The Invisible Norm: Indigeneity and Settler-Colonial States
The origin stories of too many modern nation-states are bound together by their subjugation of Indigenous populations whose lived experiences continue to be defined by systemic degradation, deprivation and dispossession. Within The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Aileen Moreton-Robinson draws on her intersectional identity as an Indigenous-Australian academic to argue that racism continues to be enshrined in and reinforced by the contemporary institutions and legal structures of settler-colonial states.
Serving as a challenge to the liberal tradition, the opening chapters of the book detail the way in which the politics of recognition are dictated by the ‘possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty’ which are fuelled by the sociohistorical construction of race. In fact, Australian identity itself is depicted as predicated upon a rejection of First Nations sovereignty for the nation-state is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession.
“There is no doubt that Moreton-Robinson’s argument strikes at the core of the Australian identity and the current model of the nation-state which views any assertion of Indigenous sovereignty to be a threat.”
White Australia has, in the past, made a concerted effort to maintain a fantasy of homogeneity and superiority of whiteness that has never existed. Strategies of possession, rationalisations of white supremacy, and assertions of ownership are what underlie the racial structures responsible for erasing Indigeneity from history. For Moreton-Robinson, contemporary Australian identity continues to reaffirm and reproduce a hegemonic narrative of whiteness which embraces colonial logic, racialises Indigenous bodies and illegitimatises Indigenous sovereignty. After all, “you cannot dominate without seeking to possess the dominated. You cannot exclude unless you assume you already own”.
The fiction of terra nullius set in motion one of the greatest thefts of all time. British colonists, and the white migrants which followed, established the sole normative measure for the condition of ‘belonging’ in Australia — a measure modelled on British political ideals which overrode Indigenous political autonomy. Property became merely another tool of oppression for the colonisers who sought to strip Indigenous populations of their homes, identities, and their ability to regain either. Excluded from accumulating capital, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were unable to attain the social worth, authority and ownership that this conferred.
Moreton-Robinson further concludes that colonisation is not an event, but rather an active and enduring process. One only has to look to the decision by the Queensland Government to extinguish native title over Wangan and Jagalingou country for the proposed Adani coal mine in the Galilee Basin to appreciate the way in which the power of property continues to be wielded over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Without public announcement of the decision, Wangan and Jagalingou are once again considered trespassers on their traditional lands and can be forcibly removed.
Moreton-Robinson argues that colonial common law systems continue to designate First Nations as trespassers, with the bestowing of ownership remaining the sole right of the white patriarchal institutions which remain incompatible with the Indigenous ontological connection to country. These contradictory and competing articulations of belonging in ‘post-colonial’ Australia cannot viably coexist. Given that it remains ‘race blind’ through the way in which it reifies and fetishises cultural differences, Moreton-Robinson moves to distance herself from existing Indigenous scholarship. She explicitly reminds her readers that the plight of her people has not been a result of differences in culture, but rather as a product of differences in race.
Indigenous scholarship has historically backgrounded race and critiques of whiteness despite the fact that the black-white racial dichotomy served as the primary justification for Indigenous dispossession. This has meant that the power of property in the story of oppression has been neither fully explored nor appreciated. There is certainly benefit to the epistemic sovereignty possessed by Indigenous studies, but not if it sacrifices the scope of material that can be critiqued. Whilst not without its faults, Moreton-Robinson admires the way in which critical race theory exogenously critiques other disciplinary fields and she draws on its methodological principles within her own work.
There is no doubt that Moreton-Robinson’s argument strikes at the core of the Australian identity and the current model of the nation-state which views any assertion of Indigenous sovereignty to be a threat. Accepting that white possessive logics continue to determine whose lives matter, who is considered virtuous, and who is deemed to be a trespasser calls into question the very objectivity of social justice within settler-states. Yet accepting her argument as a non-Indigenous Australian is difficult because it ultimately requires a disavowal of the dominant white identity and likely what may feel like a denouncement of oneself. Moreton-Robinson may not present an explicit solution within her writing, but it is clear that any reasonable answer requires a concerted effort to untangle and undo this logic of white possession.
“Avoiding the topic of race because it makes us vulnerable by addressing us personally is largely to participate in its reproduction.”
As Moreton-Robinson has pointed out in her other work, most prominently in her book Talkin’ Up To The White Woman, “…whiteness needs to be interrogated as a specific form of privilege”. Worthwhile reflection on identity — the aforementioned disavowal — may be uncomfortable, but it is what is required of us. It is uncomfortable because it implies complicity in ongoing structural racism, but it is necessary because whiteness is the assumed and thus invisible norm we face. Indigeneity is ‘difference’ precisely because it is not whiteness. In order to meaningfully engage with the issues that Moreton-Robinson raises, we must reflect on our identities and knowledge. Without this, Indigeneity is designated as ‘Other’ while whiteness survives as the invisible norm against which difference will always be measured.
Avoiding the topic of race because it makes us vulnerable by addressing us personally is largely to participate in its reproduction. The ultimate privilege is to be able to inhabit whiteness and be neutral. Whether it be the Māori in New Zealand, Native Americans in North America, or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia; there must be a disavowal of race as a marker of difference. By engaging with the colonial past as well as the colonial present, the powerful account offered by Moreton-Robinson offers a timely reminder that “Race matters in the lives of all peoples; for some people it confers unearned privileges, and for others it is the mark of inferiority”.
