Capturing Crime in the Antipodes: Colonist Cultural Representation of Indigeneity

Abstract

Narratives of colonialism in exhibitions and displays have, from inception, reflected largely Westernized, Northern and metropolitan perspectives. During the latter twentieth century, with greater social awareness of the state violence involved with dispossession, museums have sought to recognize and redress past injustices and acknowledged the ongoing impacts of invasion, in which the criminal justice system has been unreservedly involved. However, this has occurred alongside denials of (and distancing from) the relationship between government policies and practices and Indigenous trauma, disadvantage and overrepresentation in prison populations. Such perceptions are premised on colonialism being characterized as a past practice affecting 'traditional' people rather than an ongoing repercussion of colonization and state practices implemented throughout Australia's nationalization process. These paradigms of Indigeneity are reliant on particular notions of colonialism, where it is characterized as a past practice affecting 'traditional' people. Typically, the longevity and legacies of invasion are not acknowledged in regard to those deemed to be 'nontraditional'; a grouping that incorporates the majority of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the contemporary setting. Such categorizations are premised on the false assumption that culture is static and homogenous, and are reliant upon non-Indigenous impressions of the 'other' at first encounter.