Description
This paper starts from Indigenous people’s charges of genocide against the mining industry for the destruction of their lands and the basis of their existence as peoples. From this standpoint, it asks, if settler colonialism (in so-called Australia) is characterised by the logic of elimination and, arguably, by genocide, and mining is causing genocide (as asserted by Indigenous activists), is there a more substantive relationship between mining and settler colonialism than heretofore acknowledged? (How) does mining work to further the settler colonial project? I address these questions by building on the argument I make elsewhere that mining results in permanent damage to land (obscured and enabled by discourses of mine rehabilitation). I argue that the mining-induced breaking of the land does work for the settler colony: mining furthers the settler colonial elimination of Indigenous socionatures, via cultural genocide, and assists in the reproduction of settler society by materialising colonial environmental imaginaries and creating settler attachments to place. Even if mining companies get up and leave, mines come to stay, in the sense that the damage to land remains. This constitutes, I argue, a settler colonial acquisition of territory. I also reflect of why existing theorisations of settler colonialism have overlooked, or perhaps even hindered recognition of, mining’s contribution to the (Australian) settler colonial project.
