Abstract

This paper draws on a current research project examining the history of the forced removal of Indigenous children in Australia from their families - the 'stolen generations' - in order to reflect on the historically diverse intersections of differing forms of government, welfare and civilization. Beginning with some comments on the importance of attending to what is peculiar about the specifically colonial dimensions of governance, it outlines the ways in which the policies and practices of Aboriginal child removal were articulated within broader liberal discourses of citizenship and governance, as well as their connection to particular understandings of civility, both as a goal and as a means of achieving social welfare. The paper goes on to contrast the assimilationist logic of child removal as a form of welfare with the current critiques of these policies and practices as 'cultural genocide', and analyses the change in liberal governmental rationality embodied by these critiques. This contrast then forms the basis for a fleshing out of the varied and heterogenous ways in which government, welfare and civilization are 'triangulated' in relation to the particular ethical and political questions and problems characterizing a settler-colonial society moving between colonial and post-colonial forms of liberalism.