On genocide and settler-colonial violence: Australia in comparative perspective

The use of the term 'genocide' as a model for explaining frontier violence has generated varying degrees of scholarly debate and public interest among former British colonial settler societies as they attempt to come to grips with the heritage of their colonial pasts. The political and moral stakes at play are important, for at the core of the debates there often lie questions of national identity. In some former colonial societies, such as Australia, sections of the public, however small, have entered the debate, including ·politicians and journalists, not to mention spokespeople of the Indigenous communities who were the past victims of colonial settler societies (and in some ways continue to be). Almost everywhere though, the debates have become polarized between Whiggish views of settler colonialism that see it as an essentially positive, civilizing process, and those who point to the displacement of Indigenous peoples, their death and often their disappearance. The term 'genocide' is used by some scholars of the colonial frontier, but is rejected by others. The purpose of this chapter is not to discuss whether genocide occurred in settler-colonial societies, nor is it to engage in debates about causation and intent. Rather, our purpose is to place the Australian debates around genocide and settler-colonial society in a larger context by comparing them with other, similar settler societies, such as South Africa, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. In doing so, we want to examine the ways in which genocide discourse has been used to make sense of the traumatic pasts in these regions of the world, and how the debates have become part of the discussions about national identity.

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