Indigenous Sovereignty and the Being of the Occupier
98
unwillingness to recognize asylum seekers’ property-own
-
ing subjectivity in much the same way that Australian gov
-
ernments had denied equal treatment before the law to cer
-
tain classes of immigrants from the 1920s to the 1940s. In the twenty-first century the practice of granting fixed term temporary protection visas to asylum seekers in place of per
-
manent visas bears the very same mark of rendering a cer
-
tain class of immigrant bodies as potentially available to be singled out for discriminatory treatment by the Australian state as did the association in the 1930s of all non-British born nationals with inherently subversive leftist ideas.
Moreover, in keeping with the …show more content…
By the 1960s, still prior to official multiculturalism, anti-Vietnam war ac
-
tivists risked rejection of their naturalization applications, not because they were identified as belonging to inherently subversive foreigner communities, but because their actions showed them to be failing to conform to the image of the compliant foreigner. Post multiculturalism the significance of migrant groups’ opposition to Australia’s involvement in overseas wars has changed
.
In the twenty-first century politicians receive Muslim community concerns against
Australia’s role and involvement in the Middle East without inevitably reading into them any threat to national unity or other evidence of subversive conduct. But this is not due to an abandonment of reliance on the image of the subversive foreigner, but rather to the construction of Muslim and Arab communities in accordance with yet another image of the perpetual-foreigner-within. Far from having overcome the tendency to position non-British migrant communities as foreigner communities, from the 1970s with the transition to state multiculturalism, dominant white Australia has also progressively invoked a third image of the …show more content…
10, no. 1, 2004, pp. 63-77; Toula Nicolacopoulos and
George Vassilacopoulos,
From Foreigner to Citizen: Greek Migrants and So
-
cial Change in White Australia, 1897-2000, (Greek) Melbourne and Pireas,
Eothinon Publications, 2004.
7
4. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘I Still Call Australia Home’, p. 23.
103
13. THE IMPERATIVE OF
THE
INDIGENOUS - WHITE AUSTRALIAN
ENCOUNTER
We have argued that Indigenous survival and resistance generates the demand that white Australians approach our history philosophically. In becoming philosophical it is not enough for us to remember and admit that to be white
Australian is to be implicated in the violent dispossession of
Indigenous peoples. It is not even enough for us to remem
-
ber or admit to past injustices whose effects are still being suffered today.
We need to make a deeper more reflective turn to the emptiness of our being.
Having actively whitened not just the Australian insti
-
tutions, but our self-instituting gathering-we, we have de
-
cisively undermined our sovereignty. Our being has been emptied out and our sovereign emerging in the world has thus been reduced to an active non-emerging . Indeed, as white Australians we are best described as ‘the
98
unwillingness to recognize asylum seekers’ property-own
-
ing subjectivity in much the same way that Australian gov
-
ernments had denied equal treatment before the law to cer
-
tain classes of immigrants from the 1920s to the 1940s. In the twenty-first century the practice of granting fixed term temporary protection visas to asylum seekers in place of per
-
manent visas bears the very same mark of rendering a cer
-
tain class of immigrant bodies as potentially available to be singled out for discriminatory treatment by the Australian state as did the association in the 1930s of all non-British born nationals with inherently subversive leftist ideas.
Moreover, in keeping with the …show more content…
By the 1960s, still prior to official multiculturalism, anti-Vietnam war ac
-
tivists risked rejection of their naturalization applications, not because they were identified as belonging to inherently subversive foreigner communities, but because their actions showed them to be failing to conform to the image of the compliant foreigner. Post multiculturalism the significance of migrant groups’ opposition to Australia’s involvement in overseas wars has changed
.
In the twenty-first century politicians receive Muslim community concerns against
Australia’s role and involvement in the Middle East without inevitably reading into them any threat to national unity or other evidence of subversive conduct. But this is not due to an abandonment of reliance on the image of the subversive foreigner, but rather to the construction of Muslim and Arab communities in accordance with yet another image of the perpetual-foreigner-within. Far from having overcome the tendency to position non-British migrant communities as foreigner communities, from the 1970s with the transition to state multiculturalism, dominant white Australia has also progressively invoked a third image of the …show more content…
10, no. 1, 2004, pp. 63-77; Toula Nicolacopoulos and
George Vassilacopoulos,
From Foreigner to Citizen: Greek Migrants and So
-
cial Change in White Australia, 1897-2000, (Greek) Melbourne and Pireas,
Eothinon Publications, 2004.
7
4. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘I Still Call Australia Home’, p. 23.
103
13. THE IMPERATIVE OF
THE
INDIGENOUS - WHITE AUSTRALIAN
ENCOUNTER
We have argued that Indigenous survival and resistance generates the demand that white Australians approach our history philosophically. In becoming philosophical it is not enough for us to remember and admit that to be white
Australian is to be implicated in the violent dispossession of
Indigenous peoples. It is not even enough for us to remem
-
ber or admit to past injustices whose effects are still being suffered today.
We need to make a deeper more reflective turn to the emptiness of our being.
Having actively whitened not just the Australian insti
-
tutions, but our self-instituting gathering-we, we have de
-
cisively undermined our sovereignty. Our being has been emptied out and our sovereign emerging in the world has thus been reduced to an active non-emerging . Indeed, as white Australians we are best described as ‘the