Political Representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Youth in Australia

Abstract

Political representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youth reflect the deep ambivalences Australian society continues to hold toward First Nations people. This chapter explores these ambivalences by considering two key representative fields concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in recent years, which serve to illustrate our thesis that children play a constitutive role as temporary outsiders who present both risk and renewal to the demos (Bray & Nakata, The Figure of the Child in Democratic Politics. Contemporary Political Theory, 19, 20. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-019-00319-x, 2020). The first focuses on the Northern Territory Don Dale Youth Detention Centre that became the site of political controversy in 2016 for its mistreatment of youth detainees. The second explores a 2020 campaign by the conservative Liberal National Party in a recent Queensland state election to implement a youth curfew in the cities of Townsville and Cairns, that have a high number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents. As evidenced by these debates about youth crime and incarceration, we argue that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are often represented as a source of risk which lies in tension with and forecloses the transformative potential of representing Indigenous children as sources of renewal. These cases reveal the representative terrain in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people must resist and speak back to a white national imaginary that works to limit the possible futures that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples imagine for themselves.