Burying Indigeneity: The Spatial Construction of Reality and Aboriginal Australia
| Author | Rowland Atkinson,Maggie Walter,Elizabeth Taylor |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663909345449 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Burying Indigeneity: The
Spatial Construction of
Reality and Aboriginal
Australia
Rowland Atkinson
University of York, UK
Elizabeth Taylor
RMIT University, Australia
Maggie Walter
University of Tasmania, Australia
Abstract
In this articlewe argue that spatial distanceand historic socio-ethnic boundaries play a crit-
ical rolein determining the relativepriority given to groups that aremarginally placed. These
priorities are materialized through law. We utilize theories that understand ‘reality’ as
something socially constructed: our impressions of the structure of everyday life are
mediated in large partby our primary social group interactions. We profile the spatial dis-
tributionand relative segregation of IndigenousAustralians, from urban to remoteregional
contexts. Our data highlights how even a predominantly urban Indigenous population
remainsout of the sight and mind ofsocial and political actorsdue to its small numericalsize
and perceived social difference. We move to explain public policy formulation in terms of
orientations that are influenced by the spatiality of social affiliations. We suggest that the
spatially-bounded patterningof black and white lives supports thecontinued burial of Indi-
genous life.The socio-spatial constructionof Indigenous life forwhite and other Australians
has enabled both aggressive and neglectful policy instruments in which Aboriginal life
appears as somethingthat is politically, legally and spatially marginal.
Keywords
Boundary, Indigenous Australians, native title, Northern Territory, segregation, social
isolation, space
Social & Legal Studies
19(3) 311–330
ªThe Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663909345449
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311
Introduction
That Indigenous Australians occupy the Australian continent’s more remote spaces
appears as something of a self-evident fact. We suggest that the social and spatial discon-
nection of these groups has become increasingly important in helping to explain the dra-
matic gaps in life-chances and disadvantage of Aboriginal Australians. Yet it also
underlies common-sense understandings of indigeneity where it is seen as intransigent
and its problems self-inflicted, as a result of not joining mainstream white culture and
market-oriented ways of being. Such perspectives lag behind knowledge of the real spa-
tial distribution of Indigenous Australians across its inner regional and urban areas. Life,
for the majority of the Australian Indigenous population is, in fact, urban, and the lived
experience of socio-economic disparities is particularly acute between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous populations in these locations. Yet such physical proximity is not gen-
erally matched by daily social contact or the entwining of white and black institutional
life. Our analysis highlights how socio-economic exclusion and political marginalization
of Indigenous Australian life continues in large part because it is out of the sight of white
Australians.
Ian Thorpe
1
recently expressed his astonishment and disgust at the appalling condi-
tion of living conditions in an Indigenous community (NIT, 2007). Thorpe joins the
ranks of numerous public officials, policymakers and other key figures who have been
publicly surprised by the material poverty and housing, health and education outcomes
of Australia’s original peoples. Our contention is that we should be surprised at such
surprise – how is it that the abject condition and marginality of Indigenous Australians
should be periodically (re)discovered in this way? We argue that these serial epipha-
nies are a reflection of the deeper spatial and social separation of non-Indigenous
Australia from the actualities of Indigenous lives. For much of the Australian popula-
tion, Aboriginal peoples exist outside of their lived social reality and away from the
places inhabited by most white Australians. This sense of parallel lives extends to and
shapes the actions, and inactions, of government and policymakers on Indigenous
issues. This contention is supported by evidence of a decade of neglect and demon-
strable underspending by State and Commonwealth governments during a period of
fiscal bounty and a continuation of remarkable gaps between the socio-economic out-
comes of white and black Australians.
In advancing our position we pay close attention to the spatial distribution of Indi-
genous Australians across political jurisdictions. We also consider the social and insti-
tutional circuits that are built upon these distributions. In short, we suggest that
Indigenous life exists alongside, but rarely interacts with, non- Indigenous social and
institutional life. This is due to the numerical slightness of the Indigenous population
and a result of political projects that have tended to discount a culture often under-
enumerated and insensitively treated. The spatial patterning and daily trajectories of
white and black Australians, under these conditions of segregation and mutual
hermetic boundedness, inform the senses of social reality within both groups. Yet this
has also led to the reproduction of a broadly sheltered, affluent and sepa rate Australian
political class that is spatially distant and socially disengaged from the lives of black
Australians.
312 Social & Legal Studies 19(3)
312
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