Roundtable: Abolition and Colonisation

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract/Description

The violence inception of settler colonisation went hand in hand with the imposition of the carceral system on First Nations lands. Prisons operate to confine, control and dispossess First Peoples. Techniques of the settler colonial imprisonment are variegated. They include segregation on missions and reserves; intensive policing and surveillance of First Nations people on the streets; and confinement in police lockups, youth detention and adult prisons. This round table will consider how the challenge to the prison system is a necessary aspect of decolonisation. It will consider various cites of decolonial abolition:

1. Abolition of the open air settler colonial prison across First Nations land (colonial structures of oppression, omnipresent surveillance, racial violence)
2. Abolition of child protection prisons
3. Abolition of penal prisons
4. Abolition of settler tenure/sovereignty, and instead Aboriginal land rights/sovereignty as a vehicle for freedom.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Chairs

• Thalia Anthony, University of Technology Sydney

• Ami E. Stearns, Coastal Carolina University

Discussants

• Chris Cunneen, University of Technology Sydney

• Ethan Blue, University of Western Australia

• Elena Marchetti, Griffith University

Organized by a Division or external group?

Abolition Working Group