White Australia, Black Bodies: the use of Aboriginal bodies and artefacts in Australian public discourses

Indigenous bodies, artefacts and material cultures have largely been represented in the public sphere in ways that reflect and reinforce colonialist understandings of Aboriginality. This essay examines how discourses which position European whiteness in a place of primacy in direct contrast with an Indigenous ‘other’ continue to prevail in the contexts of museums, the art world and the tourism industry. Keywordsthe colonial gaze; othering; politics of representation