ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges western epistemology by focusing on the current obsession with mobility and borders from a postcolonial perspective. It is based on empirical work which the authors recently conducted in remote Central Australia. It describes how automobility became a site of contestation in a long-running, multi-faceted conflict between the settler state and Walpiri people. It demonstrates that, despite fresh colonial incursions, the Tanami desert still provides a patchwork of places where Aboriginal people can escape white authority, go off the beaten track and, through refusal, resistance and the medium of the white man’s automobile, remake and strengthen community law and culture.
