Resisting the Far-Right: Indigenous Perspectives, Community Arts and Story-Based Strategy

Abstract

This article explores how we might resist and confront anti-immigration and anti-refugee politics by addressing the social and historical well-spring from which these discriminatory and damaging politics emerge and take sustenance. In doing this, I draw upon the concept of story-based strategy and the idea that our potential to address this issue relies on our capacity to fundamentally shift the dominant ways in which people understand and engage with it. This discussion occurs with reference to one practical application of story-based strategy – a community-arts project titled Stories of Hope and Migration – which attempted to re-frame the migration and refugee debate in Australia by funnelling it through a localised Indigenous perspective. In so doing, this article challenges the way in which early British migrants and their descendants have continually excised themselves from the rhetoric of migration, and furthermore, suggests that through a more nuanced conversation regarding the migration stories of all non-Aboriginal people, we might better promote a more historically aware, compassionate and inclusive society.