ABSTRACT
Turning to critical social work pointers, one of the most powerful constructs to find its way into theorising Indigenous issues is that of 'whiteness', stemming from the work of Ruth Frankenberg in the United States and applied increasingly to the Australian context. Understanding the gap in wellbeing between Indigenous and other Australians is an important starting point for critical social workers. International trade and internal trade routes that extended as far as the Northern Territory to Victoria were blocked off with the appropriation of the land by non-Indigenous peoples who put up fences. The inclusion of a critical perspective in policy directions is a challenge that confronts social work with Indigenous communities. For non-Indigenous social workers, this can mean a blindness to their own race privilege whereby a 'colourblind' approach to practice may reproduce racist practices.
