The settler’s care: Liz Scarfe, ‘Erasing trauma – Erasing indigeneity: How the settler colonial state erased Warlpiri trauma in the wake of the police shooting Kumanjayi Walker’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

The settler’s care: Liz Scarfe, ‘Erasing trauma – Erasing indigeneity: How the settler colonial state erased Warlpiri trauma in the wake of the police shooting Kumanjayi Walker’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2022

14Jul22

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the rhetoric and discharge of state mental health care provisions in the wake of the police shooting of Kumunjayi Walker reflect the logic of elimination that underpins settler-colonial societies. Firstly, the use of emotional politics and the diplomacy of sympathy transform the police shooting of an Aboriginal man into a simple loss of life. Secondly, the deployment of psychological services to the community specifically and only for secondary trauma victims not only erased Warlpiri trauma and foregrounded nonIndigenous trauma, it also positioned Warlpiri people as the cause of non-Indigenous trauma. Lastly, I explore how narratives in the mental health care sector regarding the state response simultaneously critique and reproduce settler-colonial elimination. As an arm of the settler-colonial state, the sector cannot help but be complicit in the ongoing elimination of indigeneity and is not exceptional as a sector in this way. Settler-colonial attempts at care are inherently characterised by this conflict of interest, which, if there is any way to resolve it, requires a depth of critical reflection beyond politically progressive narratives.

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