Reconciliation in heterotopias, as elsewhere seems impossible: Lia Kenta, Geoffrey Langford, ‘Possibilities for reconciliation in heterotopic spaces of Australian frontier massacre’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31, 5, 2025, pp. 632-650 | settler colonial studies blog

Reconciliation in heterotopias, as elsewhere seems impossible: Lia Kenta, Geoffrey Langford, ‘Possibilities for reconciliation in heterotopic spaces of Australian frontier massacre’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31, 5, 2025, pp. 632-650

22Jul25

Abstract: There is an emerging narrative of Australian frontier massacre places as sites where truth-telling about past injustices might foster reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Yet this narrative obscures a more complex story of the ongoing violence of settler-colonialism. This article focuses on the Minnamurra River massacre place in New South Wales, where ongoing sand mining by the Boral construction company is actively destroying Indigenous lands. We ask: where do possibilities for healing and reconciliation lie in this place? We draw on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to explore Minnamurra as a complex landscape of multiple, dynamic social spaces, examining the different forms of power that infuse and circulate in these spaces and searching for the seeds of reconciliation in the emergent relationships between Aboriginal survivor-descendants and environmentalists. This case study invites more complex and less western-centric understandings of what reconciliation might mean in the context of Australian frontier violence.

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