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Remaking imperial power in the city: the case of the William Barak building, Melbourne

journal contribution
posted on 2019-12-01, 00:00 authored by L Porter, S Jackson, Louise JohnsonLouise Johnson
When the enormous drapes that had been covering a new building in central Melbourne were thrown off in early 2015, an extraordinary sight was revealed: a colossal image of a face staring down the city’s civic spine. This moment of unveiling marked a fascinating moment for Indigenous–settler relations in Australia, but especially urban, densely settled Melbourne. For the face is that of William Barak, ancestor and leader of the Wurundjeri people, whose country was stolen and remade into what we now know as Melbourne. That an early land rights champion is represented in the built form at such a pivotal location in the city that dispossessed his people offers an opportunity to consider the forms of violence, appropriation and misrepresentation that are perpetually constitutive of settler-colonial cities. Drawing together critical Indigenous scholarship, settler-colonial studies and geographies of memorialization, the paper analyses the building to demonstrate the contemporary workings of settler-colonial urbanization. The paper analyses the representational politics the building performs, the history of land sales since contact and the role of the site in a wider imperialist planning project to reveal the intimate nexus of land, property and recognition politics that work to continuously secure white possession of Indigenous lands.

History

Journal

Environment and planning D: society and space

Volume

37

Issue

6

Pagination

1119 - 1137

Publisher

Sage

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

0263-7758

eISSN

1472-3433

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2019, Sage

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