Possessory stratigraphy: land title, dispossession and housing crisis

Abstract

The myth that Indigenous sovereignty lives in the past is central to the lore of settler colonial societies. Sustaining that myth entails significant material and symbolic work, particularly organised around the recursive placement of the ‘original moment’ of dispossession and colonisation in the past to make the settler sovereignty that has been imposed appear legitimate and complete. This paper presents an analysis of the story of one public housing estate in inner Melbourne, Walker Street, that has been the subject of recursive dispossession and multiple enactments of displacement. We examine the history of title documents at Walker Street, tracing back and forward through time to consider how those land titles have come to be and the work they do to constitute questions of belonging and housing inequality on stolen land. The methodology we develop seeks to understand land title as a literal register of the ongoingness of settler colonialism to reveal how title documents affectively and materially underscore the myth of a thickening settler claim to territory whilst distancing Indigenous sovereignty: we call this a possessory stratigraphy.