'A call for a radical restructuring of the relationship between black and white Australia.
'Australia is wreaking devastation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Whatever the policy- from protection to assimilation, self-determination to intervention, reconciliation to recognition- government has done little to improve the quality of life of Indigenous people. In far too many instances, interaction with governments has only made Indigenous lives worse.
'Despite this, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders and commentators still believe that working with the state is the only viable option. The result is constant churn and reinvention in Indigenous affairs, as politicians battle over the 'right' approach to solving Indigenous problems.
'The Colonial Fantasy considers why Australia persists in the face of such obvious failure. It argues that white Australia can't solve black problems because white Australia is the problem. Australia has resisted the one thing that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want, and the one thing that has made a difference elsewhere: the ability to control and manage their own lives. It calls for a radical restructuring of the relationship between black and white Australia.' (Publication summary)
Epigraph: ...all they seem'd to want was for us to be gone. -Captain James Cook, 30 April 1770.
Let us go. Let us go. Give us that space to go, think and develop a way that was there before.
-Yingiya Mark Guyula
Yolnu Nations Assembly
(quoted in Wahlquist 2016a: 1)
'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
‘Fuck Australia, I hope it fucking burns to the ground.’ Sarah Maddison opens this book by quoting Tarneen Onus-Williams, the young Indigenous activist who sparked a brief controversy when her inflammatory comments about Australia were reported around 26 January 2018. For Maddison, a Professor of Politics at the University of Melbourne, Onus-Williams’s Australia Day comments (and subsequent clarification) convey a profound insight into ‘the system’. She writes:
The current system – the settler colonial system – is not working ... Yet despite incontrovertible evidence of this failure, the nation persists in governing the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in ways that are damaging and harmful, firm in its belief that with the right policy approach … Indigenous lives will somehow improve. This is the colonial fantasy.'
(Introduction)
'“Language is important,” Sarah Maddison tells us at the start of The Colonial Fantasy, a necessary and purposefully confronting book. She sets out the vocabulary on which she believes any discussion of black–white relations in this country must be based if we are to find a way forward. First and foremost: Australia is a “settler state” created by “settler colonialism”. We are deluded by the “colonial fantasy” that once we eliminate the differences between us in an act of “colonial completion”, First Nations people and settlers can enjoy life as equals within a shared polity.' (Introduction)
‘Fuck Australia, I hope it fucking burns to the ground.’ Sarah Maddison opens this book by quoting Tarneen Onus-Williams, the young Indigenous activist who sparked a brief controversy when her inflammatory comments about Australia were reported around 26 January 2018. For Maddison, a Professor of Politics at the University of Melbourne, Onus-Williams’s Australia Day comments (and subsequent clarification) convey a profound insight into ‘the system’. She writes:
The current system – the settler colonial system – is not working ... Yet despite incontrovertible evidence of this failure, the nation persists in governing the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in ways that are damaging and harmful, firm in its belief that with the right policy approach … Indigenous lives will somehow improve. This is the colonial fantasy.'
(Introduction)
'“Language is important,” Sarah Maddison tells us at the start of The Colonial Fantasy, a necessary and purposefully confronting book. She sets out the vocabulary on which she believes any discussion of black–white relations in this country must be based if we are to find a way forward. First and foremost: Australia is a “settler state” created by “settler colonialism”. We are deluded by the “colonial fantasy” that once we eliminate the differences between us in an act of “colonial completion”, First Nations people and settlers can enjoy life as equals within a shared polity.' (Introduction)
'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
