Australian racial capitalism, Indigenous exploitation and the racial regime of recognition and reconciliation

In 2023, 60.6 per cent of Australian voters defeated the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum. The disinformation campaign against the “Voice” deployed longstanding myths about Indigenous people claiming rights and benefits above the settler population. Countering this, Voice proponents sought to instil calm by insisting that Indigenous people would not be able to demand restitution of land. This masked the fact that Australian colonialism is founded upon Indigenous dispossession, and a history of Indigenous slavery and ongoing labour exploitation almost entirely obliterated from public discourse. Building on Debbie Bargallie’s research on racism against Indigenous workers, our paper uses the framework of racial capitalism to examine how the negation of Indigenous labour exploitation past and present is maintained by a racial regime. The regime posits Indigenous recognition and reconciliation as routes out of disadvantage, thus obscuring the history and present of Australian racial capitalism.