Settler Capitalism is a phrase bandied about as if it carries no baggage, a historical fact from the distant past, entirely neutral - like Queen Victoria’s underwear, say. Amoral and beyond the reach of judgements.
It appears to imply nothing more than a past state of political economy. Yet it’s a phrase that, more than any other I can think of, contains within it the very essence of the Australia we live in today.
Because as much as there is a philosophical basis to contemporary Australia, then surely Settler Capitalism is it. Since 1770, when James Cook raised the Union flag on Possession Island, it has been Australia’s past, and its present and future.
But it sits like a weeping sore within our moral and spiritual conscience.
I was first struck by the phrase in an academic article, a few thousand words out of the billions that academics churn out every year, this one about the Black War in Tasmania. Of course the Black War of extermination demands a hell of a lot of analysis and discussion. But the thing that stuck out in the anodyne calculations of how many Aboriginal people died was the descriptor Settler Capitalism.
There it was. Gleaming in the artificial sunlight of the writer’s mind, a polished turd, a perfect combination of soullessness and pedantic nerdism. Nuance banished, humanity banished. Welcome to the blank stare, weightless in the echo-chamber of academia, the sterile laboratory of indulgence, the highwire act with the secret, invisible, net. History as epigram, right up there with The Scramble for Africa and Gun Boat Diplomacy.
The shrug of absolution. Its presence was like rancid offal at a vegan dinner party. But rather than imply revulsion, its deployment among so many high-sounding words suggested just the opposite: acceptance. As if, by assigning this shibboleth to the process of violent dispossession and ongoing trauma, like vivisectors we can neutralise, quarantine and analyse the issue - and all the moral horrors it should conjure in a supposedly civilised society - so we can just move on. By tagging it thus, as with ANZAC or factory farming - complex events from which should erupt countless questions - we have reduced it to a trope, shoved it into a box on a shelf, to be looked at only by specialists, weirdos, un-Australian types who occasionally annoy us by drawing our attention to the rather unpleasant smell.
Settler Capitalism. Named, tagged and put away, alongside thylacines and 250 extinct languages.
But put those two words together in the real world, not an academic’s essay, and they’re like a mix of nitro-glycerine and petrol. Dangerous and inherently unstable, with absolutely no moral guidance system.
Settler Capitalism isn’t about political economy; it’s about a world of ultra-violence, theft and denial, operating in a thick fog of religion, law and progress.
To admit this is to help uncover a new foundational story, no longer dependant on exclusion, entropy, silence and damage. These are words that should have no place in a healthy moral body, politic or otherwise.
So let’s talk about Settler Capitalism for what it is: not a benign, perhaps even accidental, change-agent, merely a species of the genus progressus, but a masked violator of human dignity – of oppressed and oppressor both.
So here’s…
A CAST OF SETTLERS AND CAPITALISTS
Left to right, by rows…. The Squatter. Western District of Victoria, photographed second half of the 1860s. Possibly a member of the Henty family. The Stockman. Goonoo Goonoo Station, Moree district, northwest NSW, photographed circa 1880. Signed ‘From Frank’ on reverse. The Surveyor. Warrnambool district, Victoria, photographed late 1860s. The Cleric. Presbyterian minister, Western District of Victoria, photographed late 1860s. The Policeman. Frederick Archer, Commissioner of Police, Bathurst District, NSW, photographed late 1870s. Queen Victoria, the Chairman of the Board, CEO, and team mascot, by Alfred Chalon, 1837.
STARRING IN SETTLER CAPITALISM: A DYSTOPIAN FANTASY IN THREE ACTS
Act 1: How we like to think of Settler Capitalism
Act 2: A FEW OF THE THINGS WE JUST DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT
Fuck Racism, What About Genocide, 2014, by Wathaurong artist Dan Kelly (born 1964), pyrography on paper, dimensions 38 x 54 cm.
Official press photograph, dated September 27, 1956, showing the radioactive mushroom cloud generated by the first atomic explosion at Maralinga in South Australia. “Britain touched off her fourth series of atomic explosions today with a test at the new Maralinga proving ground that ripped out a crater half a mile wide” (original caption). Britain conducted seven nuclear tests at Maralinga in Operation Buffalo (1956) and Operation Antler (1957), followed over the next six years by 550 highly contaminating so-called minor trials.
Poison Waterholes Creek, about 10 kms from Narrandera on the Sturt Highway, Wiradjuri country. Read Stan Grant’s account of what happened there here. (Photo: Deborah Sims)
Niningka Lewis, (1945-2020), Pitjantjatjara, Many white people came to Australia by boat and shot Anangu, 2013. Acrylic paint on Arches paper. Dimensions 29 x 36 cm. Like many paintings by Indigenous artists of killings and massacres, this one avoids direct depiction as too painful, instead in this case showing the titular boat on which the perpetrators arrived. No end of murderous action is implied within the haiku-like minimalism of its title.
Palawa survivors of the Black War were exiled to Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, where diseases continued to reduce their numbers even further. In 1847, the last 47 living inhabitants of Wybalenna were transferred to a specially constructed camp at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, where in 1866 this postage stamp was affixed to a letter and cancelled by being overwritten by a postal service employee. Thus unwittingly, though with profoundly poignant effect, was created an image of state violence and dispossession dressed in the regalia of legitimacy and unquestionable authority. The engraved face of a young Queen Victoria, based on the 1837 portrait by Alfred Chalon, was employed on postage stamps and banknotes across the empire, specifically in Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) and Queensland in Australia, and in Natal, Bahamas, Grenada, New Zealand and Canada. Thousands of copies of the portrait were distributed worldwide to embassies, consulates and other official British establishments, in the exercise of a very modern form of soft power.
Permit, by Gertie Deeral (born 1944). "This is a painting of the bama ngay (the aboriginal people) going to the pastor's house to get a permit to go to Cooktown and do shopping". Painted at Hope Vale, Queensland. Acrylic on canvas, size 57 x 78 cm. Private collection.
Two Years On Dialysis 2015, by Western Arrernte artist Marlene Wheeler. “There’s Flynn Drive and Gap Road – these are the two dialysis clinics I have been going to for the past two years. The dialysis takes four hours. I go there three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This treatment has been going on for two years. Each day there might be 12 patients at a time. When one lot comes off the machines, another lot comes in”.Made at Alice Springs. Acrylic paint on plywood, size 60 x 80 cm.
Dhakiyarr vs the King, 2021, by Yolgnu artist Wally Wilfred. Acrylic on archival art paper. Made at Ngukurr, NT, size 56 x 76 cm. “This story is from East Arnhem Land, but it is also a story from all over Australia. It is a story about two laws. One law is handed down by ancestors, it is written on the body and it stays the same. The other law is written on paper and it always changes” – Wally Wilfred. View the documentary Dhakiyarr vs the King here for the full story.
Photo by Jon Rhodes from his series Cage of Ghosts. National Library of Australia collection.
Counter-top advertisement for Pelaco brand shirts, circa 1930-40. Does casual racist kitsch like this percolate into the national psyche? Here’s a photo of a footy team in fancy dress from the same period:
In Map Wiya (We Don’t Need a Map) 2015, artist Mumu Mike Williams rejects whitefella claims of ownership on the found Land Tenure map he has graffitied in his Pitjantjatjara language with his own manifesto of ownership. “Aboriginal people are the true owners of this land…”. Government claims to the contrary are given short shrift: as the artist so succinctly put it, in the title of his huge painting hung in The National at MCA Australia in 2019: “Government doesn’t have Tjukurpa”. End of argument. Aboriginal people are the true owners of this land. They look after the land and their Law and Culture. The Government and mining companies are not part of our Law and Culture. To claim ownership of Aboriginal Land is a lie. They’ve got no shame. Mining Aboriginal Land isn’t part of our Law and Culture. Mining destroys our sacred sites. Listen to this strong story. Mumu Mike Williams was one of the claimants who fought for and won their Pitjantjatjara Land Rights in 1981.
A different kind of map. Tingarri Design for Wanarn, by Ngaanyatjarra traditional owner and artist Cliff Reid (1947-2010). Definitely not a whitefella map, this one shows the travels of the tingarri - creation ancestors - above, on and below the artist’s country around Wanarn, near the borders of Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia.
Silver Female, from Oz Omnia Rex Et Regina, a series of ‘coins’ photographed by Darren Siwes, Ngalkban people, Northern Territory. This one features Kaurna elder Aunty Minnie. Coinage having been a powerful expression of sovereignty in the western hemisphere since around 600 BCE, Siwes elegantly and simply flips the dominant settler paradigm. (Art Gallery of South Australia collection)
“Hero” image: 1886 postcard (detail) commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of South Australia.
Act 1 images: 1963 advert for the new General Motors Holden EH station wagon. And Squatter board game... 600,000 sold and still going strong.
All other images as per captions.
All images courtesy the Sims Dickson Collection and Archive. Artworks courtesy the Sims Dickson Collection, except where noted. Artwork copyright resides with the respective artists.
