why anti-colonialism?

The genocide of the First Nations people of this land never ended. It is ongoing.

This is part of a global pattern of dispossession—of colonialism – and one of the systems at play at the heart of climate injustice. The extractivism on other lands and exploitation of people that colonialism maintains itself off of is fundamentally incompatible with self-determination, so is enacted through colonial subjugation.

Violence.

Part of it is the imposition of the prison system. Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people on earth. In fact, I’ve heard the same/similar stories from reputable sources a few times now; of an Indigenous person committing a crime just so they could join the rest of their family in prison. In light of the fact 45.6% of people are return to prison within two years, we’re looking at a systemic, sustained removal from family, community and culture, playing a direct part in cultural genocide. Not to mention imprisonment is often a death sentence for Aboriginal people. Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1991, a further 495 people have died in prison, with rates on the rise. And this entrapment into the system can start so young—at the age of 10 to be exact—the age of criminal responsibility in this country, which legal experts say is far too young. In the NT all children in detention are Aboriginal.

The Stolen Generations is not a thing of the past. Since Kevin Rudd said “sorry”, Aboriginal child removals have gone up by 500%. You’re not only seeing the removal of children from their parents or guardians, but again, an intentional severing from their entire community – their culture – in favor of assimilation into white families by the NSW Department of Family & Community Services (FACS). About 50% of the land in the NT is recognized as Aboriginal land. It’s not a coincidence that the government’s sounded a false alarm around pedophilia in Aboriginal communities then implemented the NT Intervention, which has seen an increase in child removals, youth suicide and self-harm, while over 50% of the NT has recently been opened up to fracking.

Shifting the focus to the effects climate change, the cocentration of intensive weather events and sea-level rise, particularly along the equator, are disproportionately felt by Indigenous people, as well as people of the Global South more broadly, with long histories of anti-colonial struggles, who contribute the least to pollution. While the draught here is exacerbated by climate change, it’s because the government has sold off billions of litres of water to cotton farmers that towns in rural NSW—mostly comprised of Aboriginal people – have been left without drinking water. The bushfires have drawn attention to a more recent problem – the cashless debit card ‘apartheid’. What this meant in Canberra, for over 100 people living under compulsory income management at this time, all Aboriginal, that 80% of their welfare payments were locked into the card and inaccessible due to a power outage while bushfires raged around them.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more, like how nuclear waste is being dumped right next to an Aboriginal community in Brewarrina. Environmental destruction is inseparable from its colonial roots—anti-colonialism in environmental and activist spaces is a necessity.

Alev Saracoglu USyd Enviro Officer 2019

Collage by Vivienne Guo