Aboriginal colonial history and the (un)happy object of reconciliation

Abstract

ABSTRACTReconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia is defined officially as consisting of ‘two-way relationships built on trust and respect’, recognition and acceptance of rights, histories and cultures, and institutional and community support for ‘all dimensions’ of reconciliation. We suggest, after Alexandre Da Costa (2016. The (un)happy objects of affective community. Cultural studies, 30, 24–46), that the burden of supporting reconciliation is borne differentially by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples; it is seen by the latter as an apparently ‘happy object’ in Sara Ahmed’s sense, but as an ‘unhappy object’ for many Aboriginal Australians, who have argued that it requires first a process of makarrata, or peace-making. Traditionally this has included some reciprocal pain for perpetrators, and we suggest here that the desire of many Aboriginal people to develop a public heritage of massacre sites and former ‘fringe camps’ offers an opportunity for non-Indigenous people to take hold of, and hold onto, a prickly and difficult past as part of a process of makarrata.