What now? A pandemic: patterns of protectionism during the colonial apocalypse

As an Indigenous scholar in Indigenous Studies, I study the patterns of lawlessness that were first imprinted onto Country by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. There is no shortage of evidence in our environment and general social welfare of the ‘state of disorder due to disregard for the law’ that Cook’s incursion has bought about. The Corona-virus could be viewed as another manifestation of that state of disorder. Indeed Australian systems of governance are lawlessness parading as law because their unlawful foundations have been glossed over and protected by narratives that justify actions of violence against Indigenous people to enable the theft of Indigenous lands. Over the years, settlers have felt justified allowing massacres and the codification in ‘law’ of stolen generations and the monitoring and control of Aboriginal people under the guise of protection.
Awareness of these patterns of governance combined with a yearning to be ‘on Country’ and a fear of being locked-down in a city, led us out of Sydney to Yuin Country - my partner’s blood Country and where I have cultural belonging. At our time of leaving, based on Corona-virus statistics, a mass hysteria seemed to have come over the general community. Social distancing and home quarantine ‘laws’ had come into effect, and residents of the South Coast on Yuin Country had become potential informers to law enforcement. The settler populations were openly talking on social media of ‘snitching’ on people that did not permanently reside on ‘their’ part of the coast. All of a sudden, it did not feel safe to be seen on home Country. We spent some days ‘hiding out’ at a friend’s property. We prayed to Country. A kind settler gave us a house to rent. We sought permission from an Elder to live on his part of Yuin Country. I experienced some guilt for spending time away from my PhD work to reposition on Country. This has well and truly dissipated with the realization that our interaction with Country not only gave us immune system enhancing trees, salt water and sunlight, but lived Indigenous epistemology, axiology and ontologies. Apart from an internet connection, Country already holds Indigenous innovation in higher education.