Riotous or Righteous Behaviour? Representations of Subaltern Resistance in the Australian Mainstream Media

Colonialism and Conservation

“…The fact that the mission/reserve on K'gari had terrible rates of sickness and mortality did not stop it from becoming a prototype for another more longrunning island 'penal settlement' (Scott 1970) People from up to 57 different language groups from all over Queensland were forced to live there in appalling, overcrowded conditions. They were prohibited from speaking their languages and from conducting ceremony (Porter 2015;McQuire 2018). People had to work: 'Even if you're just limping along.…”

“…People had to work: 'Even if you're just limping along. Old men … They were bloody slaves those poor old men' (Bill Congoo quoted in Watson 2010), and their wages were held by the government (Porter 2015). In 1974 Amnesty International described Palm Island as 'little more than a concentration camp' (quoted in Watson, 2010, p. 128).…”

“…'He "had fallen on concrete" while in police custody' (Lucashenko 2006). Mainstream press coverage of the Bwgcolman people's ensuing outrage about police brutality was, as Amanda Porter writes, sensationalist and served to justify the heavy handed police response that followed (Porter 2015). Six helicopters were sent to the island with white police in riot gear.…”

Indigenous People, Resistance and Racialised Criminality

“…In an important analysis of media representation of Indigenous people in Australia, Porter (2015) has contrasted the way mainstream media in Australia portrayed the riots on Palm Island after the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee with the portrayal of the riots in Ferguson, Missouri after the police shooting of Michael Brown: a contrast in portrayal between riotous (Palm Island) and righteous (Ferguson) behavior. As Porter (2015: 294) notes the disturbances in Ferguson are contextualised within a framework of civil disobedience, political demonstrations and the civil rights movement, while the event is placed more generally within the US history of Jim Crow and institutional racism.…”

Contested Deaths and Coronial Justice in the Digital Age

“…However, this has not signalled an end to racist portrayals, which, as observed by Chris Cunneen, have not abated but flourished with the growth of social media (2018: 295). Amanda Porter has noted that, despite continuing Indigenous resistance to police brutality in Australia (as evident in national actions), the mainstream media resort to moral panics about this resistance rather than tackling racial politics and the profoundly unsettling, ongoing matter of Indigenous deaths in custody (Porter 2015).…”