In both historical and contemporary contexts, gender has had a significant impact on the space, power and social rules of the land. Colonialism and globalization have further shaped this social process through the lens of capital and possessions, creating legitimized colonial maps. Such shaping of space and maps can be attributed to attempts at exclusion and forced assimilation both through the gentrification of urban areas and through attempts to deny sovereignty, for the generation of profit. This has led to the denigration of the traditional conditions of women around the world and particularly Aboriginal women in Australia. This essay will map the historical role of colonialism and neocolonialism in reshaping Australia's geography into a racialized and patriarchal landscape and highlight how this has contributed to the spatially specific "continuing dispossession" of Indigenous peoples within Australia. To demonstrate this further, I will focus on the mapping and historical development of the Australian landscape, as well as spatial representation in related colonial processes. The history of colonization is closely linked to the creation of the “Other” as well as the patriarchal designation of women as the “Other” in relation to men. In Australia the notion of the “Other” in relation to gender and race is intrinsically linked to the formation of “Australia” as a “heterotopic” entity, built on the doctrine of terra nullius. The doctrine of terra nullius was established and propagated through the mapping of the continent, obscuring as with blank spaces on colonial maps, the Aboriginal connections to history, identity and culture that form the basis of Indigenous ontology... middle of paper......003. I continue to call Australia home: Indigenous belonging and place in a postcolonizing white society. In: Ahmed, S., Castañeda, C., Fortier, A.-M. and Mimi Sheller (eds) Uprooting/Rerootedness: Issues of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg.Schaffer, K. 1988. Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition, Cambridge University Press.Waitt, G. 2000. Introduction to Human Geography: Globalization, Difference and Inequality, Pearson Education Australia/Longman . Wake up the world. 2014. Open letter from Aboriginal elder 'Auntie' Beve: 'Protect our sacred women's fertility site from mining.' [online] Available at: http://wakeup-world.com/2014/01/06/open-letter-from-aboriginal-elder-protect-our-sacred-womens-fertility-site/ [Accessed April 18 2014 ]Young, I.M. 2011. Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
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