Indigenous People, Resistance and Racialised Criminality

Abstract

Racism and racial discrimination is a common experience for many Indigenous people. Recent Australian research found that, depending in which state they lived in, between one in three and one in four Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people mentioned experiencing racial discrimination over the previous two years in a range of areas from abuse in public places to denial of access to goods and services, including employment and housing. This chapter focusses on one particular aspect of racism: the ways in which racialised criminality is both constructed and reproduced in the media, with a focus specifically on racialised criminality and Indigenous peoples in Australia. The chapter takes a broad approach to media and includes mainstream media outlets (both print and television) and other media forms including social media and film. It looks at both non-Indigenous and Indigenous media, the latter being particularly important in understanding Indigenous resistance and challenges to mainstream representations.