Non-Indigenous Australians and the ‘Responsibility to Engage’?

Abstract

National projects of reconciliation in settler colonial countries such as Australia are predicated on assumptions about non-Indigenous willingness to engage with the cultures and histories of Indigenous peoples. However, empirical research consistently finds such attitudes are far from universal. This article reports findings from focus groups with non-Indigenous peoples conducted at four locations around Australia during 2014. The goal was to see what ‘emergent’ discourses of reconciliation lay in the quotidian lives of non-Indigenous Australians. As with a comparable study conducted in Canada, this research used a poetics-rich approach to critical discourse analysis of the focus group discussions. It surfaced strong but complex themes, in particular a mode of ‘delegation’ and another of ‘embodiment’. We explore these themes with one eye towards Australia’s coming referendum on a constitutional amendment that would recognise the precolonial presence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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