Settler Decolonization in Country/on Land: Rehearsing Collaboration

The project engages with the theoretical and practical work of decolonization carried out in the settler colonies of Australia and Turtle Island/North America. We focus on the ways in which decolonization as an Indigenous-led effort can open up spaces for collaboration with non-Indigenous actors. Our project will (1) study the ways in which such collaborations centre Country or L/land as the primary site of Indigenous-settler interaction, tracing how land relations assemble potential collaborators. We ask (2) how Indigenous-led work on decolonization challenges common notions of ‘collaboration’, and (3) articulate an understanding of anticolonial and decolonial work that can and must be undertaken in Germany in relation to the two contexts of Australia and Turtle Island. We (4) develop ‘rehearsing’ collaboration as a potentially transformative methodology of relating to Indigenous work from the positionality of non-Indigenous researchers and collaborators situated outside the settler colony.