Settlers are typically guilty and uncaring (non-innocent care may help): Lisa Slater, ‘Learning to Stand with Gyack: A Practice of Thinking with Non-Innocent Care’, Australian Feminist Studies, 2021 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers are typically guilty and uncaring (non-innocent care may help): Lisa Slater, ‘Learning to Stand with Gyack: A Practice of Thinking with Non-Innocent Care’, Australian Feminist Studies, 2021

05Nov21

Abstract: Settler colonialism attempts to make invisible the labours of care that Indigenous peoples have been doing for millennia. Notably, the imposition of settler colonial ontologies-epistemologies disrupt and compromise Indigenous people’s obligations to land and ancestors. Kim Tallbear calls upon settler scholars to think more expansively about what counts as the benefits and risks of research. She asks settler scholars to learn to ‘stand with’ a community and be willing to be altered and revise one’s stake in knowledge production. What does my feminist ethics of care, which strives to unsettle my settler colonial logic of knowledge production, look like? To respond, I will reflect upon a collaborative cultural revitalisation project with Wolgalu and Wiradjuri First Nations community in Brungle-Tumut (New South Wales, Australia). The social world I am imbedded in is different from that of Wolgalu/Wiradjuri colleagues. How is meaning negotiated in the encounter between settler colonial and Aboriginal practices of care and knowledge production? It’s a methodological conundrum, which requires thinking with care. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa conceptualises thinking with care as a thick, non-innocent obligation of living in interdependent worlds. I want to practice non-innocent care.

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