ABSTRACT
This chapter conceptualizes Australia's Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) intervention into Aboriginal communities as a novel form of racialized combat. The term Indigenous peoples are used to refer to the overall composite of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who make up the original peoples of Australia. It describes the control of alcohol and food in the NTER as part of new configurations of older race or pleasure wars that reinforce elements of bio power and population management fundamental to sovereignty within the Western tradition. Among key controversial measures of the intervention was compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land, abolition of the community development employment program (CDEP), and introduction of new private home ownership measures. The NTER intervention reveals both the political economy of neo-colonial power and the ways in which racialization is embedded in the discursive environment. The NTER represents a climax' for non-Indigenous Australia's obsessive interest in Indigenous life.
