ABSTRACT
With each sign that gives language its shape lies a stereotype of which I/i am both the manipulator and the manipulated.2
Recent developments in environmentalism and feminism have intensified Western desires to affiliate with indigenous people and to call upon their knowl edges and experiences. In settler Australia, alliances have developed between feminists, environmentalists, and Aborigines seeking to have their interests in land recognized. Within the Australian setting, environmentalists have pre sumed accordance between their interests and those of Aboriginal Australians seeking land rights. Similarly, many non-Aboriginal women’s groups have pre sumed that the land struggles of Aboriginal women resonate with their strug gles against patriarchy. As the case of settler Australia testifies, such alliances do not escape the politics of colonialism and patriarchy. In particular, there are specific problems arising from the essentialized notions of Aboriginality and woman that underpin radical environmentalisms and feminisms. Yet to read these alliances only in terms of the reiteration of a politics of Western, masculinist supremacy neglects the positive engagement indigenous women may make with such ‘sympathizers’ in their efforts to verify and amplify their strug gles for land rights.
