Uncomfortable Echoes: Blackfishing First Nations Trauma During COVID-19

Abstract

The concept of enforcing or mandated medical treatment has a history for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that it does not have for those in the broader Australian migrant and settler communities. This involves not just physical sites of hospitals, lockdowns or quarantine camps but also central issues of identity involved with the larger arguments over citizenship and sovereignty. These are important claims of control over others and for what reason or legitimacy. There is a hauntology that persists here for First Nations people and discussions around COVID-19 management especially in rural and remote areas of Australia must openly acknowledge this upfront. Since 2020, this discussion has involved competing and conflicting medical advice, hyper-partisan politics and conspiracy theories imported from overseas Sovereign Citizen movements that were not aggressively present during the previous H1N1 pandemic of over a decade ago. As such, this article skirts issues of uncomfortable echoes of medicalised quarantines of the past and uncomfortable alliances between (on the surface) seemingly ill-fitted groups, using the pandemic years as a case study in blackfishing, astroturfing, and co-opted grievance.