Abstract
National and state/territory dialogues in Australia have increasingly turned towards implementing mechanisms that will oversee truth-telling processes to facilitate reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. While truth lies central to decolonising, it is vital to reflect on whose truth(s) are being represented, and in what ways it should be disseminated. In this article I discuss how the cultivation of a ‘decolonising consciousness’ may assist in confronting national and personal truths while also helping citizens of settler-colonial nations acquire the proficiency needed to put decolonial understandings into praxis. I argue that decolonising truths entails a responsive consciousness that is informed by frameworks such as border thinking, agonistic pluralism and kincentric orientations. Decolonising truth enables non-Indigenous settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples alike to live alongside the complexities of mutually informing, competing, and at times incommensurable worldviews; this is the point of departure in the ongoing path towards reconciliation.
Keywords
Introduction
During the lead-up to the referendum on a constitutional Voice to Parliament for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, career scholar and lifelong activist Marcia Langton reflected on this seminal moment in Australia's modern history. Emphasising the importance of healing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, Langton spoke of the words of fellow activist Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who told her that ‘you know when you’re being told the truth, because the truth burns’ (Allam, 2023; Langton & Rhea, 2005; Prime Minister of Australia, 2023). This statement epitomises the emotional and visceral response that often accompanies exposure to the lived experiences and truths of those who have experienced colonisation in settler-colonial settings.
In this paper I consider the importance of settler-colonists confronting colonial truths by acquiring what I describe as a ‘decolonising consciousness’ (Bradfield, 2023, 2019). Whilst the scars of colonialism may forever act as reminders of how colonisation has impacted, and continues to impact, Indigenous peoples worldwide, decolonising consciousness encourages an orientation that centralises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander truths. I argue that Indigenous and settler relations are best understood within border zones where lived realties intersect and interact, often manifesting in power imbalances. I demonstrate that a decolonising consciousness can help settler populations expose the conditions of coloniality and encourage critical self-reflection on national and personal truths.
I begin by discussing how colonisation has contributed to the construction of colonial truths that emphasise Eurocentric hegemony via the denial, control and oppression of local Indigenous people and cultures. Decolonising demands that such truths are exposed and confronted in relation to ontologies and epistemologies that differ from settler-colonial worldviews. I then consider how pluriversal understandings of the world require an orientation that acknowledges the interlocking relationships between and amongst all sentient beings and place. Through the concept of agonism, I reiterate that decolonising does not demand the abandonment of one's own ontological positionality, but rather requires that socio-cultural differences and autonomies are respected, whilst strategies for their coexistence are developed. I conclude with a case study of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and consider how voice and truth can potentially aid a decolonising consciousness by creating fluid border zones that are accountable to multiple truths.
Decolonising consciousness refers to the active pursuit and cultivation of a mode of being through which a person seeks to engage with the conditions of coloniality so that they arrive at new understandings of socio-cultural difference (Bradfield, 2023, 2019). In settler-colonial societies, this means non-Indigenous peoples gaining deeper understandings of the continuing presence of Indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledge systems, so that Eurocentric orientations can be challenged in ways that shift power imbalances. Decolonising exposes the socio-historical processes that bring coloniality into existence and seeks to reveal the ontologies, axiologies and epistemologies that maintain ‘invisible regimes of power’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p. 75). Just as Wolfe (2006) presented colonialism as culturally embedded, decolonising is best characterised as an ongoing ontological state of being that is brought to fruition through the centralisation of Indigenous voices and testimonies.
Although this paper explores some of the defining characteristics of decolonising consciousness, it is necessary that I first contextualise my discussion in relation to coloniality and the construction of (Eurocentric) truths that have come to define hegemonic populations in settler-colonial spaces.
Colonial truths
Hegemonic truth is defined as a form of collective consciousness that functions as a tool of power and reflects systems of meaning, value and understanding (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008, 2009). It is embedded in everyday habits of thought and practice that are not only represented in social discourses but are also embedded within the hegemonic population's ontological sense of being. The invention of race and racial hierarchy was, and still is, a major component of class and played a vital role in the development of colonising truths. The enforcement and representation of Eurocentric epistemologies and classification of white systems of governance as superior was further maintained through modernity, paired with conquest, oppression, increased flow of commodities and people, and the occupation and control of land (Grosfoguel, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018).
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1993, 1998) writes on how the construction of colonial truths closely aligns with education and authorship, which shaped how colonised populations were represented by colonisers and ultimately ‘known’ and objectified as subjects. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1998, p. 17) describes language as a ‘carrier of culture’ and writes on how the language of coloniality forced local populations to step outside their cultures and envision themselves within dominating frameworks, or in relation to the truths emphasised by the dominating regimes. Education was, and arguably still is, used as a tool of domination where scholars, authors and teachers are complicit through their characterisations of native populations. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1998, p. 93) writes: Economic and political control of a people can never be complete without cultural control, and here literary scholarly practice, irrespective of any individual interpretation and handling of the practice, fitted well the aim and the logic of the system as a whole.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1993, p. 43) describes coloniality as the ‘flattening or fossilisation of its victims’ cultures’. Sousanis (2015) similarly describes colonialism as a ‘flattening’ where monovocal truths are internalised and suffocate other ways of knowing and being. Sousanis speaks of flattening through sensory terms where truths fail to be ‘illuminated’, subjects remain ‘blind to new possibilities’, colour perception is restricted, and movement is confined to predetermined linear lines. Colonisation continues to be predicated on the denial and pacification of Indigenous peoples and cultures. In Australia, colonisation was predicated on the denial of Aboriginal people's existence, sovereignty and Country (Fredericks et al., 2014; Maddison, 2019; Moreton-Robinson, 2020b), as well as maintaining colonial truths of white superiority and native inferiority. Solutions to the so-called ‘Aboriginal problem’ (Ellinghaus, 2003) – a term used to characterise the inconvenience that Indigenous populations caused the colonial project – initially involved removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people via genocide and other acts of colonial violence (Wolfe, 2005). Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was believed that native populations would eventually ‘die out’ due to their perceived evolutionary inferiority (Altman & Sanders, 2002). When public awareness of increasing Aboriginal deaths on the frontiers – largely at the hands of pastoralists and the police who protected colonisers’ interests – came to light, colonial strategies shifted towards protectionism (Dunstan et al., 2020). Indigenous people were forcibly removed from their homelands and confined to reserves and missions, where they became the subjects of Chief Protectors (Attwood, 2017). Informed by theories of eugenics and assimilation, it was believed that the Aboriginal ‘race’ could be bred out of existence so that they would resemble Europeans in appearance and culture (Bond et al., 2014).
Institutions such as education, law enforcement, parliament, church and state all sought to systematically control Indigenous people's lives, defining who Indigenous people were and what was/is in their best interest. Moreton-Robinson (2020a, p. 27) writes that colonisation ‘brought its own way of looking at us, and in turn this construction affected how we also looked at ourselves’. The colonial project created and maintained false truths that denied or rationalised atrocities, silenced Indigenous voices, and justified the theft of land and slavery. Indigenous truths must continuously compete, resist and disprove the white voices that dominate social discourses and maintain epistemic and colonial violence.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia continue to be held to the same expectations that they conform and ‘play by the rules’ outlined by European institutions (Bargallie, 2020). Those who ‘talk back’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2021) or challenge dominant structures are often characterised as ‘troublemakers’ and many experience the repercussion of their refusals, whether in the legal justice system, education, employment, or other forms of discrimination.
Decolonising requires that settler populations reflexively engage and contest the colonial truths that are normalised and taken for granted within settler societies. For Sousanis (2015), decolonising is a process of unflattening, ‘a simultaneous engagement of multiple vantage points from which to engender new ways of seeing’ (Sousanis, 2015, p. 32). Unflattening involves transcending the illusion of objective truth to seek infinite ways of seeing the world whilst acknowledging the cultures that colonialism sought and seeks to flatten and fossilise. This means confronting how a person's decisions and actions may be complicit in maintaining oppressive truths (Fanon, 1963; Smith, 2012; Wolfe, 2005, 2006, 2016). Settler populations therefore must remain open to the idea that their privileged positionality stems from a context in which they are oppressors in relation to Indigenous people (Freire, 1993). In what can be seen as an inversion of colonial rhetoric, Fanon (1963) describes the refusal to confront the oppressive historical context that led to the dominance of settler populations as an act of ‘savagery’, whilst Freire (1993) has described them as ‘dehumanising’ settler populations as well.
Hegemonic populations, however, rarely turn the colonising gaze inward to confront the experiences of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, the power imbalances embedded within them, and the colonial legacies that are maintained. Acquiring a decolonising consciousness means that settler populations critically engage colonial truths and their role in constructing the settler self. This means confronting the truth that for white settlers, colonisation ‘brought its own way of looking at them [Indigenous peoples] and in turn affected how we [the white majority] also looked at ourselves [as superior]’. Turning the colonising gaze inward means confronting one's role in producing, maintaining and profiting from colonial violence, the legacies of which are maintained today. Colonisation was predicated on theories of racial hierarchy that emphasised Indigenous people's inferiority. The social relations that resulted from the policies that derived from such theories played a significant role in constructing how settler populations came to ‘look at themselves’ as superior, benevolent and sovereign.
Pluriversal truths
Decolonising consciousness promotes wider understandings of the pluriversal nature of colonised spaces where multiple truths intersect and coexist. Pluralism is defined here in relation to what Mouffe (1999, 1997; Mouffe et al., 2001) and others (Little, 2019) have called ‘agonistic pluralism’, which requires critical reflection of how the self and so-called ‘other’ – in this case, the coloniser and colonised – are understood in relation to one another. Becoming conscious of a person's positionality and how they orientate their truths within the world requires that their ‘situated ego’ (Grosfoguel, 2006, p. 168) – referring to the socio-cultural factors that shape epistemic and ontological understandings – be unpacked contrapuntally.
Said (1993, p. 18) describes contrapuntalism as a conceptual framework that challenges univocal representations of dominant truths that are often based in Eurocentric epistemologies. Contrapuntalism is a positioning where one critically reads between and within texts. It provides analytical spaces where neglected or silenced truths are reinserted into social discourses. Reading a text contrapuntally (whether a written or behavioural text) requires more than simply amplifying or platforming subjugated voices, but necessitates that the conditions of power that have silenced certain truths be exposed. Subjugated narratives and truths – in this case, those of Indigenous peoples – must be represented by Indigenous peoples, on their own terms.
For Nakata (2007), analysis is best done within a ‘cultural interface’, which he characterises as a space where Indigenous epistemologies and lived experiences intersect with those of non-Indigenous peoples. Through reflexive analysis, greater awareness of the conditions that shape the construction of truth and how they intersect, interact, counter and are informed by other truths, may prevail. New understandings and reorientations of how the world is viewed and apprehended by others (as well as oneself) can be gained. In settler-colonial spaces, this demands that the ongoing conditions of coloniality be confronted. (Mis)truths such the enduring legacy of terra nullius – the legal fiction that pronounced Australia uninhabited upon European ‘discovery’ – need to be critically unpacked and challenged. Despite being legally overturned, this concept remains a pervasive colonial conception that attempts to deny Indigenous sovereignties through the assertion of white possession.
Transcending Euro- or ethnocentricity to become responsive to diverse epistemologies requires both the acceptance that multiple truths exist and calls for the acknowledgement that they are situated amongst other ontological and cosmological orders. Settler-colonial spaces exist within a ‘pluriverse’ where different ways of knowing, doing and being coexist. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, an ontological sense of being is best represented through connections to Country, which Rose (2014, p. 435) describes as: [an] area associated with a human social group, and with all the plants, animals, landforms, waters, songlines, and sacred sites within its domain. It is homeland in the mode of kinship: the enduring bonds of solidarity that mark relationships between human and animal kin also mark the relationships between creatures and their country. As an Indigenous woman my ontological relation to country informs my epistemology. My coming to know and knowing is constituted through what I have termed relationality. One is connected by descent, country, place and shared experiences where one experiences the self as part of others and that others are part of the self; this is learnt through reciprocity, obligation, shared experiences, co-existence, co-operation and social memory.
Central to Moreton-Robinson's characterisation of relationality is that the ‘self’ is experienced in relation to its connection and dependence on other beings, whether human, non-human, spiritual, animal, or features of the land, waters and skies. ‘Descent, country, place and shared experiences’ all ontologically orientate Indigenous people within the universe and are learnt via the reciprocal actions and lived experiences maintained by culture. Truths emerge and are constantly challenged, maintained and adapted to the fluid interactions that take place and occur with and within place. Indigenous ontologies therefore differ from Western Cartesian dualities that separate body from earth, or nature from culture, as they are part of the same cosmological order known as Country.
Decolonising, however, does not demand the denial or rejection of Western dualistic epistemologies but challenges their characterisation as ‘universal’. Drawing on the work of Sami scholar Kuokkanen (2011), Sunberg (2014) highlights how decolonising involves acquiring ‘multiepistemic literacy’ to cultivate the ability to move between different epistemological standpoints. This does not require individuals to abandon their epistemic outlook but encourages a receptivity to other ways of knowing and being, with the openness of potentially changing one's behaviours in accordance with the truths encountered. Such truth may not align with an individual's own cultural standpoint, but through a commitment to remain receptive and empathetic, new possibilities may emerge.
Kincentric truths
For the Yolngu in north-eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, decolonisation demands that governments, decision makers and the wider settler population reimagine spatial and institutional relationships in ways that are cognisant of Indigenous knowledges (Marika et al., 2009). Policies pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are most effective when they are informed and constructed by Indigenous truths that restore balance through respecting Aboriginal knowledges, autonomies and self-determination (Marika et al., 2009). Using the term ngathu – a traditional practice where cycad nuts are prepared in ways that leach cyanide poison for their safe consumption – the Yolngu engage the ‘metaphoric mind’ (Cajete, 2004) to emphasise the importance of consultation and decision making through culturally appropriate methods and protocols. To fail to engage relationships, seek truth from appropriate knowledge holders, or make decisions in isolation of others is to remove the checks and balances provided by obligations and responsibilities to kin and Country. When policies are developed and implemented without acknowledgement of kin, for the Yolngu, society becomes poisoned. Like the metaphor of a burn, if left untreated, the poison of colonialism will continue to spread through body and place.
Salmón (2000, p. 1328) defines kincentricism as an epistemological label that reflects Indigenous peoples’ understandings, relationships and obligations to Country. For Cajete (2004, p. 50), kincentricism is based in ‘native science’ that he describes as ‘a broad term that can include metaphysics and philosophy, art and architecture, practical technologies and agriculture, as well as ritual and ceremony practised by Indigenous people past and present’. Western philosophies maintain human-centric outlooks of ecosystems (Rose, 2004, p. 29), which some have described as expressions of ‘human-supremacy’ (Plumwood, 2002, p. 11) or ‘knowledge chauvinism’ (Antweiler, 1998, p. 484). Decolonising involves seeking a consciousness of how one is positioned and implicated within native scientific frameworks, and how human cultures are but one expression of wider cosmological orders (Cajete, 2004, p. 47).
By gaining an understanding of the interconnections between humans and what Ingold (2000) calls ‘organism-persons’ – that is, non-human beings who have their own cultures and relations with and within place – human-centric behaviours and Eurocentric truths pertaining to land and waterscapes can begin to shift. Castro (1998) takes Ingold's concept further by arguing that ‘humanity’ is a relative term and refers to the ways that all sentient beings interrelate. Kincentric ecologies therefore acknowledge that kinship extends beyond blood or lineage (Yamanouchi, 2010) to include the agency and sentiency of Country which holds its own truths. In the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this comprises not only flora and fauna but ancestral beings whose presence and lifeforce continues to imbue the land, waters and elemental forces of Country with sentiency. Decolonising recognises Country as an autonomous agent rather than a passive or empty object to possess.
Kincentricism also challenges Western environmentalist paradigms that characterise nature reserves as pure ecological havens separated from human activity (Singer, 2011, p. 241). All beings and environments are seen to ‘crisscross and overlap’ (Plumwood, 2002, p. 12; Rose, 2002, p. 329) within an interlocking ‘web of connection’ (Hokari, 2011, p. 105). Kincentric ecology, when informed by Indigenous knowledges, provides a framework that is based on lived experiences and relationality, offering a habit of enquiry where individuals may reflexively consider their own positionality and actions in relation to other sentient beings. Muller (2003; Muller et al., 2019) has observed how conservation efforts primarily led by non-Indigenous environmentalists, and guided by posthumanism, often maintain colonial structures through misrepresenting Indigeneity via correlating it with concepts such as ‘wilderness’. Indigenous ‘heritage’ – a Western construct to begin with – is framed as a passive artefact of ostensibly past histories. Knowledge of Indigenous heritage is often used to substantiate what is considered the more ‘legitimate’ work of non-Indigenous science, theories and praxis. This solidifies non-Indigenous people in positions of power, authority and paternalism, leading Bignall et al. (2016) to describe those who engage in these Eurocentric habits that are deaf to Indigenous voices as the ‘new Protectors of Aborigines’.
Whilst Eurocentric understandings of ecological management often make distinction between ecology, economy and culture (Sullivan et al., 2010, p. 259), kincentric ecology provides a framework where non-Indigenous people are encouraged to avail themselves to the truths of other beings. One example of where the agency of place has been acknowledged within Western legal systems is through the recognition that the Whanganui River and its surrounding ecosystem in New Zealand, and the Ganges, Yamuna river and Yamunotri glaciers in Uttarakhand, India, have the legal status of a person (Hsiao, 2012; Hutchison, 2014; Kotharis & Bajpai, 2017; O'donnell, 2017; Strack, 2017). Like Castro's characterisation of humanity, granting waterways the legal status of personhood means that they are recognised as holders of truth which must be legally considered when interventions are made upon it.
Eurocentric outlooks maintained by colonialism have resulted in the truth of Country going unrecognised or unheeded. This has contributed to catastrophic outcomes for humans and the ecology alike. Examples include the destruction of Country for economic interests, as seen in the obliteration of ancient caves in the Juukan Gorge, Western Australia (Borschmann, 2022; Robinson, 2022), or the consequences of climate change and human intervention on water systems, which recently culminated in the death of millions of native fish in Menindee, New South Wales (Ao, 2020; Moritz et al., 2019). Conversely, when kincentric practices based in native science are adequately resourced, funded and granted the authority and capacity to operate – as seen in Indigenous ranger or cultural burning programmes (Dobbs et al., 2016; Freeman et al., 2021; Kearney, 2018; Robinson et al., 2021) – positive environmental, cultural and economic outcomes are achieved.
Agonistic truths
In neo-liberal settler-colonial democracies, public and political discourses often project ideologies of ‘unification’ amongst their diverse ethnic and cultural populations. Whilst rhetoric of unity and conciliation are characterised as positive attributes within democratic systems, such discourses can quickly become politicised tools of power that focus on how to ‘accommodate’ difference within existing hegemonic structures, reflective of white Eurocentric outlooks. This gives rise to questions of how reconciliation can be achieved within complex socio-political and settler-colonial settings where multiple truths, worldviews and interests coexist, conflict and contradict one another.
Agonism refers to a dialogical engagement and conceptual frame that seeks to understand the competing interests and aspiration between and within different socio-cultural groups (Ganesh & Zoller, 2012; Maddison, 2015; Mouffe, 1999). It is distinguished from collaboration, which seeks consensus through negotiation (Bokeno & Gantt, 2000; Ganesh & Zoller, 2012, pp. 70–74), and co-optation, where one group's truth attains power and dominance over another's. Collaboration is premised on the notion that positionality and bias can be suspended, whilst co-optation inflicts one's truth upon another. Agonism, however, presents an analytical space that acknowledges the positionality (and bias) of both groups. Agonism strives to embrace difference, conflict and disagreement to better understand the wider socio-cultural conditions that shape interactions, rather than assess the validity of one truth over another. It is within this agonistic space that pluralistic dialogues and debates may occur, the bio- and geo-political power that is often engrained in cross-cultural dialogues exposed, and strategic policies developed (Barolsky, 2022).
Diverse truths and positionalities within socio-cultural groups are also acknowledged within agonistic frameworks. This is pertinent to settler-colonial contexts such as Australia where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are often homogenised in ways that deny cultural diversity. Dialogues on the referendum for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, for example, bounded Indigenous peoples into ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ camps. A singular Indigenous person or viewpoint was often presented as representing all Indigenous peoples, or conversely, a viewpoint was discounted on the grounds that they did not speak for all Indigenous people. Claims that the referendum was ‘divisive’ was predicated on the illusion that divisions amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups, do not already exist.
Agonism offers a means to apprehend and engage contention such as this, as it acknowledges the internal struggle that happens within populations, whilst recognising that humans are flexible, adaptive and diverse (Ganesh & Zoller, 2012, p. 77). Personal attacks and the weaponisation of social media during the lead-up to the Voice Referendum (Beazley & May, 2023) demonstrate that when spaces for open disagreement and the ability to refute a person's claim to truth are not created, dialogue can quickly lead to antagonism and violence between opposing parties. Mouffe (Mouffe et al., 2001) argues that agonism provides a symbolic space where common ground and constructive dialogue amongst adversaries can be created. Whilst spaces for dialogue relating to the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia's constitution opened during the referendum, they often failed to create common ground and constructive dialogue amongst adversaries (Mouffe et al., 2001). In some cases, debates exacerbated tensions, or were preoccupied by false and misleading claims over the powers, function and desirability of the Voice within Indigenous communities.
The benefit of engaging in agonistic pluralism lies not in its ability to reach a desired outcome, but in its ability to highlight the conditions and contexts of different viewpoints (Mouffe, 1999, 1997; Mouffe et al., 2001). By acquiring an agonistic understanding of these contexts, informed decisions can be made. Although the referendum was ultimately rejected by Australian voters in 2023, the guiding principles of the Voice (i.e. a mechanism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation) remains relevant to decolonising. Mechanisms that seek to amplify the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – whether via state or territory Voices, treaties, or engagement with makarrata/truth-telling – must remain central to national discourses and continue to contribute to a decolonising consciousness.
Using agonism to challenge singular definitions of reconciliation and an imagined reconciled national truth, Maddison (2015) presents an agonistic framework that accommodates both peace and conflict. Agonistic reconciliation involves an active pursuit to understand the social conditions that produce and maintain power imbalances. Agonism is less concerned with achieving predetermined outcomes but rather focuses on creating pluralistic political environments that facilitate debate, accommodate difference, and set the parameters of discussion where multiple truths can coexist in a constructive manner. Maddison (2017, p. 164) writes that ‘political reconciliation does not require antagonists to agree about the significance or “truth” of past events, only that they acknowledge that they are in fact talking about the same events’.
For Maddison (2022), ‘agonistic reconciliation’ (see also Bohle, 2017) sits on a spectrum between agonistic inclusion on the one hand and agonistic decolonisation on the other. Whilst an agonistic inclusive approach to reconciliation accepts that pluralism exists within settler-colonial states, it is nonetheless driven by the premise that reconciliation will emerge when settler and Indigenous populations arrive at an agreed-upon ‘truth’. The danger of this lies in the fact that the accountability of those who have profited from colonialism becomes circumvented, whilst the conditions of colonialism which continue to be maintained go unchallenged. Hegemonic populations retain power by controlling public discourses and effectively silence Indigenous people.
A decolonising view of agonistic reconciliation, however, accepts that multiple truths – between and amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples – coexist, with each retaining their own autonomy. Colonisation and the assertion of Indigenous sovereignties are ultimately incommensurable, as modern Australia was built on the theft and possession of Indigenous lands, cultures and people (Moreton-Robinson, 2004, 2020a, 2020b, 2021). Due to the circumstances of British arrival and the fact that Australia continues to be a colonised land, colonisation may never be resolved. Agonistic decolonisation could nonetheless be a tool through which to understand conflict and embrace cultural differences. To bring about meaningful peace within settler-colonial settings, non-Indigenous Australians must both acknowledge Indigenous sovereignties whilst relinquishing power, allowing Indigenous peoples the freedom to practise their sovereign cultures as they see fit. Decolonising consciousness is the reflexive contemplation of one's own positionality in colonialism and the enactment of the actions needed to facilitate such decolonial shifts.
Little and Maddison (2017) observe how reconciliation is often put into practice through minimalist or maximalist methods. Maximalist reconciliation focuses on individual behaviours and involves confessional acts that aim to reach resolute outcomes whereby accountability is acknowledged, penance sought and perpetrators ultimately forgiven. This has deeply complex moral implications that often places onus on the settled/invaded population to forgive their oppressors – raising the question of whom reconciliation benefits? If forgiveness is offered, will it translate to just outcomes for Indigenous peoples, or simply absolve white guilt and maintain the status quo?
Minimalist reconciliation requires the dissection of the socio-political structures that create and maintain conflict as well as one's positionality in these structures. It encourages the confrontation and navigation of colonial spaces with the aim of provoking accountability. Unlike maximalist reconciliation – and in what may seem like a paradoxical notion – reconciliation means accepting that past conflict may never be reconciled or forgiven. Through such acceptance, new relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples may develop to ensure that whilst settler populations will remain on unceded Indigenous land, shifts that unsettle Eurocentric dominance can occur.
Reconciliation is best characterised as an ongoing process rather than a predetermined goal which, if achieved, marks a final resolution (Little & Maddison, 2017). For Schaap (2006), reconciliation processes must be critical of actions that seek political ‘consensus’, for these are often based within dominating hegemonic frameworks and are therefore in danger of maintaining the very oppressive structures that reconciliation seeks to resolve. Agonistic reconciliation means contesting the politics of recognition (Schaap, 2005) where a dominant ‘we’ seeks conciliation with a subordinate ‘them’ in an assimilationist approach. Schaap (2006, p. 272) writes: reconciliation is not about restoring a moral order but initiating a new political order. When conceived in these terms, reconciliation is not about settling accounts but remains as an unsettling experience since it seeks to enact a radical break with the social order that underpinned the violence of the past.
The continuing importance of Voice and Makarrata
In 2017, 250 delegates from Indigenous communities throughout the nation attended the First Nations National Constitutional Convention, held on the lands of the Anangu people in Uluru, Northern Territory (Appleby & Davis, 2018; Davis & Williams, 2021; Fredericks & Bradfield, 2021c; Larkin & Galloway, 2018). The convention was the final phase of an enquiry led by a 16-member Referendum Council appointed by the government in 2015 to document what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wanted from Indigenous recognition in Australia's constitution. Taking the findings of the regional dialogues into account, the delegates launched the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a pathway to political transformation (Appleby & Synot, 2020; Fredericks & Bradfield, 2021a). The statement is a short, concise and poetic one-page appeal to the Australian public calling for the implementation of three reforms that would contribute to a new phase of relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
The first reform it advocated, which was put to the Australian people in an unsuccessful referendum in October 2023, was to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament that would act as an advisory body to provide Parliament and the Executive Indigenous representations on matters pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people before they are enacted into law or policy. This would be followed by establishing a Makarrata Commission to ‘supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations’ and facilitate treaty negotiations (the second reform) and truth-telling about Australian history (the third reform). The Uluru Statement envisaged that the Makarrata Commission would operate as a non-binding tribunal to address struggles relating to colonialism and build working partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, to heal relationships (Fredericks & Bradfield, 2021b; Hobbs & Williams, 2018; Hobbs et al., 2019; Rubenstein, 2018).
The Uluru Statement from the Heart focuses on the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and sovereignties within national discourses and policies. A constitutionally enshrined Voice was originally presented as a practical mechanism that would represent Indigenous peoples in an authentic way, which would translate to socially just outcomes. An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament was presented as having the potential to facilitate political and responsive listening between the state and Indigenous communities (Appleby & Synot, 2020). It was to be a mechanism that enabled greater representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Appleby et al., 2023). Although a constitutionally enshrined Voice was ultimately rejected, the question over how the nation should recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in its political structures remains both essential and unresolved. The foundation of the Statement, inclusive of the Voice, continues. Regardless of the next steps – whether a federally legislated Voice, a means of channelling state and territory Voices into federal policy, or the pursuit of treaty and truth-telling – Indigenous peoples must be empowered with the authority to provide input and direct policies pertaining to their lives and communities.
Nakata and Bray (2023, p. 121) argued that the Voice could potentially ‘build new connective tissue’ between Indigenous peoples and the state, transforming political engagement amongst both settler and Indigenous groups. Rather than focusing on the Voice as a mechanism that would create Indigenous representation, Nakata and Bray (2023, p. 166, emphasis added) suggested that the Voice would ‘attract and focus existing Indigenous representation’ by bringing local concerns and insights to the forefront of political and social discourses. Whilst the referendum failed, the need remains for ‘new connective tissue’ that generates greater Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation and input into policy.
Whilst amplifying Indigenous standpoints was (and continues to be) an important component of the Voice, exposing the ways in which unceded Indigenous sovereignties conflict and are incommensurable with white settler governing systems is equally important. The Voice was not merely about including or accommodating Indigenous voices within Parliament, but rather was concerned with exposing how Indigenous voices are not accommodated or not included in the current system. In fact, the power of the originally proposed Voice stemmed not from its inclusion within the current parliamentary system, but rather in its independence from it. Whilst a constitutionally enshrined Voice was ultimately unsuccessful, there is a continuing need to ensure that the issues that have long remained veiled within Eurocentric structures are brought to the forefront of policymakers' minds, and that Parliament becomes accountable for the decisions they make. This is vital for the third component of the Uluru Statement from the Heart: truth-telling.
Concepts such as makarrata, a Yolngu word referring to practices of conflict settlement, and translating to ‘coming together after a struggle’ (Gaykamangu, 2012), reflects an agonist approach to conflict. Makarrata is one of the three defining pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017), which states: Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination (The Uluru Statement from the Heart, 2017: para 10).
Reconciliation ceases to be a quest for closure and a new beginning and becomes instead the disclosure of an always-already plurality, an immanent respect for difference, and a perpetual openness to further claims made both in the name of and against a community which can never quite be fully reconciled.
Coming together after and during (as colonialism is ongoing) a struggle is most effective when all parties have a mutual understanding of the context that has led to the struggle in the first place. In this case, it requires an understanding of the conditions that led to and maintained colonialism and its impact on the practice of Indigenous sovereignties and outcomes within the modern settler-colonial state. Bohle (2017) argues that reconciliation is a process of disclosure rather than closure. It is a pluralistic practice of disclosing, witnessing, remembering and forgetting that ‘expresses the hope that cooperation and disruption can together foment a space of democratic action which resists settler-colonial narratives in the name of futures to come’ (Bohle, 2017, p. 183).
During the regional dialogues, community members emphasised that truth-telling must come from local communities and be led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Appleby & Davis, 2018). Appleby and Davis (2018) observe how community representatives expressed inherent distrust of top-down government-led initiatives that too often disregarded local injustices and ‘reinforced colonial hegemonies’. Makarrata offers an approach to conflict resolution whereby local and shared histories can be collated (whilst maintaining their autonomy) in ways that flow upward, entering public discourse and consciousness.
Conclusion
Throughout this paper I have argued for the cultivation of a decolonising consciousness where the conditions of colonialism are exposed. Indigenous epistemologies and lived experiences must be brought to the forefront of the settler's mind to confront the burning truth that one's actions may be complicit in maintaining power imbalances. For decolonising to begin, the so-called ‘subaltern’ truths of Indigenous people must be recognised as equal and legitimate to those of hegemonic populations. Agonistic and pluralistic interfaces need to be established so that competing and at times incommensurable truths can coexist rather than be silenced by dominant structures and discourses. This paper has discussed the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its proposal for Voice and Makarrata as means through which such agonistic interfaces can be created.
Confronting colonialism and engaging decolonising within non-Indigenous structures that are devoid of Indigenous voices, or reflexive accountability, runs the risk of replicating the same conditions that contribute to Eurocentric epistemic coloniality and white privilege (Laurie, 2012; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013; Michaelsen & Shershow, 2007). The ongoing impacts of colonisation, therefore, must be centralised within contemporary approaches to reconciliation. Colonial violence (Fanon, 1963; Freire, 1993) has left its mark on Indigenous populations, which has contributed to and perpetuated many of the social disparities that exist in settler-colonial settings today. Exposing the conditions of coloniality and entering a state of ‘solidarity with the oppressed’ (Freire, 1993, p. 31) is a confronting prospect for settler populations: the truth burns – and a burn is a necessary part of avoiding further and irreversible harm.
Exposing the conditions of coloniality alone, however, is not enough (Mignolo, 2012), and as Tuck and Yang (2012, 2016) famously stated, ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’. Decolonising must facilitate practical mechanisms that centralise Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being, and result in greater settler accountability and reparations. Reconciliatory intent needs to be backed up and translated to practical actions and meaningful policies that respect and enact Indigenous people's autonomy and sovereignties.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart still offers an opportunity to confront colonial truths in an open, honest and receptive way, potentially entering a new phase of settler-colonial relationships. While the referendum failed, it did amplify public awareness and dialogue relating to the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the state, and Indigenous sovereignty more broadly. Furthermore, it signified the importance of engaging in agonistic dialogue that respects difference and does not result in antagonism – a practice that did not always eventuate during the referendum's campaigns.
The scar the referendum has left on the national consciousness will be a permanent reminder of the continuing burn of colonialism. Yet, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will endure as they always have, maintaining their cultures and unceded sovereignties. Regardless of the type of recognition sought (constitutional or otherwise), the fundamental principles of the Uluru Statement from the Heart – i.e. Voice, Treaty, Truth – remain necessary components for the cultivation of decolonising consciousness.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author biography
Abraham Bradfield is a non-Indigenous researcher at the University of Sydney. He is author of Aboriginal Art and Australian Racial Hegemony: Decolonising Consciousness (Routledge, 2023). His work is grounded in Anthropology, Social Sciences, and critical Indigenous Studies. Abraham applies a cross and transdisciplinary approach to his research to explore themes relating to colonisation, identity, and the intercultural. He remains committed to developing and implementing morally responsible research that challenges colonial power structures and encourages new habits of thought and praxis.