Ravi de Costa

Identity, Authority, and the Moral Worlds of Indigenous Petitions

The global movement of Indigenous peoples has attracted the attention of a number of scholars, notably lawyers, anthropologists, and cultural theorists (Muehlebach 2003; Anaya 1996; Battiste 2000; Churchill 2003; Dei, Hall, and Rosenberg 2000; Independent Commission 1987; Jull 1999; Kingsbury 1998; Minde 1996; Passy 1999; Pritchard 1998; Radcliffe and Laurie 2001; Feldman 2002; Smith 1999; Ward and Smith 2000; Wilmer 1993). With few exceptions such as Niezen (2000; 2003) and Radha Jappan (1992), this growing interest has not extended to the origins and development of this movement. There are obvious reasons for this: as in other areas of the disci-

Reconciliation or Identity in Australia

The struggle by indigenous peoples to assert their rights against the continuing oppression of colonial societies is the source of much contemporary global conflict. Liberaldemocratic states like Australia have managed to contain open violence in that struggle, increasingly by shifting it into a seemingly larger debate about national identity. This article evaluates the Australian debate about Aboriginal reconciliation, drawing on work in political theory to suggest that even a generous revisiting of national identity will impair the selfdetermination of the countrys indigenous peoples. The possibility that reconciliation could be a process of justice is overwhelmed by an emphasis on positive nationalism.The struggle by indigenous peoples to assert their rights against the continuing oppression of colonial societies is the source of much contemporary global conflict. Liberaldemocratic states like Australia have managed to contain open violence in that struggle, increasingly by shifting it into a seemingly larger debate about national identity. This article evaluates the Australian debate about Aboriginal reconciliation, drawing on work in political theory to suggest that even a generous revisiting of national identity will impair the selfdetermination of the countrys indigenous peoples. The possibility that reconciliation could be a process of justice is overwhelmed by an emphasis on positive nationalism.

The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation

This book investigates whether and how reconciliation in Australia and other settler colonial societies might connect to the attitudes of non-Indigenous people in ways that promote a deeper engagement with Indigenous needs and aspirations.

Non-Indigenous Australians and the ‘Responsibility to Engage’?

ABSTRACT National projects of reconciliation in settler colonial countries such as Australia are predicated on assumptions about non-Indigenous willingness to engage with the cultures and histories of Indigenous peoples. However, empirical research consistently finds such attitudes are far from universal. This article reports findings from focus groups with non-Indigenous peoples conducted at four locations around Australia during 2014. The goal was to see what ‘emergent’ discourses of reconciliation lay in the quotidian lives of non-Indigenous Australians. As with a comparable study conducted in Canada, this research used a poetics-rich approach to critical discourse analysis of the focus group discussions. It surfaced strong but complex themes, in particular a mode of ‘delegation’ and another of ‘embodiment’. We explore these themes with one eye towards Australia’s coming referendum on a constitutional amendment that would recognise the precolonial presence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Non-Indigenous People and the Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation

This chapter sets the context for this volume’s concern with the conceptual, attitudinal, and political limits to policies and practices of reconciliation in settler colonial societies. It explains the complex and interconnected focuses of the book as a whole and sets the notion of a non-Indigenous ‘responsibility to engage’ in a broader context of theory and research, Australian, Canadian, and globally. The chapter maps the continuities and contestations evident among the book’s following 15 chapters, and outlines an overall contribution to an operational understanding of reconciliation as an historically critical problem.

Two Kinds of Recognition: The Politics of Engagement in Settler Societies

Advocates of the recognition of Indigenous peoples conflate two distinct claims. On the one hand, they seek to validate the cultural differences of Indigenous peoples, such as language or prior occupation. On the other, they call on dominant states and societies to reform their own institutions and recognise their own failings, with implications that may go far beyond those for Indigenous peoples specifically. The chapter explores this distinction using rationales for recognition in the Australian constitutional debate as well as in the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Recognition and self-determination: Indigenous politics in settler states

Australians have long been concerned with whether and how Indigenous peoples should be ‘recognised’, ranging from representation in the collective non-Indigenous imagination or public sphere, to formal recognition in the Constitution or other documents of agreement. The former, and more cultural, dimension of this debate began at least as early as the 19th century, when humanitarian Christians sought to ameliorate some of the harshest colonial policy, and continued through the 20th century with arguments over the inevitability of the extinction of Indigenous peoples and the merits of assimilation. Most recently, with growth in the Indigenous population, there has been renewed anxiety about ‘authenticity’. These concerns have always interacted uneasily with claims put by Indigenous peoples over the past 50 years or more for greater freedom from the state in the form of self-determination. Early in its history, the Australian Journal of Political Science, then known as Politics, published a review essay by the distinguished Indigenous poet and activist, Kath Walker (1970), who later took the name Oodgeroo Noonuccal. Walker reviewed Australian Journal of Political Science, 2015 Vol. 50, No. 1, 174–189, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.997190

Testimonial Textures: Examining the Poetics of Non-Indigenous Stories about Reconciliation

This paper arises from a collaborative project of research, exploring non-indigenous attitudes towards national agendas of reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (Clark et al.; de Costa and Clark). To date the research has focused on Australia and Canada, two countries where Aboriginal reconciliation is posited as a central organizing principle for national policy frameworks aimed at redressing entrenched indigenous disadvantage. Australia and Canada are also two countries whose federal parliaments endorsed resolutions of apology during 2008, apologizing to their indigenous populations for large-scale policies of forcible family separation. The purpose of this project is to gauge the strategic prospects for the national reconciliation projects in both countries, by exploring actual and potential ways in which non-indigenous settler populations — what we might call ‘second peoples’ or ‘subsequent peoples’ — identify with, against, or even without reference to the reconciliation agendas pursued by their respective governments and on their respective behalves. Here we argue that such identifications are highly amenable to a research approach that focuses on the stylistic ways that people share the stories that underpin their experiences and beliefs.