Aboriginality and the Violence of Colonialism（本土性和殖民主义的暴力）.pdfVIP

borderlands e -journal www.bord .au VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 , 2009 Aboriginality and the Violence of Colonialism Irene Watson University of South Australia Aboriginality survives the long history of a violent colonial project. In the contemporary space an Aboriginal resistance and survival struggle continues. However, the colonial project also continues. The state still has assimilation agendas, intent upon the removal of Aboriginal peoples from traditional lands and the absorption of Aboriginality into a ‘white Australia’. Colonising acts of violence, both past and present, have been read as being beneficial to Aboriginal communities, saving them from their violent selves. A comprehensive analysis of the sources of Aboriginal community violence from a diversity of Aboriginal perspectives is rarely made by the mass media or given space for communication and conversation. The Howard government’s intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities is supported by the current Rudd government, and remains largely immune from a critical gaze at its underlying impulses. Introduction In previous works I have argued that the impact of colonialism is central to the contemporary condition of Aboriginal peoples and that de-colonisation of the Aboriginal position is central to the healing of that condition. De-colonisation processes are in the realm of what is yet to come, to be imagined and negotiated between the colonized and the colonizer. While it may be the choice of some individuals