Criminology, Genocide and the Forced Removal of Indigenous Children from their Families

Abstract

This article argues that understanding the nature of genocide in its various manifestations goes to the core of developing a ‘postcolonial’ criminology. Ultimately, the fact of genocide involves a re-theorising of the ‘colonial question’ in criminology. It involves a shift in the focus from Indigenous people as the object of inquiry usually as offenders, to the survivors of systematic crimes against humanity. Certainly in the Australian context, the greatest crime that has been committed on the continent since European conquest was genocide. Genocide also demands a rethinking of the criminalization process, particularly in relation to ‘crimes of the state’. How can the state be held responsible? What form can responsibility take, and what type of reparations are commensurate with the nature of the offence? Genocide against Indigenous peoples also inevitably leads us to the issue of preventing human rights abuses and respecting the existing and emerging rights of Indigenous peoples. The cultural and physical survival of Indigenous peoples is ultimately dependent on self-determination. Again this poses quite specific questions for criminological theory and practice. How do we theorise the interrelationships between Indigenous modes of governance and law, with imposed extraneous models, and what are the policy implications of those interrelationships? The questions that are raised imply a very different approach to one which continually sees Indigenous people as a function of offending, imprisonment and so forth.