Articles by: Dan Tout

Author Biography:

Dan Tout is a lecturer in history and sociology at Federation University and an Arena Publications Editor. His research focuses on settler colonialism and nationalism in Australia and their impacts on and implications for First Nations peoples. Dan was Arena Journal’s managing editor and is part of the editorial team behind Arena Online.

Again and Again: Settler-colonial extractivism and the Juukan Gorge inquiry’s interim report

Arena Online

Jon Altman, Dan Tout

17 Dec 2020

…it seems the First Nations of Australia will be left with another empty promise that governments and mining companies, together so invested in their ongoing dispossession, will act in good faith to ‘protect’ them and their heritage. Surely nobody can reasonably believe this by now.

Juukan Gorge Destruction: Extractivism and the Australian Settler-colonial Imagination

Arena Quarterly no. 4

Dan Tout

Dec 2020

...the settler-colonial logic of elimination—of displacement for the purpose of replacement—has come to align in ever more destructive ways with the economic logic of neoliberal capitalism…

Destruction and erasure: Juukan Gorge and the contemporary settler-colonial imagination

Arena Online

Dan Tout

30 Jun 2020

…the post-1967 period, in which settlers have been no longer able to deny Indigenous existence, has been marked by the development of new strategies that seek to submerge, subsume, or to otherwise evade the implications of Indigenous sovereignties…
"Review(s) of: Deep time dreaming: Uncovering ancient Australia, by Billy Griffiths, (Black Inc., 2018).

Informit: Belonging [Book Review]

Arena Magazine no. 158

Dan Tout

Feb 2019

PDF available from Informit

Review(s) of: Deep time dreaming: Uncovering ancient Australia, by Billy Griffiths, (Black Inc., 2018).
"

Informit: Confronting a new leviathan

Arena Journal no. 47/48

Dan Tout

Jan 2017

PDF available from Informit

"This issue of Arena Journal, as many before it have been, is concerned with both…

Editorial – Issue 47/48. ‘Confronting a New Leviathan’, by Dan Tout

Arena Journal no. 47/48

Dan Tout

Jan 2017

This issue of Arena Journal, as many before it have been, is concerned with both specific and more general processes of transformation and crisis. While, considered together, the contents of this issue paint a bleak picture about the contemporary situation and future prospects, they also point towards more hopeful, if provisional and conditional futures.
"'Invasion is a structure, not an event.' Through his oft-quoted refrain, Patrick Wolfe aimed to…

Informit: Why didn’t we listen?

Arena Magazine no. 148

Dan Tout

Jun 2017

PDF available from Informit

'Invasion is a structure, not an event.' Through his oft-quoted refrain, Patrick Wolfe aimed to emphasise the persistence of the structures and effects of settler colonialism from the past into the present. He sought to reorient our (settlers') understandings of settler colonialism away from a retrospective view of invasion as an event that had occurred in the past and, one way or another, been resolved (even if its legacies might still warrant some form of…
"At the 2013 conference of the Australian Historical Association, Tim Rowse brandished a recent copy…

Informit: The Janus faces of indigenous politics

Arena Journal no. 45/46

Dan Tout

Jan 2016

PDF available from Informit

At the 2013 conference of the Australian Historical Association, Tim Rowse brandished a recent copy of Arena Journal in its book form as 'Stolen Lands, Broken Cultures: The Settler-colonial Present', and railed against what he characterized as a 'festschrift' to Patrick Wolfe's self-fulfilling project of the homogenization of Indigenous histories and experiences. He accused Arena of projecting the overarching singular narrative provided by Wolfe's 'elimination paradigm'. The session was tense. Rowse was himself subsequently excoriated…
"In December 2015, Megan Davis opened her article for The Monthly, 'Gesture Politics', with the…

Informit: Settler recognition?

Arena Magazine no. 143

Dan Tout

Aug 2016

PDF available from Informit

In December 2015, Megan Davis opened her article for The Monthly, 'Gesture Politics', with the following words: 'Despair. In a word, this is the universal sentiment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders I have spoken to about the state of Aboriginal policy in Australia'. More recently, Jon Altman has written in The Guardian and on the 'Arena' blog on the Coalition government's 2016 Budget and its damaging disregard for Indigenous affairs, alongside the…
"Review(s) of: The last man: A British genocide in Australia, by Tom Lawson, I. B.…

Informit: Whose genocide? Whose stain? [Book Review]

Arena Magazine no. 137

Dan Tout

Aug 2015

PDF available from Informit

Review(s) of: The last man: A British genocide in Australia, by Tom Lawson, I. B. Taurus, 2014
"Western Australian premier Colin Barnett has announced plans for the forced 'closure' of 'at least…

Informit: Settler colonial closures

Arena Magazine no. 133

Dan Tout

Dec 2014

PDF available from Informit

Western Australian premier Colin Barnett has announced plans for the forced 'closure' of 'at least 100 or more' of the 274 remote Aboriginal communities across the state. It seems that South Australia may soon follow suit, with sixty locations in that state also earmarked for 'closure'. As with the Howard government's Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention) and its extension under the Gillard government's perversely named Stronger Futures legislation, we are seeing what Patrick Wolfe…
"The Northern Territory Intervention as a strategy of settler colonialismThe Northern Territory Intervention and its…

Informit: Stabilise, normalise eliminate

Arena Magazine 118

Dan Tout

Jun 2012

PDF available from Informit

The Northern Territory Intervention as a strategy of settler colonialismThe Northern Territory Intervention and its continuation in the form of the perversely misnamed Stronger Futures legislation (which at the time of writing is set to pass the Senate in a rare instance of bipartisan cooperation) has already been subjected to critical analysis from a wide range of perspectives. Yet five years after the Intervention's announcement and on the eve of its ten-year extension, this radical…