Capricornia

2 ideas

1. Norman Shillingsworth's shifting racial classification

   Norman is fathered by white settler Mark Shillingsworth on an Aboriginal woman, abandoned, and first known as 'Nawnim' (no-name). He is raised by his uncle Oscar on the Red Ochre cattle station, educated in the south, and told his mother was a Javanese princess to cover his Aboriginal descent. On returning north he finds that law and settler society treat him by the 'half-caste' category, not by his upbringing, property or education, and his standing collapses whenever that category is invoked, including when he is tried for murder.

2. Protection regimes manage a problem their authors create

   The white men who father mixed-race children deny paternity and escape consequences. The state then treats the children as a problem to be classified, removed and confined. Herbert argues that this 'protection' apparatus launders settler sexual exploitation into an administrative duty, so the harm is repeated rather than acknowledged.

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