Neoliberal Indigenous Policy

Elizabeth Strakosch is Lecturer in Public Policy and Politics at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research focuses on the intersection of policy and political relationships, and explores the ways that new public policies and administration techniques transform our political identities in liberal and settler colonial contexts.

• 1. Introduction2. Neoliberal Colonialism3. Analysing Neoliberalism and Settler Colonialism4. Policy: Assuming Sovereignty5. Australian Indigenous Policy 2000-20076. Redefining the 'Aboriginal Problem'7. Building Capacity8. Authoritarian Paternalism9. Conclusion

"Reading Elizabeth Strakosch's incisive account of the procedural mechanisms whereby neoliberal settler colonialism seeks to reduce the politics of conquest to a welfare issue reminds me of second-wave feminism's transformative insistence that the personal is political. Lucidly, methodically and with great intelligence, Strakosch shows how, in the twenty-first century, the technical has become political, as she uncovers the technocratic ruses whereby Australian governments have sought to convert the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty into a depoliticised managerial agenda, the preserve of service delivery rather than international relations. The implications of this astute analysis are immediate and profound". - Patrick Wolfe, La Trobe University, Australia.