Indigenous and Settler Understandings for Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Australia: The Significance of a Decolonial Approach

Introduction

Social movements such as #MeToo have led to unprecedented public interest in, and concern about, gender justice issues in Australia (and globally). An outpouring of women’s and girls’ accounts of gender-based violence through social and traditional media has led to greater government and community resourcing of preventative measures to address this violence. It remains that an average of one woman per 10 days is killed by her intimate partner or ex-partner (AIC NHMP 2022). Amid this interest and scrutiny, there has been particular concern expressed about the over-representation of Indigenous ¹ Australian women in family violence statistics. While reports vary, conservative estimates indicate that Indigenous women are around three times more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women and they are 32 times more likely to be hospitalised from their experience of family violence-related assaults than non-Indigenous women (OurWatch 2018a).

Addressing the gendered dimensions of family violence remains a key focus in the primary prevention of violence against women and children (PVAW) in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian communities (Our Watch, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), and VicHealth 2015; 2018a). What is seen as more important for Indigenous communities in PVAW is addressing the legacies and ongoing impacts of colonisation on Indigenous people, families, and communities (OurWatch 2018b; Healing Foundation et al. 2017). Violence within Indigenous communities and, particularly violence perpetrated by men, is recognised as a product of colonisation and racism (as well as gender inequality).

This focus on decolonisation deviates from “settler” PVAW programs (defined here broadly as programs developed from a Western/Anglo perspective) in Australia which predominantly focus on challenging hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy (Our Watch, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), and VicHealth 2015; Healing Foundation et al. 2017). Unlike Indigenous programs, settler programs do not tend to critique the “logic of coloniality” of western ways of thinking and knowing about gender-based violence (Blagg et al. 2018, 61). In this paper, I consider the importance of critiquing this logic in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous PVAW programs through examining the links between hegemonic masculinity and colonisation. I argue that the processes of colonisation are inherently violent and corrosive (albeit in very different ways) to the social and emotional wellbeing and relationships of Indigenous and non-Indigenous men. The paper draws attention to the importance of a decolonising approach for Indigenous and non-Indigenous programs seeking to address gender-based violence.

The paper is a think piece that considers key national PVAW research and policy in Australia. It takes a comparative focus to examining the priorities and action areas of Indigenous-focused approaches and settler approaches to understanding and addressing gender-based violence (defined broadly here as violence against women). This comparison considers how settler approaches might be enhanced by Indigenous ways of thinking, knowing and being. It provides a strong argument for a decolonial approach to PVAW in examining the links between colonisation and VAW and in highlighting (and seeking to transform) the deleterious impacts of colonisation on Indigenous and non-Indigenous men. In making this argument, I acknowledge that decolonisation aims to recover and give testimony to Indigenous struggles and injustices and make transparent and enable a challenging of the oppressions produced through a privileging of non-Indigenous (read settler or Western/Anglo) perspectives and cultures (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012; Moreton-Robinson 2021; Malin and Maidment 2003; Nakata 2007; Hingangaroa Smith 2003). It is an approach that seeks to reconcile “what is really important about the past with what is important about the present for Indigenous communities” (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012, 40). Such processes enable a “rewriting and re-righting” of Indigenous identities and histories (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012, 28; Moreton-Robinson 2021).

Applying this logic to non-Indigenous PVAW approaches is contentious. Decolonising processes are premised on Indigenous people telling and writing their own stories, in their own ways, for their own purposes and, as such, there is a necessary rejection of non-Indigenous vantage points (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012; Moreton-Robinson 2021). The danger of applying the logic of decolonisation from a Western/Anglo vantage point lies in the potential of further essentialising, objectifying and marginalising Indigenous knowledge and culture and/or appropriating Indigenous knowledge and culture for Western purposes (Tuck and Yang 2012). In this paper, I seek to reconcile and work through these contentions by drawing on Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) scholarship to consider how the “logic of coloniality” shaping settler approaches to gender-based violence might be reconsidered (Blagg et al. 2018, 61). This process is not about essentialising or appropriating Indigenous knowledge but about highlighting the destructive impacts of colonisation within and beyond the lives of non-Indigenous men. These destructive impacts are evident in the gendered processes of colonisation through men’s force, i.e. conquest and settlement (that massively disrupted Indigenous gender orders), through the subsequent establishment of stratifications around gendered divisions of labour and hierarchies of masculinities (defined around race and social class) and through the global institutionalising of neoliberal capitalism (which reorientated masculinities on a massive scale) (Connell, 2000). These colonising processes are associated with non-Indigenous men’s gendered violence. As such their critique should be central to settler approaches to PVAW—i.e., settler approaches to PVAW should examine and seek to transform the destructive impacts of colonial masculinities.

I write this paper self-consciously as an Anglo-Australian feminist academic. My research in the space of education has focused on issues of gender and masculinity with a concern about how schools might better address gendered violence. I was inspired to write this paper through my involvement in a research project that includes a community-based program for Indigenous boys and men. The Indigenous-led program is offered by an organisation whose overarching goal is to build stronger Aboriginal families and communities (see Keddie et al. 2021). The insights generously offered through my interviews with two of the facilitators of this program led me to delve deeper into the masculinities and PVAW research and policy that scaffold this paper. I gratefully acknowledge these insights.

Understanding Gender-Based Violence: Indigenous Australian Men

As already noted, it is generally acknowledged that requisite to understanding gender-based violence within Indigenous communities is an understanding of how the processes of colonisation and racism intersect to compound this violence. Thus, it is imperative to situate this violence within the broader context of colonial violence—for example, Indigenous communities continue to experience and inherit grief and trauma from state sanctioned policies of forced separation and assimilation (e.g., the Stolen Generations ² ), dispossession (e.g., the loss of traditional land) and cultural violence and imperialism (e.g., the destruction and loss of traditional languages and culture including loss of traditional Aboriginal roles and status, law and community norms) as well as ongoing racism and discrimination (Atkinson 2002; Bulman and Hayes 2011; Day et al. 2012; Healing Foundation et al. 2017). Many Indigenous men have experienced disrupted family lives; been surrounded by anger and violence within institutions, families, and communities; been witness to and experienced drug and alcohol abuse as a means of coping with life; engaged in violence as a form of self-harm; and are subject to systemic discrimination and racism in their daily lives (Atkinson 2002; Day et al. 2012; Healing Foundation, et al. 2017).

Colonising and racist processes have destructively impacted on the role, identity, and wellbeing of Indigenous men. As Day et al. (2012) argue, many Indigenous men feel powerlessness in relation to the majority culture—evident in a sense of loss of identity within changing economic, familial and community roles; relationship breakdowns; high incarceration rates; mental health issues; unemployment and low wages (Cripps and Davis 2012). These factors undermine the capacity of Indigenous men to meaningfully support their families and kin (Bulman and Hayes 2011; Healing Foundation et al. 2017; Tengan 2008). Addressing the harmful impacts of colonisation is thus central in programs of violence prevention with Indigenous boys and men.

Cripps and Adams (2014, 404) argue that “the indiscriminate and uncontrolled violence taking place in [Indigenous] communities against our loved ones was never part of [Aboriginal] culture or practiced within the family context” (see also Ridgeway in Curthoys 2020). In pre-contact societies (according to Indigenous research in Canada and North America) current levels of gendered violence in Indigenous communities did not exist because gender relations were based on equity and balance. While roles and tasks for labour and kinship relations were gendered, these roles and tasks were not valued differently (Anderson, Innes, and Swift 2012; Antone 2015; Morgensen 2015). Anderson, Innes, and Swift (2012, 267–268) further state:

Male dominance in the areas of governance, social relations, economics, and spiritual practices were introduced by settler society as a way of breaking down Indigenous families and communities … Western patriarchy was used to dismantle traditional kinship systems and introduce a gendered order of violence.

Heteropatriarchy was central to this gendered order of violence (see Hokowhitu 2015) and was reinforced within Indigenous communities through western religious teachings about gender, sexuality, and morality, as Morgensen argues (2015, 42):

…at the time of contact with Europeans, Indigenous peoples of the Americas shared in not having instituted something then emerging in Europe: total religious or scientific judgment of all non-binary gender and same-sex sexuality as immoral and unnatural. These are among the differences that set up manhood as a site of conflict within European efforts to assert control over Indigenous peoples.

The imposing of heteropatriarchal rule via economic, political, and religious means supported a gendered order of violence. The racist and heteropatriarchal values and practices of colonisation were particularly harmful for Indigenous women. Australian Indigenous women scholars have written extensively about the ways in which Indigenous women’s sexuality continues to be constructed in opposition to white women’s sexuality within these values and practices. These discourses position Indigenous women’s bodies as exotic, primitive, and thus naturally predisposed to promiscuity—such objectification and devaluing has increased, and worked to excuse, gender and sexual violence against Indigenous women (see Moreton-Robinson 2021).

Day et al. (2012) draw attention to the feelings of anger experienced by many Indigenous men. Research with Indigenous men conducted by (Day et al. 2008) identify four main triggers to this anger that lead to violence: anger at their own situation; anger at family and others; anger at historical treatment; and anger at perceived injustice. The impacts of intergenerational trauma borne of colonising processes frame the backdrop of these triggers. Intergenerational or multigenerational trauma is transferred from one generation to the next with compounding and complex flow down effects (Healing Foundation et al. 2017). An example of this is the “significant burden of loss and bereavement” that Indigenous people can carry from an early age and their experience of ongoing and chronically high levels of stress (OurWatch 2018b, 52; Atkinson 2002). The impacts of intergenerational trauma are complex, layered and cumulative and include both an internalising of oppression where pain is expressed through self-harm and an externalising where pain is expressed through violence against others (Atkinson 2002).

A key issue here is that there is no legitimate or safe outlet for Indigenous men (and women) to express their feelings of anger “passed on to each generation on the basis of collective memories and experiences” of trauma (Day et al. 2012, 108; Atkinson 2002). The anger often remains hidden, unacknowledged, or unexpressed which is corrosive to social and emotional wellbeing and relationships especially as it is compounded by the stressors noted earlier (Wanganeen 2008; Atkinson 2002). Wanganeen (2008 in Day et al. 2012, 108–109) explains that this anger can lead to violence towards family members:

It is a short step from there to violence as an outlet for frustration and internalised or unprocessed pain and may be directed at family members and kin because these are the persons with whom the greatest share of time—and day-to-day frustrations—is spent.

This violence has been termed “lateral violence” (Cripps and Adams 2014, 401) which describes “the way people in positions of powerlessness, covertly or overtly direct their dissatisfaction inward toward each other, toward themselves, and toward those less powerful than themselves.”

Addressing Gender-Based Violence Within Australian Indigenous Communities

The PVAW (Preventing Violence Against Women) field in Australia has increasingly recognised the significance of addressing the ongoing destructive impacts of colonisation and racism on the identity, wellbeing, and relationships of Indigenous men (see OurWatch 2018a). This focus is understood as key to addressing gender-based violence in Indigenous communities. There is recognition that programs and services should be created and led by and for Indigenous communities and be grounded in holistic and culturally sensitive recovery where communities and individuals are empowered to take control of their own healing (Cripps and Davis 2012; Healing Foundation et al. 2017; OurWatch 2018a). This empowerment is crucial given that healing from trauma is a process that is unique to each individual—trauma, loss and grief are experienced and felt in different ways. Important to this healing is a recognition of these different experiences and feelings of trauma. Cripps and Adams (2014, 409) argue here that men need to:

…examine their own experiences of being hurt before then examining what it is to be doing the hurting … as part of the healing journey [men need] to feel the emotions as they begin to get to know themselves, where they have come from and begin to envisage how they would like their futures to be.

This process can occur through “focused work on identity, responsibilities and relationships to enable men to make better choices for themselves and their families that break the cycle of violence” (Cripps and Adams 2014, 409). In relation to gender-based violence and gender inequality, an important focus here would be supporting Indigenous men to consider “how and why patriarchy was introduced to [Indigenous] communities, how it has contributed to violence and social dysfunction among [Indigenous] peoples [and] looking to [Indigenous] traditional cultures to dig up what we can about healthy Indigenous masculinities” (Anderson, Innes, and Swift 2012, 267). Anderson, Innes, and Swift (2012) refer here to the different ways in which responsibilities such as “protection” and “provision” are understood within pre-contact and post-contact societies. They argue that healthy Indigenous masculinities (drawing on pre-contact traditions) would mobilise these responsibilities in “non-patriarchal ways” through nurture and mentoring within kinship relations that are balanced and equitable.

While the religious and spiritual beliefs within Australian Indigenous communities are complex, multi-faceted and shifting, what remains strong (and recognised as significant within the Indigenous PVAW space, OurWatch 2018a; Healing Foundation et al. 2017) are efforts to re-connect with and re-value the culture and spirituality of radical re-connectivity (Dudgeon and Bray 2017) white-washed through colonisation. Yunkaporta and Shillingworth (2020, 2) describe this connectivity as a “‘relational process’ that is at the heart of being—in Aboriginal worldviews an entity cannot exist unless it is in relation to something else, and so our ontology (way of being) is a process of relating to the world.” This is about appreciating that all matter (things and beings) contains knowledge, story, and pattern. “In this way of knowing, there is no difference between you, a stone, a tree or a traffic light” (Yunkaporta 2019, 29).

Tyson Yunkaporta’s book Sand Talk (2019) brings these ways of thinking and being to life through stories. He notes, for example, that “explaining Aboriginal notions of time” in English is “an exercise in futility as you can only describe it as ‘non-linear,’” which labels these notions as what they are not, rather than what they are, as he explains (2019, 19):

We don’t have a word for non-linear in our languages because nobody would consider travelling, thinking or talking in a straight line in the first place. The winding path is just how a path is and therefore needs no name … [our] stories tell us how we must travel and think in free-ranging ways.

Another story Yunkaporta (2019, 30) shares in this book is the story of the Emu which he describes as a “troublemaker who brings into being the most destructive idea in existence: I am greater than you; you are less than me.” The story is about the damaging effects of competition and narcissism as the source of all human misery. Yunkaporta explains (2019, 31):

…a meeting in which all the species sat down for a yarn to decide which one would be the custodial species for all creation. Emu made a hell of a mess, running around showing off his speed and claiming his superiority, demanding to be boss and shouting over everyone. You can see the dark shape of Emu in the Milky Way. Kangaroo (his head the Southern Cross) is holding him down, Echidna is grasping him from behind, and the great Serpent is coiled around his legs. Containing the excesses of malignant narcissists is a team effort.

These stories are about relationality and respect. As Bulman and Hayes (2011, p. 21; see also Yunkaporta and Shillingworth 2020; Healing Foundation et al. 2017) point out, what makes connections and understanding possible is respect which they describe as a code of conduct that allows people to “be together without shame, humiliation or belittling … [towards] achieving good for one’s self and others.” This does not mean condoning harmful behaviour. Bulman and Hayes (2011, 21) explain:

Respect keeps us looking for the good in the other until we find something to base a shared reality upon … yet it does not condone harmful behaviour or support practices that allow for its continuance. For instance, “men’s business” cannot be used as an excuse for covering up unacceptable activities that harm the vulnerable.

Bulman and Hayes (2011, 14) also draw attention to the significance of spiritual healing which they describe as “about having a shared vision of the future that creates hope in the hearts of individuals, groups and communities [and] what is good for a person, group or community.” Important here are collective healing approaches that move away from individual treatment models, as explained by the Healing Foundation et al. (2017, 36):

Collective healing reinstates and reconnects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to their core cultural value systems, where obligations and reciprocity were central to community survival. These values are essential to preventing abuse and violence, both broader community violence as well as family violence.

Such spiritual healing is a non-linear and relational process that, within the contexts of programs for Indigenous men, involves younger and older men sharing their concerns and “listening and reflecting carefully upon what they hear and see” (Bulman and Hayes 2011, 14). Mentors play a pivotal role here in creating safe and trusting relations and spaces for this sharing, listening, and reflecting. Significant here is supporting young men to reconnect with the past through stories—otherwise lost because of disconnection from communities of origin. According to Bulman and Hayes (2011, 18) family stories help to:

…understand what people went through and why certain choices were made by family members. Even though it remains painful, the past becomes less haunting and less harrowing. Hope is engendered and healing takes place.

These ways of working are seen to be central in creating “a culturally safe, respectful and empowering environment” for Indigenous men to unpack issues of gender-based violence (OurWatch 2018a, 21).

Understanding Gender-Based Violence: Non-Indigenous Men

Colonising processes have also had highly destructive impacts on non-Indigenous communities—especially the policies and practices of neoliberal capitalism. These policies and practices are part of the story of cultural imperialism and racism exacerbating the disengagement and disempowerment of Indigenous communities. While complex and differently articulated, the driving force of neoliberalism is economic (Lindisfarne and Neale 2016) and aims to transform human social life into economic terms (Brown in Garlick 2020). The norms of individualism, competition, and materialism that drive neoliberal capitalism are aligned with hegemonic (Western/Anglo) masculinity and an increasing of gender inequality (and inequality more broadly). These norms have also re-articulated our understandings of what constitutes gender equality. Nation states like Australia, for example, have (at least in rhetoric) supported gender equality initiatives and (to varying degrees) feminist activism (Pease 2019). However, as some feminists have argued, such initiatives and activism have been contained or co-opted by the state and thus end up serving the interests of patriarchy and capitalism (Fraser 2013). Notions of gender equality within the parameters of neoliberal capitalism are largely about increasing women’s autonomy, choice, and meritocratic advancement. They do little to challenge the hegemonic masculinity/patriarchy embedded in these parameters—which is necessary to eliminate men’s violence against women. The Nordic countries are a telling case in point here. In these countries, women hold significant political and social power, yet violence perpetrated by men against women remains high (Pease 2019). The persistence of gender-based violence in these countries indicates that ending this violence requires more than increasing women’s autonomy, choice, and meritocratic advancement, it requires dismantling neoliberal capitalism (Pease 2019). Critiquing this western logic, as noted earlier, tends not to be the focus of settler PVAW approaches where gender-based violence is conceptualised primarily as a gender equality issue.

While gender-based violence is a product of gender inequality, it is also a product of colonisation and capitalism and the values that drive this way of understanding the world, e.g., striving for economic status and wealth accumulation (Connell 1995; 2016; Pease 2020: Garlick 2020). These are gendered sensibilities that align with hegemonic masculinities which, as Messerschmidt (2018; see also Connell 1995) explains, are those masculinities that legitimate an unequal relationship between men and women, masculinity and femininity, and among masculinities. The masculinities valued and institutionalised by the state are both patriarchal and capitalist. The links between the colonial forces of capitalism and patriarchal or hegemonic masculinity are perhaps mostly well recognised in relation to the gendered division of labour (Connell 1998). Relevant here is the notion of paid work in the public sphere being associated with the self-interested and independent rationality of a man while unpaid work in the private sphere is associated with the dependent caring sensibilities of a woman (see Folbre 2009). Capitalist or neoliberal governance in its aims to transform human social life into economic terms, supports this gendered division (Brown in Garlick 2020; Connell 2016). The “capitalist relations of production [in the public sphere] are entwined with the production of men” (Garlick 2020, 551). This is a system that requires economic exploitation and control—thus it produces individuals (usually men) willing to exploit and control others (Schwalbe 2014; Garlick 2020).

Connell’s work (1998; 2016; see also Hearn 2015; Garlick 2020; Pease 2020) has been particularly important in highlighting the intersection of hegemonic masculinities with capitalist globalization, colonialism, and neoliberalism. She argues that “corporate, managerial forms of trans-national business masculinities are crucial to the functioning of neoliberal capitalist institutions and to the ongoing effects of colonialism around the globe” (in Garlick 2020, 551). Such institutions depend on and reproduce the distinctly masculine cultures of control, competition, domination and risk-taking (Garlick 2020; Salzinger 2016). In this respect, as Garlick (2020, 553) argues:

…getting to grips with the affinities between masculinity and neoliberalism requires further consideration of the nature of markets. The importance of risk-taking and the management of insecurity to both hegemonic masculinities and neoliberal discourse can be seen in a new light when “the market” is understood as a complex socio-natural reality.

Getting to grips with these affinities also requires considering the technologies that seek to control the natural environment. Garlick (2016) highlights here the links between the control over nature and the environment, capitalist values of ownership, material accumulation and hegemonic forms of masculinity. Paradies (2020, 440) adds:

…the creation and maintenance of property is deeply colonial and underpinned by violence either within states (i.e., to protect the “rights” of those who have against those who have not) or via state aggression against stateless societies (i.e., extracting resources as property, including exploitation of human resources). Similarly, the very definition of a sovereign state is a body whose use of force is legitimate and sanctioned.

For Garlick (2020, 557) economic calculation (whether it is associated with financial markets or the natural environment) “offers the alluring possibility of precise control” within “a complex and constantly changing world.” This is “a level of control that is able to banish insecurity and can thereby allow one to at least envision the possibility of becoming a “real man” (Garlick 2020, 557). Such quest for control over the economic and material world has its roots in humanism which supports the “notions of self-determination, rationality and autonomy” and the idea of human separateness (from the non-human world and the natural environment) and human supremacy (Pease 2021).

To refer back to the Emu story, the central idea driving neoliberal capitalism is one of competition, individualism and hierarchy—“I am greater than you; you are less than me.” It is also one of rationality and containment. These are damaging ways of knowing and being that are the cause of much human disconnection and misery (Yunkaporta 2019). The new forms of abjection and inequality brought about through neoliberal capitalism make this disconnection and misery clear (Cornwall 2016).

In relation to men and masculinities this misery can be seen as playing out in the anger and aggrievement of many white men. As Pease (2020, 55; see also Kimmel 2013) points out:

…many class-privileged white men feel excluded and aggrieved in spite of their privileges [while] … working-class white men experience a sense of aggrieved or thwarted entitlement resulting from economic restructuring and the crisis of global capitalism.

Pease (2020) and Kimmel (2013) argue that the anger expressed by these men tends not to be directed towards neoliberal capitalism—it is not directed “towards those creating the economic hardship” (Pease 2020, 59) or to the western corporate ideologies undergirding economic restructuring. Rather, these men’s sense of powerlessness and emasculation are attributed to a loss of gendered and racial entitlement—thus women, racial and other minorities tend to be blamed for this loss (Kimmel 2013; Pease 2020).

The notion that White men are losing out is made possible from a vantage point of colonial masculinity. This version of hegemonic masculinity has engendered in many white men a sense of superiority and entitlement to power and status based on race (which is deeply entwined with gendered and classed entitlement) (Connell 1987). A sense of racial entitlement is steeped in colonial histories of white supremacy built on inequitable race relations, structural inequality, and racial oppression (Moreton Robinson 2021; Tengan 2008). However, as the idea of white men losing out makes clear, this is a version of racialized hegemony that is not fixed and has adjusted in the face of challenges from non-hegemonic groups or those who do not ascribe to a particular hegemony (Connell 1987; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Nevertheless, as Pease (2020) argues, white superiority and entitlement are so taken for granted in the minds of many white men that it is seen as a breach of their rightful position when “others” take up spaces that were once unquestionably theirs.

It is important to understand the anger of white men within the context of their perceptions that they are losing gender, economic and racial status. This loss of status impacts both working class and middle-class white men (albeit differently), as Pease (2020, 60) explains:

Disaffected working-class men, who have been rejected by the new economy, express anger and rage at their plight. Such men are no longer able to give expression to traditional masculine traits such as physical strength and toughness, which was a hallmark of manual labour. White-collar men are also experiencing greater work insecurity as more women enter the professional workforce (see also Roose 2018).

These challenges to traditional masculinity can lead to risk-taking, aggression and violence in both the private and public spheres as a re-assertion of power amid anxiety and stress at losing gender status (Pease 2020; Ward 2012).

The areas of anger and violence noted earlier (Day et al., 2008) that relate to Indigenous men can be seen as aligning with the anger these white men express: anger at their own situation; anger at family and others; anger at perceived injustice; and anger at historical treatment. White men do not experience racism and they do not experience the trauma and oppression of colonisation in the same way as Indigenous men. However, it is evident that the processes of colonisation are corrosive (albeit in very different ways) to the social and emotional wellbeing and relationships of white men and are likely to lead to violence towards family members. White men, as do Indigenous men, engage in “lateral violence” (Cripps and Adams 2014, 400)—i.e., “the way people in positions of powerlessness, covertly or overtly direct their dissatisfaction inward toward each other, toward themselves, and toward those less powerful than themselves” (including less powerful men). While power and control are associated with hegemonic masculinity, many (white) men feel powerless, especially those who are subordinated on the basis of economic, cultural or political disadvantage (Connell 1995; Garlick 2020; Pease 2020).

Addressing Gender-Based Violence Within Settler Australian Communities

Settler PVAW approaches to gender-based violence in Australia tend to focus predominantly on gender and addressing the gendered “drivers” of violence against women (i.e. factors that lead to violence against women) such as the condoning of violence against women, men’s control in decision making, rigid gender roles and stereotyping, and dominant boys’ and men’s peer relations that amplify aggression and disrespect towards women (OurWatch 2015). These drivers reflect the accepted wisdom regarding interventions that seek to address gender-based family violence—i.e., that “gender trumps other differences, and that violence against women results from similar forms of oppression, linked to gender inequalities and patriarchal forms of power” (Blagg et al. 2018, 9). This is a wisdom that underpins many interventions in this space (e.g., Men’s Behavioural Change programs or mentoring programs for boys and young men)—whether they are focused on men who use violence against women or more broadly on challenging harmful versions of masculinity (Flood 2019; Promundo 2018). The measure of a good program tends to relate to its gender transformative capacities—i.e., its capacities to (Rutgers 2018, 7):

…actively challenge and transform the current gender system through critical reflection of the attitudes, norms, structures and practices of gender that underpin this system of inequality. This involves actively challenging dominant and rigid forms of masculinity and promoting alternative models that are more positive and respectful.

Through exploring topics such as gender, power and relationships, the social construction of masculinity, emotions, sexual consent, and gendered violence, these programs encourage boys and men to challenge and find alternatives to the gendered attitudes and norms that perpetuate gender inequality. These programs are seen as offering potential for challenging and transforming the drivers of gender-based violence identified above (Promundo 2018; OurWatch 2015).

In some ways, there is resonance between what is seen to be good practice within settler (PVAW) programs and Indigenous programs—e.g., the significance of facilitators being culturally and socially sensitive, the importance of creating inclusive and trusting spaces and relations that connect with participants in meaningful and sustainable ways and the significance of community centred and driven responses (Day et al. 2012). A key area of resonance can be found in the importance placed on an intersectional approach in both settler and Indigenous violence prevention programs where there is a consideration of how the social categories of race, class, ability, and sexuality intersect to compound or alleviate gender inequality (David 2017). In the violence prevention field (e.g., Men’s Behavioural Change Programs), the need for such an approach is well recognised (Flood 2019) as imperative in moving beyond narrow conceptions of gender inequality and gender-based violence where the focus is on men’s perpetration and women’s victimization (see David 2017).

However, this focus on intersectionality and its relationship to gender inequality does not extend to a critique of Western or colonial logic as is the focus within Indigenous programs. As noted earlier, central to the distinctiveness of an Indigenous approach to family violence is a challenging of “the logic of coloniality underpinning Western theories and methods,” and Western ways of thinking and knowing the issue of gender-based violence (Blagg et al. 2018, 61). Settler approaches to addressing gender-based violence tend not to subject themselves to this critique. It is contended here that these approaches would be enriched by subjection to this critique.

A De-colonial Approach to Settler Programs that Seek to Address Gender-Based Violence

So, what might a critique of Western or colonial logic in settler PVAW programs look like? As already mentioned, key here is a gender transformative approach that fosters boys’ and men’s critical examination of the links between gender-based violence and hegemonic/patriarchal masculinity (including how such violence intersects with and is amplified by racism, hetero-sexism, classism, and ableism). It will also involve a critical examination of colonial masculinities focused on highlighting the ongoing destructive social and environmental impacts of colonisation including how gender-based and other forms of violence perpetrated by white men are produced and reinforced by the colonial forces of neoliberal capitalism, patriarchy, and racism. It will thus involve supporting white men to understand and address not only their investments and complicities in gender inequality but also their investments and complicities in the cultural and economic imperialisms of neoliberal capitalism as they are linked to ideas and enactments of hegemonic masculinities.

The Indigenous concept of relationality provides insight into how colonial masculinities might be deconstructed—relationality is about appreciating that all things and beings are connected in non-hierarchical ways; that all things and beings contain important knowledge, story and patterns for the sustenance, health and wellbeing of the social and natural worlds and that attempting to control and commodify these worlds in rational, accumulative, competitive and hierarchical ways is destructive (Yunkaporta 2019). Engaging with this concept can support a critical understanding of the gendered, heteronormative, racialized, classed and ableist values and mechanisms of colonial masculinity towards an “unlearning of colonial habits of mind, redefining identities and transforming relationships” (Morgensen 2015, 57; Hokowhitu 2015).

Morgensen (2015, 57) argues that to “undo colonial masculinity, white settlers must follow Indigenous and racialized people whose movements are challenging the political realities of settler colonialism and all colonial governance by re/imagining and creating decolonized futures.” This has involved Indigenous peoples decolonizing themselves especially in relation to reimagining how Indigenous self-determination and autonomy have been contained by the parameters of coloniality (Hokowhitu 2015). This argument does not place responsibility for undoing colonisation on Indigenous peoples but rather recognises that Indigenous peoples are “decolonizing masculinity as part of the broader decolonization of Indigenous peoples and settler societies” (Morgensen 2015, 55) and that members of settler societies can learn from this challenging.

Such unlearning means rejecting the theories of humanism, human reason, and human supremacy (including white supremacy) that inform colonial masculinity (Hokowhitu 2015). While often not attributed to the rich genealogy of Indigenous scholarship, recent non-Indigenous masculinities research is engaging with these theories under the theoretical umbrella of post-humanism which challenges ideals of the human subject as self-determined, rational, and autonomous and as separate or superior to non-human entities such as the environment, plants and animals (Braidotti 2013). Pease (2021, 108) argues that these theories are necessary in transforming all forms of privilege and inequality which is especially important in work that seeks to disrupt men’s privilege, as he explains:

If men are to move beyond human exceptionalism, they must acknowledge their relational dependence on other humans, non-humans and the ecology of the planet. They must … break the connection to a humanistic, unitary and masculinist subject. This means rethinking the importance of rationality, autonomy and intentionality of the male human subject. [It means understanding] that autonomy is a myth.

Movement beyond human exceptionalism, Pease further argues (2021, 108), requires “ontological vulnerability” which he defines as:

…a relational and embodied sense of self, a capacity to experience sorrow and grief in response to the pain of others, and empathy and compassion not only in relation to people but also in relation to non-human others and the planet.

This is a decolonising process that can support more peaceful, non-violent, conciliatory, and caring ways of knowing and being in the world (Paradies 2020; Morgensen 2015). This process would enrich settler approaches to PVAW—that might, for instance, take men on a healing journey of strengthened connections to country and spirituality. As noted earlier, this would not be an uncritical healing journey resonant of the mythopoetic or therapeutic men’s movement where the focus is on reconnecting men and boys to a lost essentialised masculinity (as distinct from girls, women and “the feminine”). Rather, it would involve a deep transformation at the ontological level (Dudgeon and Bray 2017) that unsettles the deep attachments and entrapments many men feel and experience in relation to processes of colonisation and patriarchy (Paradies 2020; Antone 2015).

Unsettling attachments within the context of PVAW policies and programs can only go so far. As Indigenous scholar, Paradies (2020) argues, we need to unsettle these attachments at an institutional and state level. The organisation of modern capitalist societies within the boundaries of the nation state and the institutions within them depend on hierarchical order, inequality, and disadvantage to function (Paradies 2020). Institutions, including schools, workplaces, and law enforcement tend thus to strangulate “our capacity for creativity and self-expression” and “our modes of being” (Paradies 2020, 441). Paradies (2020, 442) understands that an “end to modernity would imply an end to coloniality.” His calls for an end to modernity are a form of decolonial action. Such decoloniality would involve “removing the oppressive influences of colonialism from the world to open a broader range of potential futures” that do not promote individualism, rationality, entitlement, competition and materialism and their degrading effects on our relations with ourselves, others and the environment (Paradies 2020, 442). These are ideas of the “good life” that lead to an “alienation from ourselves, other living beings and the environment” (Paradies 2020, 441).

Paradies (2020, 443) argues that avoiding the “mistakes of modernity” may be possible through a radical restructuring of society around small self-organising independent communities. These communities, he explains (2020, 443):

…would ideally be based on non-hierarchical egalitarian anarchist political structures together with an ethos of down-shifted collective sufficiency and frugality where people seek meaningful mutuality of being and becoming with close-by (non-)human life. This would include a focus on resource and skill sharing, cooperation and limited accumulation or status seeking, in contrast to our existing “specialized, regimented and commercialized existences.”

There is evidence to suggest that in communities with these structures and ideals there are “low levels of violence, rape, homicide, depression, loneliness, self-doubt and suicide [and] very high levels of social, economic and political freedom and equality” (Paradies 2020, 443). In such communities, “poverty, homelessness, famine, genocide and similar consequences of structural violence are virtually, or entirely, absent” (Paradies 2020, 443).

Conclusion

The processes of colonisation are inherently violent and corrosive. These processes destructively impact (albeit in very different ways) on the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous men. Colonising and racist processes have impacted on the role, identity and wellbeing of Indigenous men with many feeling powerless in relation to the majority culture. Factors such as a loss of identity within changing economic, familial and community roles; high incarceration rates; mental health issues and unemployment have undermined the capacity of Indigenous men to meaningfully support their families and kin. Recognising the harmful impacts of colonisation and racism is central to understanding and addressing gender-based violence—as key Australian PVAW policy and programs articulate. Such recognition is evident in PVAW approaches that are created and led by and for Indigenous communities and grounded in holistic and culturally sensitive recovery.

Colonising processes have also negatively impacted on the role, identity, and wellbeing of non-Indigenous (white) men. The version of masculinity valorised within these processes is one of individualism, competition, human supremacy, and the accumulation of private wealth. This is a masculinity steeped in colonial histories of gendered, heteronormative, racial and class hierarchies of entitlement. Power and status associated with this version of masculinity are to do with men’s capacities to dominate and control people and the environment. While many white men accrue patriarchal dividends from this form of masculinity (Connell 1995), it is difficult to attain for most men. Its valorising (especially in times of economic restructuring and work precarity) has left many men feeling aggrieved that they have missed out on what they believe they are entitled to, or unworthy because they cannot measure up. It is a masculinity that is destructive socially and environmentally. While research has aligned the values and processes of neoliberal capitalism with hegemonic masculinity and gender inequality, the negative impacts of this Western logic tend not to be the focus of mainstream PVAW policy in Australia. Mainstream PVAW approaches tend to focus on gender inequality and gender transformation through challenging dominant and rigid gender and masculinity norms.

Gender-based violence is a product of gender inequality but it is also a product of colonisation and capitalism and their driving force to transform the social and natural worlds into economic terms. The system of neoliberal capitalism relies on economic inequality and exploitation to survive and is entwined with the production of hegemonic masculinities (which legitimate the unequal relationship between men and women and certain groups of men over others). Central to the distinctiveness of an Indigenous approach to family violence is a challenging of colonial or western ways of thinking and knowing the issue of gender-based violence. The evidence I have presented in this paper illustrate that settler approaches would be enriched through this challenging.

Indigenous ways of knowing challenge ideals of the human subject as self-determined, rational, and autonomous. These ways of knowing understand human existence as relational and inter-dependent with others (including all that is non-human) and as constantly in process. They reject the notion that humans are separate or superior to non-human entities such as the environment, plants, and animals. These are important ideas for challenging all forms of privilege and inequality—recognising our relationality and inter-dependence with the social and natural world means rejecting human supremacy, invulnerability, individualism, competition, and the quest for control and certainty (Pease 2021). Such rejection leads to more peaceful, non-violent, and caring ways of knowing and being in the world through unsettling the deep attachments and entrapments many men feel and experience in relation to processes of colonisation and patriarchy (Paradies 2020).

Preventing violence against women and violence more broadly will require unsettling these attachments at institutional and local levels. For settler PVAW policy and practice, it will require (as with Indigenous PVAW policy and practice) not only a focus on dismantling gender hierarchies but also on dismantling the entitlements and oppressions of colonial masculinities (Mihesuah 2003).