Terra Nullius Research Articles

Void Almanac: A Political-Geologic Rubbing of Nuclear Testing in Mississippi

Although classical physics states that the void lacks matter or energy, the misunderstanding of emptiness as a spatial concept extends far beyond the sciences. The essay explores the concept of empty space, debunking classical physics’ notion of voidness by delving into quantum mechanics, where energy and particles continually manifest through a site investigation of the Salmon & Sterling Nuclear Test Site (located in Lumberton, MS, USA). This revelation challenges colonial ideologies, exemplified by terra nullius, which justified empire-building by claiming certain lands devoid of inhabitants. Operating through a political-geological exploration of repetitive cycles of extraction, speculation, and vacancy at the Salmon & Sterling Site spanning from the Mesozoic Era to the present day, I scrutinize spatial constructions and their reinforcement of prevailing socio-political systems. Juxtaposed against Faulkner’s Southern Gothic literature and Sartre’s existentialism, this essay underscores a modern dialectic between spatial arrangements and anticipations of cataclysmic endings. Through a passenger-traveler account of void-encounter, I propose a reconsideration of “emptiness” through examining its broader spatio-temporal origins and implications in relation to the nuclear detonations. This perspective allows for the synthesis of the inherent paradox of this site: initially conceived from Cold War anxieties to solidify social structures, yet also harboring unpredictable and potentially mutant futures.

‘Australia’ as competing projects of settler nationalism

ABSTRACT Nationalism has fallen out of academic fashion over the past several decades. In this article, we refocus on nationalism as a crucial dimension of the continuing settler-colonial project that is ‘Australia'. Across the settler political spectrum, nationalist teleologies envisage a moment of completion, in which conflictual settler-colonial relations will be resolved in the form of an imagined-as unified, coherent and legitimate settler nation. Here, we trace the dynamics of settler nationalism within and beyond the recent debate over an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, identifying a ‘good colonist/bad colonist' dynamic which we contend works to conceal the eliminationist logics of the Australian settler-colonial project at large. Whereas conservative settler nationalists attempt to (re)construct a white settler nation founded on fantasies of terra nullius, ‘progressive' settler nationalists seek to build a ‘mature’, reconciled nation-to-come by incorporating limited forms of Indigenous difference within the settler national body. Between these apparently opposing modes of settler nation-building, the unity and coherence of the nation is maintained, while prior and persisting Indigenous sovereignties are denied and disavowed (despite this, they endure). We conclude with our reflections on the necessity of undoing settler investments in the idea/l of Australia, and the political limitations they continue to impose.

The Capitalist and Colonial Logics of Rowland Hill’s Postal Reforms: Terra Nullius , Uniform Pricing, and “Conveyance at the Lowest Rate”

Le pamphlet Post Office Reform publié par Rowland Hill en 1837 est considéré comme ayant influencé la loi britannique sur la poste de 1839, qui a introduit une tarification uniforme et peu élevée ainsi que l’affranchissement du courrier par l’expéditeur. Ces réformes ont à leur tour ensuite induit le Traité de Berne de 1874. Post Office Reform a été rédigé alors qu’Hill était secrétaire de la Commission pour la colonisation de l’Australie du Sud. Ce contexte nous permet de mieux comprendre les logiques à la fois coloniale et capitaliste qui sous-tendent les réformes postales de Hill, influencées en particulier par le plan de colonisation d’Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

Training on Terra Nullius? A decolonial approach to militarisation in Sápmi and Northern Finland

Training on Terra Nullius? A decolonial approach to militarisation in Sápmi and Northern Finland

Thinking the Other: From Terra Australis Incognita to Terra Nullius

At the end of the 18th century, when Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, recommended Botany Bay in Australia as an “advantageous” site to establish a new British penal colony, he did so with the knowledge that the east coast of the country was inhabited by Indigenous Australians, having traveled to the South Continent with Lieutenant James Cook. As a naturalist and imperial botanist on board the Endeavour, Banks’s primary duty had been to identify and classify Australian flora and fauna. Yet, the multiple observations that he made based on his interactions with Aboriginal people also contributed to establish his influence in scientific and political circles at the turn of the 19th century. Banks’s ethnographic accounts recorded in his Endeavour Journal shed light on his mind-set and convictions during his time in Australia as well as his impressions that later played their part in making him the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales and motivating the decision to colonize the country. In a time when exploration records significantly shaped the perceptions of the public about human nature and the beliefs and theories of the scientific community on questions of race and otherness, the writings of Joseph Banks offer a window into science and history in the making. As the scientific exploration of distant lands progressively gave way to political and economic interests, the transition from geographical othering to racial othering in the representation of Indigenous Australians turned Terra Australis Incognita into terra nullius.

South African Allegories in Richard Jefferies’s After London; or Wild England (1885)

This paper argues that Richard Jefferies’s After London (1885), often praised as a pioneering work of speculative fiction, has not been sufficiently understood within the context of late-Victorian imperial expansion. While After London is frequently read in tandem with Jefferies’s nature essays and speculative fiction like H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), I locate the novel within the generic conventions of lost world fiction, a subgenre of the imperial romance associated with masculine adventure tales. Analysing After London’s parallels with, and potential influences on, H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885), published later that same year, I argue that Jefferies’s unflattering portrayal of English ‘Bushmen’, coupled with the geography of Wild England, gesture emphatically to South Africa. In turn, the motif of a ‘relapse into barbarism’ serves to rationalise the fantasies of terra nullius [‘nobody’s land’] and extractive treasure hunting that Felix Aquila, the quixotic hero, enacts. By connecting After London to Haggard’s highly influential fiction and drawing on Jefferies’s writings about British colonialism in South Africa and the conventions of travel literature, cartography, and ethnography, this paper provides a more complete understanding of Jefferies’s contributions to the canon of lost world fiction.

The Analysis of Hegemony in Terra Nullius Novel by Claire G. Coleman

<div><p class="AbstractHead">A B S T R A C T</p></div>This research aims to analyze hegemony in Terra Nullius a novel by Claire. G. Coleman uses Antonio Gramsci’s theory in literary studies and sociology. The research focuses on discussing the concept of hegemony that occurs in the main character. The theory in literary studies is used to analyze the novel, using an intrinsic approach including characterization, plot, and setting which is elaborated through an extrinsic approach related to hegemony. This research used a qualitative method with data collection techniques including literature study, observation, and note-taking. The main data used are novels and several books and journals to support the research. The results of the research in the novel Terra Nullius are the concept of hegemony and the state involving civil society, namely the Natives called Aboriginals, with Settlers communities, Europeans. In the hegemony that occurs, the practice of supremacy has been found, namely a group that manifests itself in leadership that dominates the opposition to destroy or subdue the Aboriginals with weapons. All done to win power over the nobody land called Australia. Consequently, it became an Integral state, a hegemony shielded by the systems of violence.

Book Review: Barron Field in NSW: The Poetics of Terra Nullius

Book Review: Barron Field in NSW: The Poetics of Terra Nullius

THINKING ISSUES: Large Language Models, the 'Doctrine of Discovery' and 'Terra Nullius' Declared Again?

THINKING ISSUES: Large Language Models, the 'Doctrine of Discovery' and 'Terra Nullius' Declared Again?

“You cannot really live (or die) here” – Ongoing struggles over Muslim cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1957–2020

The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and highlights a broader geo-temporal interpretation of the indigenous right-to-the-city. We analyse a succession of mobilizations against sales and demolitions of Muslim cemeteries across the city since the 1950s and investigate how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protest as an urban citizenship mobilization. We show that by utilizing creative spatial performances, applying to municipal governance and stressing their right to use and produce urban space, to participate, and to have their local heritage acknowledged and commemorated, they invoked and reinterpreted right-to-the-city ideas. Their struggle also expanded this agenda, as they did not focus on their living area, but rather advanced claims related to the full city space and its history, and to the customary view of their spaces as 'terra nullius'. In analysing their struggle, we thus contribute to the right-to-the-city literature and agenda, highlight the right for commemoration as part of right to live in the city as equal citizens, and address the promise this case presents for minority ethnic politics.

Competing claims on land in the solar age: Valorising capital or Country in Australia?

The colonisation of Australia was predicated on the premise of terra nullius, a contention that was successfully challenged two centuries later, confirmed with the legislation of land rights in the Native Title Act 1993. In a classic case of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, while formal land rights and the right to contract the use of native title land were legislated, in the Pilbara in Western Australia the reality was otherwise. Iron ore mining companies disregarded heritage safeguard agreements, a contractual violation which damaged their reputation which was being scrutinised as major CO2 emitters. Confronting a coincidental energy cost crisis, companies turned to acquire more land to establish renewable energy generating capacity and a new model of accumulation. Drawing on Peck and Polanyi, we posit the notion of socioecological orders, and distinguish between the instrumental approach to land as a key frame in the accumulation of capital, and First Nations peoples' concept of belonging to Country and stewardship. This provides a method for considering the interaction of two distinct socioecological orders and the evolving tensions or contradictions that are generated. The restoration of the colonisation project calls native title land into the service of capital to provide the foundations for a renewable energy generation industry. This not only results in dispossession, it can also result in estrangement and alienation that compromises the integrity and reproduction of First Nations' communities and impels new modes of socioecological organisation.

Frontier ecologies: Israel's settler colonialism in the Jawlan-Golan

In June 2023, thousands of non-Jewish residents of the Jawlan (in Arabic) or Golan (in Hebrew) protested for several days against the construction of a new wind farm near the picturesque village of Majdal Shams (Arabic for Tower of the Sun) on the southeastern border between Syria and Israel. This event and its fallouts were arguably the culmination of 56 years of Israeli frontier making projects in the region. Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as field observations, this article traces Israel's ecological frontier. Specifically, the article chronicles five strategies of nature related frontier making deployed by the Israeli settler state in the Jawlan-Golan in the last six decades: terra nullius, animal nullius, naturalization, militarization, and renewable energy. I refer to such settler colonial investments in various modes of natural and environmental management, when these occur in contentious political regions and near borders, as “frontier ecologies.” The power of frontier ecologies lies precisely in that they seem to exist naturally—namely, beyond the realm of humans and their wars. Ultimately, the nexus of colonialism and nature conservation highlights the ways in which violence travels in between vulnerable human and nonhuman communities. Documenting the Jawlani resistance to colonialism, and to climate colonialism in particular, this article also calls for a more collaborative practices of nature conservation that would unsettle the colonial legacies of frontier ecologies.

The Collective Memory of the Hairy Man

My work with the Hairy Man story aims to debunk the false narratives of colonialist invaders who sought to legitimate dominion over, and transform the identities of, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – who were often referred to as scarcely human – in order to seize land to declare ‘Terra Nullius’. I show how cultural knowledge of the Hairy Man is integral to how I identify with and connect to Country. I tell this story to make explicit my cultural sovereignty over an aspect of First Nations ‘intangible’ knowledge that the Western world has often labelled as myth or legend.

Unavoidable Slips: Settler Colonialism and Terra Nullius in the Wake of Climate Adaptation

Unavoidable Slips: Settler Colonialism and Terra Nullius in the Wake of Climate Adaptation

The search for a promised land: three settlement plans, three agents, and three handbooks for Icelandic migrant-settlers from 1875

ABSTRACT The nineteenth century was a time of mass migration from Europe to North America, and in the last quarter of the century, Icelanders joined the flow of European settlers. Icelanders were one of the last European peoples in this period to start sailing west, between 1870 and 1914; but, one in every five Icelanders moved to North America. This article looks at three handbooks for prospective Icelandic migrant-settlers – all published in 1875 – and the settlement plans they promoted (in Nova Scotia, today’s Manitoba, and Alaska), to analyse the information presented to prospective settlers, especially depictions of land and its inhabitants. While the texts, written or translated by three Icelandic immigration agents, vary greatly in their scope and tone, all perceive Icelanders as desirable settlers, suitable for advancing the goals of settler colonialism, and portray the areas as terra nullius, minimizing perceived Indigenous presence in the places marked for European settlement. The texts show that prospective Icelandic emigrants reading these booklets were aware that they contributed to and benefited from Indigenous dispossession, and that Icelanders and other ‘ethnic’ migrant-settlers in British settler colonies should be considered in settler colonial studies, as settler colonialism and migration policy are intimately linked.

Arab World in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin: Making Visible the Idea of Terra Nullius

The nineteenth- and twentieth-century European texts on “unfamiliar” parts of the world were injected with the idea of terra nullius (more pernicious than its legal and military implications) to justify European imperialism. It is a projection of “diffusionism,” which intends to theorize how the “outside” world lacks indigenous geography, history, or culture. In this context, this article takes up Georges Remi Hergé’s representations of the Arab world in The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Red Sea Sharks, Cigars of the Pharaoh, and Land of Black Gold to identify traces of the idea of terra nullius albeit it was not legally applied on the land and its people.

Aquaculture’s offshore frontier: learning from the Canadian courts on ocean grabbing, ocean privatization, and property as process

Many coastal nations have endorsed the Blue Economy as both an economic and environmental opportunity, despite numerous questions as to how industrial expansion into deep ocean waters might be regulated for sustainability. Aquaculture is one industry actively promoting a move offshore, with numerous offshore leases in development. Drawing on the history of aquaculture in the nearshore, and relying on a processual approach to property, we explore questions around the regulation of privatized ocean spaces: What can court cases involving aquaculture in the nearshore tell us about the role of law in promoting sustainable offshore ocean spaces? And what in turn does this suggest about extractive capitalism, the privatization of ocean spaces, and the law? We examine 46 Canadian court cases which cover a 30-year time frame and multiple Canadian jurisdictions. We argue that there are lessons here regarding the questionable ability of law to effectively regulate existing or future aquaculture operations once privatization emerges. The lessons from these Canadian court cases, taken together with a burgeoning literature on legal geography, more-than-human methodologies, and critical environmental law, suggest the varied legal dimensions of deep-sea aquaculture frontier imaginaries and highlight the real limits to regulating the extraction of resources in this perceived open space (terra nullius). We highlight crucial barriers to sustainability through what we are calling jurisdictional opaqueness in regulatory issues. The results include poor regulation and overlapping or contested jurisdictions, which relates in turn to inadequate consultation, frequent environmental problems (toxic chemicals, anoxia, salmon escapes, marine debris), and scientific disputes.

(Re)positioning Indigenous games in HPE: turning to criticality

ABSTRACT In 2011, the Australian national curriculum called for the inclusion of Indigenous histories, cultures and perspectives/knowledges, prompting Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers in schools and academics within higher education have experimented with and reported upon different purposes and ways of teaching Indigenous Games. However, Australian schools remain sites of epistemic injustice, where the privileging of Western knowledges marginalises alternative voices and knowledge systems, maintaining disciplinary terra nullius [terra nullius means ‘empty land’ – it was a legal fiction, overturned by the High Court of Australia in 1992, used by British settler-colonisers to justify the invasion of Australia. In this context, we mean that Physical Education in Australia still assumes erroneously that Western knowledges are the only available knowledges]. Worryingly, experimentation with Indigenous games, by predominantly white educators with minimal understanding of Indigenous histories and cultures, has resulted in confusion and apprehension over their purpose and place in the curriculum, leading toward either omission or cultural appropriation, rather than deep, critical engagement with Indigenous Knowledges. Centring on the publication and implementation of Yulunga: Traditional Indigenous Games [Edwards, K., & Meston, T. (2009). Yulunga: Traditional indigenous games. Ausport. http://www.ausport.gov.au/participating/indigenous/resources/games_and_activities/full_resource], we reappraise the Australian approach toward Indigenous games, suggesting this work has occurred over three distinct time periods or ‘waves’. Conceptualising this work with the heuristic of ‘three waves’ provides a useful contribution to the field, revealing a lack of substantive progress in including Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in HPE. We argue HPE educators and researchers are complicit in the marginalisation and/or omission of Indigenous knowledges and perspectives and must shift current practice toward a ‘fourth wave’ of implementing Indigenous games with criticality. We call for a revisiting of Martin Nakata’s [(2002). Indigenous knowledge and the cultural interface: Underlying issues at the intersection of knowledge and information systems. IFLA Journal, 28(5-6), 281–291. https://do.org/10.1177/034003520202800513; Nakata, M. (2007). The cultural interface. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 36, 1–7. Nakata, M. (2011). Pathways for Indigenous education in the Australian curriculum framework. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 40(1), 1–8. https://do.org/10.1375/ajie.40.1] theory of the Cultural Interface – a theory of critique of knowledge systems. Nakata [(2002). Indigenous knowledge and the cultural interface: Underlying issues at the intersection of knowledge and information systems. IFLA Journal, 28(5-6), 281–291. https://do.org/10.1177/034003520202800513] cautioned that Indigenous knowledges and perspectives cannot be simply dropped into contested knowledge domains. Now more than ever, knowledge of critical frameworks like Nakata’s are required to disrupt the entrenched white disciplinary praxis of Australian HPE.

Michael Marker Dialogues with the Pope on Primacy of Place: Advocating for the Papaschase First Nation

This article begins from Michael Marker’s methodological invocation to center place and “the consciousness of landscape” (2018, p. 453). The places at issue are Manito Sakahikan (aka Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta) and Amiskwaciwaskahikan (aka Beaver Hills House of Edmonton, Alberta). Both places were in the news in 2022 when Pope Francis made his historic and tardy apology on behalf of the Catholic Church and its members for their role in the cultural genocide of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Both places hold spiritual significance for the Papaschase First Nation, whose traditional territory encompasses them, as well as for practicing Catholics. As a means of advocacy for the Papaschase First Nation, I trace the breaking of their treaty, in part, to the Church’s role in, and the dire consequences of, terra nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery. I contrast the Western view that one can own the land with a traditional Indigenous emphasis on the importance of sharing and caring with and for the land. I present my arguments via an imagined three-way dialogue among Dr. Michael Marker, Pope Francis, and myself. To create this dialogue, I draw on: Marker’s scholarly work, particularly on the primacy of place; Pope Francis’s homilies, statements, and earlier papal bulls (decrees). As a Métis from Manito Sakahikan, I share memories of the place of my ancestors and childhood that bring forth an Indigenous Métissage (Donald, 2009, 2012), underscoring place-based and sacred traditional relationships to “sentient landscapes” (Marker, 2018, p. 454). The dialogue takes place in three places: Ancient Gathering Places, the Vatican, and An Alternative Future of Wholeness. The results of the conversation suggest the importance of an Indigenous perspective on the sacredness of place as a possible educational

Isotakeshima Oboegaki and Japan’s Confirmation of Dokdo as Korean Territory in the Late Seventeenth Century

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially claims that Japan had discovered Takeshima (Dokdo) since the seventeenth century, but this article argues that quite to the contrary, Isotakeshima Oboegaki, a primary source that confirms Japan’s recognition of Dokdo as Korean territory, clearly corrects this claim. Isotakeshima Oboegaki’s importance can be explained in three ways. First, Japan’s official position regarding Dokdo wrongly conflates different uses of “Takeshima” depending on historical context and ignores that it was because of a paucity of Japanese sources confirming Japanese ownership over Takeshima (Ulleungdo) and a comparative certainty from the Korean government, forcing a reluctant Bakufu to admit the deficit in historical evidence and order that Japanese fishermen cannot trespass into Ulleungdo. Second, Isotakeshima Oboegaki was not just a document of its time but a key primary source that the Meiji government invoked as undeniable evidence to officially declare in the Dajokan Directive that neither Dokdo nor Ulleungdo were under Japanese sovereignty due to a paucity of evidence. Finally, Isotakeshima Oboegaki terminates Japan’s logic regarding Dokdo because it contradicts the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ claim of “original discovery” regarding Dokdo and Ulleungdo and corrects the mistaken notion of terra nullius.