Settled and Unsettled Spaces: Are We Free to Roam?

Home , Aboriginal title, Freedom to roam

Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal, Vol. 1, 2005

SETTLED AND UNSETTLED SPACES: ARE W E FREE TO ROAM?

IRENE WATSON

I want the reader to engage with a number how much do I retain and ”own‘ of my of questions. They are questions to which I sovereign Aboriginal self outside the body provide no answers. For I see that it is not of my being? Am I free to roam across my up to me to provide the answers–the country and to sing and to live with the responses and the resolutions should come land of my ancestors outside the body of from the community. But how problematic my Aboriginal being/community? Or will I is that? What and where is the community, live the life of the sovereign self only within and which community? The Aboriginal1 the mind, body and spirit, and in isolation community. But we are diverse, with many from country and community? Left to the languages, different country and ways of illusionary spaces of recognition within the being. When Aboriginal peoples‘ lives are settled colony. The sovereignty of the destroyed, uprooted, and displaced, the Aboriginal being forever a challenge to the call to community is to the gathering of settled spaces of the colony. broken and shattered pieces. So what Aboriginal community can be pieced In returning to the opening questions I together in this colonising space?2 To take have posed: that is, in thinking of the point further, what kind of Australian Aboriginal community who are we? What community do we have in this same and where is the community, and which colonised space and to what extent does community? Community as constructed by the force of homogeneity determine the native title processes or in what way? Are evenness of the cultured landscape? those questions now settled and layered by conquest and colonisation? When we are speaking into a colonised space how are Aboriginal voices captured, Does Truth Have a Colour? echoed, ricocheted, distilled? Where does that voice of our old people go? Speaking or telling the black ”truth‘ of Australia‘s colonial history is to challenge In looking at the question of settled and white supremacist ”truths‘ of history. When unsettled spaces: who is it that is free to Aboriginal people speak in opposition to roam? What is the continuing Aboriginal white truths, we are accused of having a connection over roamed spaces and what blinkered or ”black armband‘ view of space do Aboriginal peoples occupy in this history. Accusations of telling ”black lies‘ one nation-Australia? To what extent is our flared up when Aboriginal women spoke of sovereign Aboriginal being accommodated the need to protect Aboriginal women‘s by the nation state‘s sanctioned native culture, law and country. Instead of the titled spaces? (see Watson 2002: 253).3 State of South Australia entering into Who am I when I stand outside native title negotiations towards a peaceful recognition, who am I–the untitled native? settlement, the Aboriginal women who Do I remain the unsettled native, left to were involved in the struggle to protect an unsettle the settled spaces of empire?4 important Aboriginal cultural site were When thinking of Aboriginal community, accused of fabrication for the purpose of who are we? Or in the suggestion of preventing development. The development Indigenous to Australia, what thought in question was to build a bridge from the predominates? Am I Aboriginal to myself; mainland at Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island. are we Aboriginal to ourselves? Or do we The State of South Australia held a Royal become part of the ”collective spirit‘ of the Commission inquiry into the truth or nation state, to become ”our‘ Australian otherwise of Aboriginal women‘s business Aborigine, then free to roam within the and the inquiry concluded there was no colonial spaces and identities as ”Australia‘s evidence to support the claim made Aborigines‘? But in that collection process, (Watson 1998 & 1997). When another way

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of knowing the world (here black Aboriginal situates, and we know or should know women‘s knowing) threatened white where those unsettled spaces were for privilege and its intention to go forth and Aboriginal peoples, and where they remain build its bridge, the white ”truth‘ prevailed. today. Look into prisons, and juvenile In some small way I make an offering of detention centres–what are the Aboriginal the truths as known to myself. It is an statistics? What capacity do Aboriginal individual attempt to provide some of the peoples in custody even have to posit the pieces and to also untangle some of the question or speak of the answers? knots, in the hope of providing some further openings or ways of looking beyond Ziauddin Sadar writes: the limited horizon many believe is all there is. Other horizons exist. Colonialism was about the physical occupation of non-western cultures. Legitimizing W hite Supremacy Modernity was about displacing the present and occupying the minds of non-

western cultures. Postmodernism is about The belief in European supremacy appropriating the history and identity of legitimised the violent theft of all things non-western cultures as an integral facet Aboriginal–our lands, our lives, our laws of itself, colonising their future and and our culture it was a way of knowing occupying their being (Sadar 1998: 13). the world, a way which continues to underpin the continuing displacement of How is the Australian ”native‘ placed in Aboriginal peoples. Sadar‘s analysis? We can trace a history from the appropriation of our Aboriginal The legal foundation of the Australian state lands, our displacement and movement was based on the white supremacist onto reserve mission stations, and into doctrine of terra nullius,5 and the idea of prisons, to a displaced Aboriginal identity backward black savages roaming over vast resisting absorption. In the process of tracts of open wastelands. Until the High absorption we are to be consumed by the Court decision in Mabo,6 terra nullius state and its citizens and in their applied in Australian law. The doctrine consumption of us, they are to become us. applied even though Aboriginal people had They anticipate coming into their own state been here for many thousands of years; of lawfulness through the consuming of our our histories were long. Terra nullius made sovereign Aboriginality. In this colonising black invisible, the question of ”Aborigines‘ process of us becoming white and white being free to roam was irrelevant, for we becoming Indigenous, white settlement were in law non-existent. deems itself as coming into its own legitimacy, as whites come into the space Now that terra nullius is rejected in law of our freedom to roam as Aboriginal and no longer applies as the legal peoples over our Aboriginal places and foundation for Australia‘s settlement, how spaces. We become cannibalised. But can visible is the Aborigine and what is our we enter into a conversation on the capacity to roam the lands of our cannibalism of our self, with the cannibal ancestors? In the aftermath of terra nullius being, the cannibal who is yet to see and what changed and what continues to go on know itself in its eating of us? How does as before? Speaking of colonialism and the the cannibal recognise itself? Is there a possibility of its passing, Franz Fanon saw safe conversational space where we can ”the smoking ashes of a burnt-down house have a close encounter, without our own after the fire has been put out, [but] which appropriation?7 still threaten to burst into flames again‘ (Fanon 1971: 59). I ask the reader: in How is it that we are Being Eaten? relation to Australia, has there even been an attempt to put the fire out? Or have we There are many examples of appropriation, witnessed merely the illusion of change? since the advent of colonialism in 1492. The most recent appropriation is in the Is the land post-Mabo peacefully settled, form of biopiracy. Aboriginal knowledge is allowing the freedom for all to roam? The stolen and Aboriginal resources and answer depends on what space one knowledge marketed and profited upon.

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Sadar makes reference to the occupation In speaking of the possibility of coming of our being. This can be seen along with together, what may be required of us (the the absorption of our Aboriginal being, and Aborigine)? To dissolve into whiteness? For raises the question: how white are we, the that is what is currently required. Has Aborigine, becoming? And, or, what is the anything altered that position? Have potential for the indigenisation of a white universal human rights found their way settled Australia? Germaine Greer, in her into our recognition? Has the purported essay ”Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest recognition given by native title rights Way to Nationhood‘ (Greer 2003), invites a advanced our struggle to walk the land? rethinking of Aboriginality and the How am I, the Aborigine, situated? What repositioning of the Australian state as an spaces do I, the unsettled native, have to Aboriginal one. I don‘t disagree, it is a roam? In settled native titled spaces? thought Aboriginal peoples have held for (Watson 2002: 253) Or, do we continue as some time. Greer invokes the idea of we have since the time of Cook to dodge Aboriginality coming into being through the from the belly of genocide, resisting sharing of traditions; this is a philosophical digestion and dilution? tradition that Aboriginal peoples have always lived by. It is a good suggestion for Reconciling the Burning Fires and the moving forward, but in this process of Ghosts of Assimilation8 hybridisation what happens to the Aboriginal? Do we become cannibalised, In the Australian government‘s current digested and absorbed by a white settled policy shift to the idea of ”mutual Australia that is to become embodied in obligation‘, that is, the idea of Aboriginal our black Aboriginal being? communities and government becoming mutually responsible for the future Is there a need first to dissolve the borders development of communities, I see more a between white and black? What happens to concern with returning to assimilation the overwhelming whiteness of this country practices of the past. At the dawning of and its freedom to roam? How do we, the this new century, the Australian minority, ensure Aboriginality? If we are government parades its return to cannibalised and utilised to Aboriginalise assimilation under the illusionary name of the majority, how do we as individuals and ”practical reconciliation‘. But is it new or communities sustain our own vulnerable more of the same? Have the ghosts of Aboriginality? assimilation returned? Did they ever leave us? So how white is Australia, and is there any possibility of the blackening of Australia‘s The Howard federal government has soul, as Greer argues must occur? I cunningly used the Australian reconciliation wouldn‘t disagree that there must be an movement to subvert and contaminate its admission that whitefellers live in an own popular force. The return to a more Aboriginal country, and for the need to open approach to assimilation was recognise Australia‘s ”inherent and dramatically revealed by Australia‘s ineradicable Aboriginality‘ (Greer 2003: Governor-General during a speech made 72). But what are its possibilities? The whilst serving as the Governor of Western history of colonialism illustrates not only a Australia, where he called for a greater denial of Aboriginal existence but also a distinction between ”full-blooded‘ and ”part- refusal to embrace Aboriginal society; blooded‘ Aboriginal peoples (Price 2003: instead, in the past it has rejected it in all 26). of its forms. So what is Greer suggesting? Is she appropriating Aboriginal history and While many Aboriginal people have identity as a site of white occupation? Who embraced and supported the reconciliation is Greer to speak and who can speak of movement, there have been as many such things? What is the role of the white Aboriginal people again who did not, and ”commentator-expert‘, in the context of the many who asked critical questions, like silenced spaces of Aboriginal voice? what does reconciliation really mean? Will it provide homes for the homeless, food for the hungry, land for the dispossessed,

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language and culture for those hungry to In the beginning there lived a giant frog, revive from stolen dispossessed spaces? who drank up all the water until there was How can you become reconciled with a no water left in the creeks lagoons rivers state and its citizens who have not yet lakes and even the oceans. All the animals acknowledged your humanity, let alone became thirsty and came together to find a your status as the first peoples of this solution that would satisfy their growing conquered land? In considering moving thirst. The animals decided the way to do forward, what lies before us? In looking this was to get the frog to release the ahead, Fanon wrote: water back to the land, and that the ”proper‘ way to do this was to make the The final settling of accounts will not be frog laugh. After much performing one of today nor yet tomorrow, for the truth is the animals found a way to humour the that the settlement was begun on the frog, until it released a great peal of very first day of the war, and it will be laughter. When the frog laughed it released ended not because there are no more enemies left to kill, but quite simply all the water, it came gushing back to the because the enemy, for various reasons, land filling creeks, riverbeds, lakes and will come to realize that his interest lies even the oceans. As the community of in ending the struggle and in recognizing animals once again turned their gaze to the the sovereignty of the colonized people. frog they realised they had to make the (1971: 113). large frog transform into a smaller one, so that it could no longer dominate the It is to the question of Aboriginal community. They decided to reduce the sovereignty that we are returned, to the one large frog to many much smaller frogs, question of an imposed and displaced so that the frog would be brought to share Aboriginal sovereignty. Whiteness, white equally with all other living beings (Watson supremacy and Eurocentricity fuelled, and 2002a).9 continues to fuel, the displacement of Aboriginal sovereignty. The end of this The frog celebrates diversity of community displacement is, as Fanon suggests, in its and is different from the idea of the recognition or its reinstatement. homogenous state, with its trend for fast tracking the assimilation of Aboriginal However, in moving the Aboriginality of peoples into a white racist capitalist Australia forward, white Australia has culture. Aboriginal sovereignty is also never in its colonial history embraced this different from Greer‘s vision of a national idea. Today the words ”Aboriginal process of Aboriginalisation, one which is sovereignty‘ have become the capable of being led by expatriate white unspeakable. Aboriginal sovereignty is intellectuals. feared as posing a threat to the security of Australians and their assumed ”territorial W hat W ill we Look Like in the Future? integrity‘. Instead, we become again the internal enemy. Is Aboriginal sovereignty What should we be prepared for? With the to be feared by Australia in the same way continued policies of assimilation, will we as Aboriginal people fear white sovereignty return to policies of protection of those and its patriarchal model of state, one Nungas not yet deemed ”white‘, or which is backed by the power of force? Or sufficiently civil, in their interactions with is Aboriginal sovereignty different, as I white Australia? How did we get here? The have argued in other writings, for there is war on terrorism escalates, coinciding with not just one sovereign state body but a return to assimilation, a denial of a black hundreds of different sovereign Aboriginal history, a denial of the impact of peoples. Aboriginal sovereignty is different colonialism, and a denial of self- from state sovereignty because it determination. We stand in a time where embraces diversity, and inclusivity rather the Australian public believes justice has than exclusivity. Aboriginal sovereignty been delivered, and that Aborigines have poses a solution to white supremacy in its received sufficient handouts, in the form of deflation of power, and here, as I native title and ”self-governance‘ in the repeatedly do, I refer to the story of the form of the Aboriginal Torres Strait frog. Islander Commission, (ATSIC).10 As a

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corollary, the public now supports the considers racism as no longer being the winding back and demise of ATSIC, and central issue: further limits to native title. Racism, while in serious decline in Currently the call to right past wrongs is Australia as against 30 years ago, is losing volume in a climate where to speak something about which people need to be ever vigilant. Yet to represent it as the of Aboriginal rights is to be switched off main issue of indigenous affairs in our from, yawned at, to have the subject time is to misread completely the extent changed to that of a more ”deserving of profound suffering on so many other victims‘ agenda. Refugees for example. fronts and from so many other causes. Here I am not reducing the refugee The balance of the political situation has position but merely illustrating the position moved on (2001: 140). we have come to in our struggle for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty. I see The political situation has certainly moved the state as playing one crisis situation off on, but to the exclusion of racism? The against another, so as to displace the idea of mutual obligation, currently popular position of Aboriginal peoples to that of the with the Howard government, lends itself lesser deserving victim,11 so that we are to Sutton‘s notion of an inherent violence now characterised by the state and the in Aboriginal communities that exists media as the ungrateful native,12 or so outside of the impact of colonialism. White inherently violent and dysfunctional that Australia shouldn‘t be made to feel guilty we are in need of supervision and about its complicity in the colonial project protection from ourselves. Self- because the dysfunction in Aboriginal determination is demonised as being the communities has always existed. Sutton cause of the Aboriginal problem. Support then speaks of the remote community for these views is found in the work of where he white anthropologist, Peter Sutton, who has advised government in the area of almost drove into a young woman who staggered across the road, clearly in Aboriginal land claims for more than 20 advanced pregnancy, and clutching a can years. According to Sutton: of petrol to her face. It was one of those communities in a desperate condition, some behaviour, such as high levels of and where observations of this kind are violence involving both men and women, not rare. Officially, it was a community existed well before the impact of enjoying ”self determination‘. What ”self- colonisation, both in sanctioned collective determination‘ was being enjoyed by this forms (as in formal dispute resolution unborn child? (2001: 141) through duelling and warfare) and in forms less subject to such control (as in Here the possibility of empowerment the beating by their husbands) (2001: 134). through the principle of self-determination is demonised as the cause for petrol Sutton supports his argument that violence sniffing in Aboriginal communities. against women occurred prior to Similarly journalist Janet Albrechtsen, colonisation, referring to the work of writing for The Australian newspaper, archaeologist Stephen Webb, who when suggests that we would be hard-pressed to speaking of ”samples‘ taken from find an Aboriginal girl who hasn't been prehistoric remains concludes from the sexually abused. Her focus on race, sex evidence that the frequency for fractures in and violence is then positioned to justify the women indicated that they were the following statement: ”that in the ninth caused by attacks, and that cranial injuries year in the International Decade of the were also a result of deliberate aggression World's Indigenous Peoples focus on the rights of Indigenous peoples is to the (2001: 152). Sutton seems to infer from 13 these ”samples‘ that violence is inherent in detriment of what goes on domestically‘ ”traditional‘ Aboriginal communities. What (Albrechtsen 2003: 11) She goes on to further inferences can be drawn? Can add: ”the policies of the International Sutton then go onto argue that there is Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, ”evidence‘ of the incapacity of Aboriginal based on self-rule with little accountability, peoples to manage their own lives? Sutton have done more damage to indigenous Australians than the white missions of the

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1930s did‘ (11). Should we be fearful of The discourse on Aboriginal rights has been gaining recognition of the right to self- marginalised by the Australian state in its determination? Is the assimilation of the preference for a ”pragmatic‘ response to Aborigine saving? Were we, as Albrechtsen the ”Aboriginal problem‘, an ideology which appears to believe, better off living under underlies the term ”practical reconciliation‘. the white missions of the 1930s, and have Yet for millions of Indigenous peoples we, as Sutton seems to argue, declined globally, the struggle for recognition of into petrol sniffing communities as a result minimum human rights standards and the of self determination? recognition of self-determination has been hailed as being fundamental to the survival Over recent years we have been deemed of Indigenous peoples. Without recognition, culturally deficient and poor managers of Indigenous peoples will continue to be our own affairs; this has been ”proven‘ and vulnerable to the genocidal policies of the is illustrated in our alleged various states in which they live. I say this maladministration of ATSIC. The federal even though on the face of it, state policies government has been largely successful in regarding Indigenous peoples have not its discrediting of the ATSIC structure, been judged to reveal clear genocidal through a public media campaign waged intentions. Yet for centuries, different against ATSIC, and also the appropriation states and their Indigenous policies have of an Aboriginal critique of ATSIC. The been genocidal in their impact. Australia blame for the failings of ATSIC was laid at presents an extreme example of genocide, the feet of Aboriginal peoples. The gaze where the Aboriginal population has been was not once turned upon the state, the reduced to less that 2% of the general state which in any event held power to Australian population. What is behind this determine a different course for ATSIC, in marginalisation of a population which just terms of it being a failure or a success. over 200 years ago was 100% of the Aboriginal peoples are not in a position of population, if not genocide? power to question the state‘s motive in initially implementing ATSIC, or of its de- Dismissing the question of rights and funding, and erosion of the power and recognition, and removing the discussion of duties of ATSIC. How could a structure like Aboriginal sovereignty and self- ATSIC, based as it was upon hierarchy, determination from any state political patriarchy, and entrenched colonialism, agenda wherever the question of serve the Aboriginal community? Consider Aboriginality emerges is to bring a silence. the story of the frog and the obligation of That is a silence on the question of how community to share all of the water whiteness holds power and how blackness, resources, and to not let one big frog grow Aboriginality, is denied the right to be. even bigger. That‘s what we got with Discussion of Aboriginal sovereignty and ATSIC, a white patriarchal model of the resistance to the homogenising policies political representation that served the role of the state should be central to any of enlarging the frog. We never got to a conversation about whiteness. place of empowering community to share equally. ATSIC was not an Aboriginal The Coming of Great Beauty model; it was a colonialist model that served to entrench white values and ways The creation of a healthy society, one that of being. Aboriginal ways of sharing never heals the sickness of colonialism, is the surfaced, and Aboriginal poverty and work ahead, for if it is not done we will disadvantage remained the dominant continue to exist in an Australian ugliness, discourse. Aboriginal peoples were given in a journey coming to an ugly ending. an under-resourced white model to Fanon expresses some cautions regarding perform the impossible task of caring for that journey: Aboriginal Australia. From the beginning, the ATSIC project was doomed and set up If care is not taken, the people may begin to fail, and when it did, white racism laid to question the prolongation of the war at the blame in black hands. any moment that the enemy grants some concession. They are so used to the

settler‘s scorn and to his declared intention to maintain his oppression at

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whatever cost that the slightest as the frog story tells us, the deflation of suggestion of any generous gesture or of the frog‘s power and control. any goodwill is hailed with astonishment and delight, and the native bursts into a Can W e See the Aboriginal W orld? hymn of praise … It must be clearly explained to the rebel that he must on no account be blindfolded by the enemy‘s What is the Aboriginal struggle today? Can concessions. These concessions are no we even name it? What is it that we can more than sops; they have no bearing on expect from the other side, from those who the essential question; and from the have stolen the country from us? Many native‘s point of view, we may lay down Nungas have grown to expect nothing but that a concession has nothing to do with more of the same. Has there been an the essentials if it does not affect the real abandonment of the struggle? Fanon nature of the colonial regime (1971: 113). argued that the settler‘s work is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the To avoid the colonial ugliness, is it native. Have we abandoned the dream of necessary, as Fanon suggests, for us to go liberty? Do we have a concept of what further than take the offerings of a liberty and freedom are? Is the only concession, or the crumbs which fall from possibility of liberty and freedom to the table? Is it necessary to transform the become assimilated into the dominant ”real nature of the colonial regime‘? culture? If we have no real choice but to assimilate, what hope is there for the I have written previously on how ATSIC survival of our Aboriginal way of knowing and native title are essential to the colonial our country? regime (Watson 1996: 1). They pose no challenge to Australian real property law, I understand that which brings us together nor the governance of the state. They in these settled and unsettled places and provide no direction in the ”road-map‘ or that which binds us is the land. It is the journey of de-colonisation. They simply land that the white man came for, but we reinforce the colonial order and world view. the Aborigines are in relationship with the However, at the advent of ATSIC and land in different ways. The white way of native title, the ”natives burst into a hymn knowing country is forged by ownership, of praise‘ (Fanon 1971: 113). For there was possession and control. The Aboriginal way praise by the ”natives‘ for these bodies of knowing comes through spirituality, which did not and do not bring change, but identity and traditions of historical rather entrench our lives further in the connectedness. Which way holds power? melding pot of absorption into one Indigenous people are in occupation of Australian, white, homogenous nation. many different spaces: that of extinguished and non-extinguished native title, curfews, Where did these songs of praise emanate mandatory sentencing, poverty, prisons, from? Was it from a place of absolute poor health–you know the statistics–they despair? Is there an alternative? Can we have been named so often before that we make good from the poison chalice we are becoming desensitized to their were handed in the form of ATSIC and significance. What spaces are we left with? native title? Can we reduce their poisonous Where are we free to roam? Are the impact upon Aboriginal lives? Or is the ”natives‘ finally settled under native title condition of the colonised such that any law? What remains of unsettled spaces? offer that is made will be gratefully The use of curfews across Australia target received, whilst it will change nothing of Aboriginal children in the same way as the despair that is lived by Aboriginal mandatory sentencing laws. Has the peoples across Australia? We are apartheid system we knew under the positioned to fetch the crumbs which were Aborigines Acts ever ceased? Or does it never intended to feed all of the people, so continue in different forms, and do these while those who are fed are singing, life new forms continue to maintain white remains the same for those unfed. For all privilege? to eat requires, as Fanon suggests, the transformation of the colonial regime, or, These questions lead to ”white discomfort and unsettling conversations‘; they create

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a desire for the appeasement of white guilt of 2003. Goward was reported as stating in high places within the nation state. Why Bell's behaviour would not have been have those conversations? Can we hear tolerated if he had been a white artist them? What drowns them out, and can making offensive jokes about the sexual they be washed away? What is left to behaviour of Aboriginal women, and was discuss, post-Mabo, Pauline Hanson, native further quoted as follows: ”It's got to be title, and the dismantling of a ”road map‘ to understood that the law and cultural self-determination? Are we moving into standards have to be upheld by everyone settled territory? Are there still unsettled in Australia, regardless of colour and spaces? What is this time which Indigenous creed‘(Goward in Jackman 2003: 3). peoples occupy? Is there an Aboriginal voice, or are there voices of Aboriginal Goward subsequently called upon diversity and community that can express Indigenous leaders to pressure Richard Bell and also transcend this time? Can we to apologise. But who is Richard Bell‘s speak of justice that is justice from a black, leader? An ATSIC Commissioner? At the or Aboriginal perspective, one that lives time the Chairman of ATSIC was being beyond the assimilation of the native? primed for dismissal by the Prime Minister John Howard. As to Goward‘s suggestion, How do I Look? an Indigenous leader from whose perspective? From the perspective of Colonisation brought its own way of looking Richard Bell? Who did Goward have in her at us and in turn this construction affected mind as being able to pull Bell into line and how we also looked at ourselves. what line would that be? In her attack on Anthropologists working in Australia also Bell, Goward compared his act to that of constructed their identities of Indigenous former test cricketer, David Hookes, peoples, identities constructed from a place stating that he had been widely beyond our power. Fanon wrote: ”for the condemned for recently calling a South native, objectivity is always directed African woman a ”dopey, hairy-backed against him‘ (1971: 61). The objective sheila‘. According to Goward, ”David view, is ”known‘ to be more reliable than Hookes made comments, and was roundly our own oral stories about ourselves, which ticked off, and the same must apply … It's are too much ”inside the story‘, and not particularly important for leaders, black or sufficiently distant from the subject. The white, to make it clear he's got to state, in engaging the ”expert‘, imposes its apologise, just as David Hookes recognised way of knowing us, and deploys colonial that he'd offended community standards‘ institutions to name us, and we are left to (2003: 3). Goward dismissed Bell's media work with this, sifting the sand to find the reported argument in his defence–that the kernel of our lives. Each one of us studied T-shirt would make Aboriginal women feel by anthropologists is the carrier of the seed good. Goward responded: ”I don't think that they seek to study: to absorb, black women feel better about themselves understand, compare, analyse, and when you speculate about their sexual measure for authenticity (Watson 2002b). prowess or availability‘ (2003: 3). Our identities have always been under the microscope, or on the slab for dissection at It is interesting to compare what, if any, the same time as we Aboriginal women are controversy arose over the film title ”White framed as the victim of violent black- Men Can‘t Jump‘; I don‘t recall any. So bashing males, waiting to be rescued by what is it about sex and the suggestion of the next crusade. competing sexual prowess between black and white women that raises a howl, one A recent media article reported an outburst that seems distinguishable from the from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru competition between white and black men Goward (Jackman 2003: 3) angrily jumping to net the ball? What ”black truths‘ demanding an apology from artist Richard might we lay bare at the colonial frontier of Bell. Bell was wearing a self designed T- sexual encounters? shirt with the slogan ”White girls can't hump‘, at the time of accepting the Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art Prize

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Growing up the Settlement Nulyarrima.14 Our removal from our country and our history of genocide is The Aboriginal voice of opposition to the carefully spoken of by the High Court as a theft of Aboriginal land is now quiet, as matter of being simply ”washed away by a though the matter was settled by the High tide of history‘.15 The courts have refused Court decision in Mabo and the subsequent to characterise the historical and current native title legislation. There is no longer acts of violence and dispossession against broad public support for land rights, as if Aboriginal peoples as constituting the the public think that Aborigines have crime of genocide. enough land already. However there is also no public outcry as ”public lands‘, crown The ground for supporting the Aboriginal lands, are appropriated for development struggle is shifting. Genocide is officially purposes; there is no question that these denied, and the illusion of recognition lands should be returned to the Aboriginal prevails through ATSIC and native title. We people from whom they were stolen. We do are attacked and accused of over- not expect the same public outcry that dramatising the history of invasion, and goes with the theft of Palestinian lands, or demeaning the meaning of the word the invasion of Iraq. Aboriginal sacred genocide.16 It is considered that what the lands are appropriated for mining Nazis did was truly genocide, but what was development or suburban sprawl as a done to Aboriginal peoples was not. matter of course; it is business as usual. However we know there were acts of theft And when the land of my grandmother at of the entire continent of Australia, the Cape Jaffa is excavated for a marina destruction of hundreds of languages, laws development to house the yachts of those and cultures, and thousands of murders. who have stolen everything from my past, Our children were stolen and now we present and future, there will be likewise experience the theft of Aboriginal little that will be heard; my voice of knowledges. We have no remembrance opposition has as much likelihood of being shrine in this country that recognises the heard as if I were speaking during the final demise of Aboriginal peoples in our own quarter of an AFL grand final. territory. Instead we have a mass denial that it even happened. For we are deemed settled peoples, our claims put right by white Australians and W here to From Here? their Mabo native title deal. The deal of the century, the deal which will carry us into We need to go beyond a mere theoretical this new millennium, a deal which rejection of terra nullius, and beyond guarantees the continuing theft of our positions of victim, perpetrators and lands while at the same time muffling our enemies, to a place in Aboriginal ”black‘ voices of trauma when we scream for the truth, where we can share our common protection of our sacred places. Would the humanity as equals. We need to move scale of this theft be got away with beyond the conversation of the Aboriginal elsewhere? Where else has there been problem to a discourse on the problem of such wide scale appropriation of the lands colonialism. The opportunity for these of any peoples? conversations have never been created; the conversations have been mostly about The Colour of Genocide us–the ”other‘–we are framed as the subject of the conversation, not ever Is genocide a crime determined by colour? sitting as equals in and a part of the Even commentators such as Raymond conversation. For we have no power to Gaita would theorise that it wasn‘t, while determine otherwise in any event. Our they would also conclude that the Australian colonial legal history illustrates reduction of the Aboriginal population to this point well. just under 2% within 200 years of colonial settlement does not constitute the crime of Often only those who make the Prime genocide (see Gaita 2003: 9). In addition, Minister feel safe in their whiteness are the law‘s failure to recognise the crime of allowed into the conversation. In fairness genocide is illustrated in the decision in to them, I concede that their position is

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determined not by themselves entirely, but are in–the call should be answered, but by a hopelessness, a powerlessness, and protected how and by whom? Howard the thought that the Aboriginal world is a declares that the state is not acting like a disappearing one, and the thought that coloniser, but is instead responding to the there is no other choice but to negotiate call for aid, a call which is then the best deal for now. I, however, dispute appropriated to disguise any appearance of these thoughts, and have argued in an ongoing colonialism. It is now more previous writings that another way of comfortably referred to as humanitarian knowing the world is not dead to us but intervention. Calls for intervention are alive in the minds of those who continue to going on in territories where the natural see through other horizons (Watson 1998). resources of the people have been stripped So can we move into the uncomfortable for centuries by colonialist states and their conversations? For that is what is needed. corporate affiliates, leaving the people Can we move from places where impoverished and plundered of their whitefellers feel comfortable, to what I call resources. Now we observe the returning ”into a meditation on discomfort‘? To places of more of the same. The Europeans where the settler society is made to reappear as the crusaders, the rescuers of answer these questions: what brings them the recontextualised, primitive, violent, to a place of lawfulness? Or, how lawful is maladministrators–the hungry and their sovereign status? backward black-savages.

Aborigines like myself continue to struggle What context is given to these with great hope to survive the worst aspect conversations about us? Who even of colonialism–that of the colonised understands this process of colonialism, devouring each other–for that is what who wants to speak its truth, and who happens when the power to determine wants to own it? The line, the continuing one‘s existence is denied, a problem which song line of colonialism is now sung up and is compounded by the intergenerational enlarged as the song for globalisation. Yet impact of colonialism. This brings us to the the minority position in the world of critical point of Aboriginal peoples turning Indigenous peoples and an Aboriginal upon each other. We become the victims of critique of colonialism can only become in each other as well as the perpetrators. And this space a set of abstract ideas that are as we struggle with these tensions we are released, hopefully embraced, digested, still under examination, as our own and activated for the bringing of change. processes of surviving colonialism are To enhance and grow a deeper studied. In spite of the studies and the understanding that all humanity is research about us, the colonial context and diminished while we sit aside, failing to act, causes are still frequently denied; and watching, and blaming the ”other‘, instead instead white experts give to it their own of seeing and interrogating the role of the meaning. Although the lack of critical white privileged self in this ”other‘ analysis in the work of such experts is Aboriginal story. This seeing, this quite apparent, the damage of their ideas interrogation will remain the unfinished is already released. They are seized upon business, the business we will continue to to characterise us as people too ”primitive‘ return to in the life we each have within us to entrust with the power of becoming truly and future life times. For we will return to self-determining. these unresolved questions. They are questions of humanity, and to not be In this global climate of fear we are set up, touched by these questions, requires of us all of us are, to consider and question all to ask, how could you not be? Can you whether Aborigines should be fearful of believe that you will escape having to gaining the right to self-determination? We answer this? Whether you do or not have seen this phenomenon before and are depends upon what you believe in, and still seeing it occur in other regions of the what you understand we have left to return world. It is the classic so-called ”de- to in terms of settling down the future. colonisation‘ scenario, where conditions become so oppressive that the people are To come to understandings that are calling for protection. This is the state we different we need to create more open

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spaces for those conversations not simply largesse of its own oneness. I want to about the ”other‘ but led by the ”other‘. We ”liberate‘ white from its hold over power– need to hear more Aboriginal voices, to enable all colours to roam freely. I want particularly those Aboriginal voices that go to see a return of the Aboriginal horizon beyond the representations of the and its ways of knowing the world, from a popularly perceived ”leaders‘. Aboriginal place where I believe we have all begun. peoples are diverse, and so are our situations, interests, desires and dreams. Acknowledgements To create the space that will hear that diversity will require patience and the This article first took form as an oral making of time to listen beyond the one presentation to the Placing Race Localising minute grab. Whiteness Conference held in Adelaide, October 2003. Thanks are owing to Can we come to a reconciled place?17 Not comments made by reviewers of this unless we engage in talks of co-existence. article, in particular Fiona Nicoll and Aileen The road was spoken of, the talk was Moreton-Robinson, and to research talked, thousands of people crossed assistance provided by Peter David Burdon bridges, but where were they led, and and Debbie Bletsas. what deterred their further walking the talk? Was it a fear of the other? Are we W orks Cited stuck there? Meanwhile, we, the other, have feared for our lives. It is a strange Albrechtsen, J 2003, ”The decade of irony. The fear of thousands of blacks ”out squalor‘, The Australian, 18 June, p. 11. there‘ persists at a time when we have been comprehensively reduced to being Churchill, W 1994, Indians Are Us? Culture just 2% of the population. What is it that is and Genocide in Native North America, feared of the Aborigines? That we will take Between the Lines, Ontario. over Australia? That if we are given too many handouts white Australia may Fanon, F 1971 (1967), The Wretched of the become just like us also? That they will Earth, Penguin, London. also become as impoverished, traumatised, unemployed, and dispossessed? Or come Gaita, R 2003, ”Bringing home some into the status of black like us? —genocide“ truths‘, The Australian, 4 August, p. 9. I want to hold the same privilege that is held by the loud and the heard voices so Greer, G 2003, ”Whitefella Jump Up: The that we (Aborigines) can speak about our Shortest Way to Nationhood‘, Quarterly own things for ourselves. I want to occupy Essay, no. 11, pp. 1œ78. spaces of governance where I would have the capacity to protect my country against Jackman, C 2003, ”Goward demands the state that eats it and pours its pollution —sorry“ for T-shirt‘, The Australian, 22 back onto the lands of my ancestors while August, p. 3. it starves our future into assimilated submission. I want to unsettle spaces held Kerruish, V 1998, ”Responding to Kruger: by the powerful so as to re-settle the the Constitutionality of Genocide‘, future of millions of peoples globally in Australian Feminist Law Journal, no. 11, their access to good food and clean October, pp. 65œ82. drinking water and to continue the sustainable lifestyles of our ancient ones. I Price, M 2003, ”Governor-General‘s want to see us turn the monster of greed prejudices on parade‘, The Australian, 28 around, as the wisdom of our ancient June, p. 26. stories tell us we must do if we are to have any future. Sardar, Z 1998, Postmodernism and the Other: The New Imperialism of Western I want to make white into the many Culture, Pluto Press, London. colours of humanity just as the frog was deflated into many more frogs beyond the

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Sutton, P 2001, ”The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Policy since 1970‘ in here for his discussion of the Anthropological Forum, vol. 11, no. 2, p. settled/unsettled Aborigine. 134. 5 Terra nullius justified acquisition of lands the coloniser deemed were unsettled, the Watson, I 2004, ”From a Hard Place–to a presence of Aboriginal peoples in Australia, softer terrain‘, Flinders Journal of Law was not sufficient to displace terra nullius Reform, no. 7, p. 205. as we were viewed to not exist in law. 6 Mabo v The State of Queensland (No 2) 2002a, ”Buried Alive‘, Law (1992) 175 CLR 1. and Critique, no. 13, p. 253. 7 For further discussion on the 2002b, Looking at You, appropriation of Aboriginal identity by Looking at Me: An Aboriginal History of the colonising socieities, see in general the South East Volume 1, South Australia. work of W Churchill (1994), Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North 1998, ”The Power of Muldarbi and America, Between the Lines, Ontario.. the Road to its Demise‘, Australian 8 I develop the ideas here more in a lecture Feminist Law Journal, no.11, October, pp. ”From a Hard Place–to a softer terrain‘ 28œ45. (Watson 2004). 9 This story is known throughout Aboriginal 1997, ”Indigenous Peoples‘ Law Australia, and is discussed further in my Ways: Survival Against the Colonial State‘, article ”Buried Alive‘ (Watson 2002a). Australian Feminist Law Journal, no. 8, 10 The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander March, pp. 39œ58. Commission, is a statutory body that was established by the Commonwealth 1996, ”Nungas in the Nineties‘, in government to administer Aboriginal Greta Bird, Gary Martin, Jennifer Nielsen, services to communities across Australia. (eds.), Majah Indigenous Peoples and the 11 For further discussion on the use of crisis Law, Federation Press, Sydney, p. 1. against minority groups see Watson (2004). Windshuttle, K 2002, The Fabrication of 12 A study of the Australian media Aboriginal History, Macleay Press, Sydney. reporting from 2002œ4 on the ATSIC body, and the state of crisis regarding violence in Notes Aboriginal communities across Australia produces a picture of dysfunctional Aboriginal communities. For further 1 I use the term ”Aboriginal‘ to bring focus painting of the picture of Aboriginal to my own Aboriginal connection to dysfunction see also the work of country, whilst also acknowledging that anthropologists Peter Sutton and Maggie this article is addressing broader universal Brady and social and political commentator concerns for Indigenous peoples in general. Tim Rowse for their critique on the failings 2 The context I reflect upon is of the of Aboriginal self-determination. current position in Australia, but the questions raised also have application to 14 Nulyarrima (1999) 165 ALR 621. many other colonised spaces. 15 Justice Brennan in Mabo (No2) (1992) 3 I argue in other places that ”recognition‘ 175 CLR 1at 69. Further refusal to confront is an illusion, that native title is genocide is noted by Valerie Kerruish, ”recognised‘ in the common law decision of (1998) and the High Court application on Mabo v Queensland (1992) 175 CLR 1, and appeal from the Federal Court decision, the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth); in my Nulyarimma v Thompson (4 August 2000) article ”Buried Alive‘ (2002a) I discuss the High Court of Australia, Transcripts, critical limits to the recognition of Registry No 18 of 1999. Aboriginal title. 16 See for example the history wars 4 Long conversations were held at the surrounding the publication of Keith Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra during Windshuttle‘s book, The Fabrication of 1997œ8. Ray Swan-Bird, is remembered Aboriginal History (2002).

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17 In 1991 the Australian federal who participated in a walk for Aboriginal government established the Council for reconciliation. Aboriginal Reconciliation, the activities of the Council culminated in the mass support of hundreds of thousands of Australians