Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people maintain their cultural identities even when living in urban areas, and do not "leave them at the city limits". Some Indigenous people have ancestral connections to the lands where large cities have now been built. However, many non-Indigenous Australians see Indigenous people as only living in remote communities. This presentation discusses the connections Indigenous urban residents have to place, as well as issues like lack of cultural affirmation, misrepresentation in media, and appropriation of Indigenous culture for tourism. Places can enact feelings of inclusion or exclusion, and are sites of ongoing struggle over Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationships and ownership of place.

1. ‘We don’t leave our identities at
the city limits’: Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people
living in urban localities
Bronwyn Fredericks
Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Conference
September
2009

2. We don’t leave our
identities at a petrol station,
bus stop, jetty or airport
when we enter the city
limits.

3. Some of us even belong to the
Country where a huge cityscape or
town has been built.

4. An Australian population that generally sees Indigenous people
as ‘out there in communities’ or the ‘real Indigenous people live
on communities’.
This type of thinking makes those in urban locals like visiting
‘non-locals’ or ‘strangers’.

5. Connections to Place
•Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people may still
maintain a sense of feeling for the people and Country
“back home”.
•Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people may have
links to their traditional lands and links to other named
areas/towns/regions that have been created since
colonisation.
•Some urban residents are Traditional Owners for that
urban area just as there are Traditional Owners in other
geographic areas.
•There is the traditional, the colonial and the contemporary
connections to place.

6. Some Issues
• Lack of positive identity affirmation within
many environments and broader society.
• Problematic portrayals of
Indigenous people in the
media.
• Exotic parts of culture wanted – dancing,
painting, singing, reading stories.

7. Tourism - uses, misuses, and
appropriates us and our cultures…
Picture from a book titled Brisbane
found in many hotel rooms in the
inner city of Brisbane, logo of a shop
in Brisbane Mall that sells giftware
made in China with Aboriginal images,
and leaflet from tourist Shop in
Canberra, Australia’s capital (look at
spelling)

8. Stickers -
picked up for $2.00
in a
Discount Store…
demonstrates
the exotic and
a past era.

9. Colonial messages are re-enforced over and over again,
sometimes covertly and sometimes overtly.
If we are not included, then we are reflected in our
absence.
Places can enact feelings of welcome, belonging and
inclusion or feelings of being unwelcome and excluded.
Places and spaces are not neutral, non-racialised and
depoliticised arenas in which people live, work and act.

10. Simple everyday activities are part of the
process of appropriation and territorialisation
(de Gerteau, 1984).
Based on the work of de Gerteau (1984), non-
Indigenous people have developed an
attachment and belonging to places based on
dispossession of Aboriginal people and the
everyday practices of the past two hundred
years.
Places have become sites of struggle, where
there can exist complex political realities of
Indigenous /non-Indigenous relationships.

11. While the processes of
colonisation have
dispossessed
Aboriginal peoples and
may have altered
Indigenous
connection, access
and control of place, it
does not alter the
reality of Indigenous
place and Indigenous
ownership of place.
Pamela Croft. 1990. The Brisbane River.

12. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have tried to
make their mark and claim spaces and places in urban
locations. In some areas it is more visible than in other
areas. Urban content can be seen in a range of
mediums.
South Brisbane
Pamela Croft (1990) Living in the City
Fitzroy, Melbourne, Victoria

14. Indigenous engagement with some sites is
mediated and sometimes includes forms of
surveillance and cultural guardianship by those
who have assumed ownership.
Most urban places are linked to white notions of
Australian identity and citizenship which also
includes control of who has citizenship and who
doesn’t. Thus, this is in part how we are seen as
‘non-locals’ and ‘strangers’.

15. Future
• New ways of working with Indigenous peoples in different
contexts and different environments. Need to working from
the basis that places and environments are not innocent
nor neutral, they can work to marginalise and oppress or to
include and engage.
• Need work done on issues - naming issues, the analytical
and conceptual and not just the statistics of where we live.
• Move away from “benevolence” and “goodwill” which
masks the power differentials (Hage 1998) and denies the
truth of Indigenous poverty and dispossession and non-
Indigenous privilege.
• More of the same?

16. Thank you
&
Questions