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Terra Nullius

By Guy Mannes-Abbott

A poetic condemnation of the 'genocide' of Western colonialism in Australia

1 May 2007 - Terra Nullius is the latest instalment in Sven Lindqvist's confrontation with the genocidal consequences of Western advancement. Previously he has transformed momentous history into startling, poetic essays, in books like Desert Divers and A History of Bombing. Always happiest in extreme desert, he has now turned to Australia, the imaginary "No One's Land" of the title, and its Aboriginal peoples. Lindqvist argues that this land harbours a culture of songs and tracks "devastated" by British invasion, and through to the nuclear tests of 1963. Lindqvist writes that "you can't travel through history, but you can go to the place where the past happened" and "goes on happening".

While the English-speaking world is condemned to repeat its errors - for " terra nullius" think "failed state" - the Swede's conviction is "that even the past can be changed".

Lindqvist's past begins in 1827 with the south-west coast settlement, trade in land and massacres of inhabitants, without touching on the 18th-century penal colonies. Unbounded barbarity and its legacies run on through the 20th century, the elemental injustice barely acknowledged. Lindqvist's strength is the sheer heat of his passions and the boldness with which he attacks complacency. He's quick to point to Sweden's ongoing dispossession of the Sami people and his country's "cowardly" accommodation with German Nazism.

Lindqvist presents Western Australia as a place littered with penal institutions. The landscape, and his journeying, are brilliantly rendered by a master of worldly insight and stylistic precision. He cherishes "the stillness that only the absolute provides".

He narrates the brutality inflicted upon survivors of genocide. He details " the 'fuck 'em white policy'", the young boys forced into short-lived slavery as pearl divers, and the triumph of Aboriginal art.

Lindqvist believes that the price of changing the past involves costly, sustained reparation, not hand-rinsing near-apology. He indulges a slightly romantic, occasionally didactic tone. Ironically, his focus on the significance of land allows for virtually no people. The closest he gets to the people whose kinship he celebrates is a mutual aversion of the eyes. But in a book about a failed genocide, place is key. While "we" ignore the past's lessons, Lindqvist's attempts to change it are irresistible. Terra Nullius is a work of urgent necessity and a heart-warming marvel.

Source: The Independent

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