Decolonizing conservation? Australian government discourses on the indigenous protected areas program 2000–2023

Indigenous nature conservation programs are lauded as a step towards decolonizing nature. Created in 1997, Australia's Indigenous Protected Areas program has produced the world's largest Indigenous conservation estate. Yet little research has critically explored exactly how the program aligns the interests of Indigenous peoples with the settler colonial state and nature conservation actors. We address that gap here by using a Foucauldian discourse analysis of power relations and related priorities by reference to seven federal government Indigenous Protected Areas program factsheets published from 2000 to 2023. Our analysis identifies three subject positions in this discourse: the enabling and financially responsible post-colonial state; the tax-paying non-Indigenous stakeholder; and the contributing and self-determining Indigenous citizen. These positions highlight the complexity of the program, and the constraints imposed on it by ongoing legacies of colonialism. We document how dominant political-economic and settler colonial interests work through scientific knowledge and institutional arrangements to seek to advance Indigenous self-determination while decentering Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing, being and doing. Our findings underscore the need to make visible and questionable the power relations that operate in settler colonial programs claiming to empower Indigenous peoples. Doing so is vital to conserve Country and honour Indigenous peoples in ways that truly advance decolonization.