Violence as care: Indigenous policy and settler colonialism

Abstract

This chapter examines the fundamental political dynamics of Indigenous public policy in liberal settler colonies such as Australia. Indigenous policy systems in these liberal states are framed around the idea of ‘care’ and are often understood as technical and neutral instruments for achieving better outcomes in Indigenous wellbeing. However, this chapter explores how these systems are conditioned by the fundamental dynamics of sovereignty, bureaucracy and race. It argues that policy systems are crucial to contemporary liberal settler colonial attempts to erase and dispossess Indigenous political orders. Bureaucratic policy institutions both enable large-scale control of and harm to Indigenous Nations and mask this control as a form of benevolent management for Indigenous benefit. In this sense, liberal Indigenous policy is an inherently racialising process, which frames Indigenous people as a population characterised by deficit and disadvantage, and in need of state intervention.

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