Cloning acceptable indigeneities: Debbie Bargallie, ‘Producing the “good Indigenous employee”: cultural cloning and the reproduction of sameness in the Australian workplace, Ethnic and Racial studies, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Cloning acceptable indigeneities: Debbie Bargallie, ‘Producing the “good Indigenous employee”: cultural cloning and the reproduction of sameness in the Australian workplace, Ethnic and Racial studies, 2026

13Apr26

Abstract: Australian workplaces, particularly the Australian Public Service (APS), reproduce institutional whiteness through the cultural cloning of Indigenous employees. While Indigenous underrepresentation is widely acknowledged, less attention is paid to the regulatory terms under which inclusion operates. Drawing on Philomena Essed’s concept of cultural cloning and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s theorisation of the “good Indigenous citizen”, this paper theorises the figure of the “good Indigenous employee” as produced through institutional practices that reward compliance and proximity to whiteness while suppressing critique. Based on qualitative interviews with Indigenous APS employees, a four-part conceptual framework is developed – cloning at the gate, cloning within, cloning upward, and de-cloning as refusal – to map how Indigenous employees are recruited, contained, promoted, or excluded according to their alignment with dominant institutional expectations. Refusal is foregrounded as sovereign resistance that disrupts what Charles W. Mills terms the racial contract structuring recognition, legitimacy, and conditional inclusion within Australian workplaces.

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