Settler colonial studies: eliminating the native and creating the nation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis important collection of essays gives us cause to reflect on postcolonial and settler colonial studies, their impact and legacies. In this reflection and response, I read this against the recent calls to reconsider the nebulous concept of ‘Australian values’ as a defining principle of belonging in and to the nation-state. Echoing the 1950s ‘Australian way of life’ discourse, these values are overwhelmingly white, European and middle class. The place of Indigenous people in this conversation is both unclear and unsettled. As a settler colony, Australia has struggled to accommodate, celebrate or reconcile the relationship between the nation’s ‘First people’. Settler colonial theory, and what Patrick Wolfe called the ‘elimination of the native’, can be a useful lens for considering these issues. However, it is also clear that settler colonial theory has not attracted Indigenous scholars as it might have been expected to do. I briefly consider the place and role of Indigenous people in these debates and the shifts that have taken place over the past few decades.