Indigenous Invisibility in the City

Indigenous Invisibility in the City Indigenous Invisibility in the City contextualises the significant social change in Indigenous life circumstances and resurgence that came out of social movements in cities. It is about Indigenous resurgence and community development by First Nations people for First Nations people in cities. Seventy-five years ago, First Nations peoples began a significant post-war period of relocation to cities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. First Nations peoples engaged in projects of resurgence and community development in the cities of the four settler states. First Nations peoples, who were motivated by aspirations for autonomy and empowerment, went on to create the foundations of Indigenous social infrastructure. This book explains the ways First Nations people in cities created and took control of their own futures. A fact largely wilfully ignored in policy contexts. Today, differences exist over the way governments and First Nations peoples see the role and responsibilities of Indigenous institutions in cities. What remains hidden in plain sight is their societal function as a social and political apparatus through which much of the social processes of Indigenous resurgence and community development in cities occurred. The struggle for self-determination in settler cities plays out through First Nations people’s efforts to sustain their own institutions and resurgence, but also rights and recognition in cities. This book will be of interest to Indigenous studies scholars, urban sociologists, urban political scientists, urban studies scholars, and development studies scholars interested in urban issues and community building and development. Deirdre Howard-Wagner is a sociologist and associate professor with the Australian National University. Her expertise is in Indigenous policy. Her co-edited books include The Neoliberal State, Recognition and Indigenous Rights (2018), Indigenous Justice (2018), and Unveiling Whiteness in the Twenty-First Century (2015). Routledge Advances in Sociology 293 Mobilising Place Management Claus Lassen and Lea Holst Laursen 294 International Labour Migration to Europe’s Rural Regions Edited by Johan Fredrik Rye and Karen O’Reilly 295 The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk Mines, Farms and Auto Factories Alan Hall 296 Civil Society Between Concepts and Empirical Grounds Edited by Liv Egholm and Lars Bo Kaspersen 297 The Economy of Collaboration The New Digital Platforms of Production and Consumption Francesco Ramella and Cecilia Manzo 298 Rural Youth at the Crossroads Transitional Societies in Central Europe and Beyond Edited by Kai A. Schafft, Sanja Stanić, Renata Horvatek and Annie Maselli 299 Indigenous Invisibility in the City Successful Resurgence and Community Development Hidden in Plain Sight Deirdre Howard-Wagner 300 Socio-gerontechnology Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology Alexander Peine, Barbara L. Marshall, Wendy Martin, and Louis Neven For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511 Indigenous Invisibility in the City Successful Resurgence and Community Development Hidden in Plain Sight Deirdre Howard-Wagner First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Deirdre Howard-Wagner The right of Deirdre Howard-Wagner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www. taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-58355-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-50651-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Cultural Advice Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that the book contains references to, information about, and names of deceased persons in the text. Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xiv List of Abbreviations xv 1 Introduction: making the invisible visible: the city as a critical space of Indigenous resurgence and community development 1 2 Settler-colonial cities as sites of Indigenous relocation: from removal to relocation 28 3 Indigenous resurgence in settler-colonial cities: from social movements to organisation building 48 4 Indigenous social economies hidden in plain sight: organisations, community entrepreneuring, development 72 5 A ‘renewed right to urban life’: reconciliation and Indigenous political agency 96 6 White spaces and white adaptive strategies: visibility and aesthetic upgrades and Indigenous place and space in the post-industrial city in the neoliberal age 122 7 Neoliberal poverty governance and the consequent effects for Indigenous community development in the city 141 viii Contents 8 Conclusion: the wilful inattentiveness to racial inequality in cities: what Black Lives Matter protests reveal about Indigenous invisibility 171 Index 188 Preface This book is the culmination of 20 years of research engaging with First Nations peoples in the Australian city of Newcastle. The research on which this manu- script takes as its starting point is a four-year, place-based, qualitative case study of Indigenous community development in Newcastle dating back to the 1970s. This research has critical characteristics associated with the urban Indigenous move- ment, such as the formation of urban Indigenous community-owned organisations, and it predates the popularisation of a top-down Indigenous development para- digm in countries like Australia, Canada, and the United States in the 21st century (Howard-Wagner 2017). It built on a four-year sociological ethnography conducted from 2000 to 2003 and a return to the field from 2005 until 2006. Relationships forefront my way of being, way of knowing, and way of doing research with First Nations peoples. It is how the research was conducted, building on a sociological ethnography on racism, whiteness, and Indigenous marginal- isation in the city of Newcastle from 2000 to 2006 (Howard-Wagner 2006, 2009, 2015). It built on an existing relationship of openness and trust with Indigenous partners and organisations in this urban locality. The earlier project led to the one at hand. Local Koori Elders and senior position-holders in Indigenous organisations set the research agenda. Local Koori Elders and senior position-holders with Indigenous organisations presented the idea for this research at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) Community Consultation on Rac- ism in Newcastle held in July 2001 in the lead up to the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intol- erance. A key concern among those present was a continued propensity within the mainstream to ignore local Indigenous success and preserve a deficit mental- ity around Indigenous issues locally. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Regional Councillor at the time stated: ‘Media alerts from ATSIC never get used – like the release about 30 Aboriginal students accepted to study medicine at the University of Newcastle’ (Howard-Wagner 2006, 250– 251). A representative from the local land council noted: ‘There is a proliferation of racism through the media – they focus on the bad news stories’ (Howard- Wagner 2006, 250–251). A representative from a local community-based organisation stated: ‘I get calls from a young woman at the Newcastle Herald x Preface who rings me each month to do negative stories – only interested in alcohol- ism, domestic violence and bad issues and who will not report good news stories’ (Howard-Wagner 2006, 250–251). The focus on failure or dysfunction ‘squeeze[d] out news focusing on success, strength or “good news,” which [was leading] to a distorted public perception’ (Fogarty, Lovell, Langenberg, & Heron 2018, 23). The discussion revealed not only an entrenched deficits view but also how race and racism are deeply intertwined with the framing of Indigenous failure or dysfunction in Newcastle. Such narrative framings have long been reproduced in Australian Indigenous policy about Indigenous disadvantage (Fogarty, Lovell, Langenberg, & Heron 2018; Howard-Wagner 2018). Success, even in the limited form of the extent to which First Nations peoples conform to a set of predetermined, measurable characteristics (Fogarty, Lovell, Langenberg, & Heron 2018), remained invisible. It also suggested that ‘success [and disadvantage] can mean quite different things to Indigenous and non- Indigenous peoples’ (Finlayson 2004, 2). The collaborative research project intended to speak to such issues. Newcastle provided a significant example of successful Indigenous governance and Indigenous community building and development in practice, having set up separate community-owned and operated organisations and services that deliver government-subsidised or wholly funded programs

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