ABSTRACT
This chapter moves the study from the personal to the collective good intentions of settler Australians. It is an ethnographic account of settler-Indigenous co-presence, in which the author feels, witnesses and documents the ‘trauma’ of an unfolding political encounter, and then how settlers are reorientated towards Aboriginal self-determination. The chapter explores a Yolngu, the traditional owners north-east Arnhem Land, cultural tourism program. It is held at the Garma Festival in remote Northern Australia. The program harnesses non-Indigenous tourists’ fascination with Aboriginal culture to assert political and economic autonomy and sovereignty. The cultural tourism program provides an opportunity to closely observe settler anxiety and the other emotions and reactions triggered when the white women confront Yolngu difference and political autonomy. Focusing upon white women’s emotional responses to Aboriginal people and politics is uncomfortable, to say the least. However, the path to decolonisation requires, as Irene Watson argues, staying with discomfort. Under what conditions is settler anxiety displaced and what, if anything, takes its place? The chapter engages with a particular political confrontation, which unsettled and disorientated the tourists. In turn, they were reoriented toward a Yolngu ethos and generous encounters.
