A political economy of genocide in Australia: The architecture of dispossession then and now

Crook, Martin; Short, Damien

Abstract

This chapter examines the full range of literature on aboriginal participation in the Australian economy. Most of the scholarly works that consider the question of genocide in Australia focus on the “dispersal” extermination campaigns of the 1800s and/or the issue of the “Stolen Generations.” While writers like Tony Barta and Patrick Wolfe imply that genocidal structuring dynamics are at work in Australia, theirs is a distinct minority opinion in genocide scholarship and popular discourse. A Raphael Lemkian ontology is well suited to illumining the kind of colonial-settler regimes, like Australia, that continue to subject internal indigenous populations to genocidal structuring dynamics. The Intervention was a discriminatory package of changes to indigenous welfare provision, law enforcement, land tenure and basic freedoms. The colonial structures, which have yet to be dismantled, have persisted throughout the history of Australia as a colonial-settler state, in various modalities and historically specific phases; the long chain of genocide mutates and evolves through time.

• Online Publication Date: May 24, 2019
• Publication Date: Jun 13, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 7, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 13, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 140-178
• Book Title: Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics and Global Manifestations
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9780815380078; 9781032092300
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351214100-7
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10419303
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781351214100/cultural-genocide-jeffrey-bachman