’, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 12(1), 2019, pp 1–14; Dani Larkin and Kate Galloway, ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart: Australian Public Law Pluralism’, Bond Law Review 30, 2018, p 335.

9 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8(4), 2006, pp 387–409.

10 Richard White, ‘The Australian Way of Life’, Historical Studies 18(73), 1979, pp 528–545; Ronald Conway, The Great Australian Stupor: An Interpretation of the Australian Way of Life, London: Macmillan, 1985.

11 White, ‘The Australian Way of Life’, p 535.

12 Mark Rifkin, ‘Settler Common Sense’, Settler Colonial Studies 3(4), 2013, pp 322–340; Mark Rifkin, Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

13 Stephen Dziedzic and Henry Belot, ‘Australian Citizenship Law Changes Mean Migrants Will Face Tougher Tests’, ABC News, 20 April 2017. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tougher-tests-for-australian-citizenship/8456392.

14 Kevin M. Dunn, ‘Performing Australian Nationalisms at Cronulla’, in Greg Noble (ed), Lines in the Sand: The Cronulla Riots, Multiculturalism and National Belonging, Sydney: Institute of Criminology Press, 2009, pp 76–94. That Cronulla – as the location of the race-hate riots – is in the seat of Cook, the current Prime Minister of Australia’s parliamentary seat, seems like a physical manifestation of the shift to conservative white values.

15 See Patrick Wolfe, Logics of Elimination: Colonial Policies on Indigenous Peoples in Australia and the United States, Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000; Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’.

16 Konishi, ‘First Nations Scholars’, p 304.

17 Wolfe, Logics of Elimination; and ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’. For a precursor, see Patrick Wolfe, ‘Nation and MiscegeNation: Discursive Continuity in the Post-Mabo Era’, Social Analysis 36, 1994, pp 93–152.

18 Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuffnell (eds), A Global History of Gold Rushes, vol. 25, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018; Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001; David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Recent archaeological work has revealed that the movement of native animals was also a feature of the gold-rush traffic between Australia and the United States. See Cyler Conrad, ‘Kangaroos and the California Gold Rush’, California History 94(3), 2017, pp. 62–65.

19 Wolfe explored the idea of elimination in a range of incisive essays. See, for example, Patrick Wolfe, ‘Corpus nullius: The Exception of Indians and Other Aliens in US Constitutional Discourse’, Postcolonial Studies 10(2), 2007, pp 127–151; Patrick Wolfe, ‘Against the Intentional Fallacy: Legocentrism and Continuity in the Rhetoric of Indian Dispossession’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 36(1), 2012, 3–45; Patrick Wolfe, ‘The Settler Complex: An Introduction’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 37(2), 2013, pp 1–22.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynette Russell

Lynette Russell AM, is Director of the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre at Monash University, Melbourne. She is also deputy director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Heritage. She has published widely in the areas of Indigenous and contact history, postcolonialism and representations of race, ethnographic knowledge and archaeology.