Firstly, a note for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: this book includes the names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have passed away.
Secondly, a note for all readers: this book addresses issues of race and privilege in relation to contemporary art and in it I have referenced many scholars and artists from a range of places, communities and designations. When I introduce a scholar or artist, I situate them whenever possible in relation to their country of origin and their field of expertise and I have sought to use the words they use to designate their own race, ethnicity, community association, land association or place of origin. For First Peoples I use the name of their specific people when it is known and when they themselves use it. For example I introduce the First Nation philosopher Mary Graham as “Kombumerri (Australian) philosopher Mary Graham.” In other cases I use the word “Aboriginal,” “Indigenous,” or “First Nation person,” whichever word the scholar or artist might use to describe themselves in writing and if that is not clear I tend towards “First Nation person.”1 While these kinds of designations have recently become more common for white, settler-colonial scholars and artists, most of the white, settler-colonial scholars and artists I have referenced in this book have not designated themselves in their own texts. When I am discussing the work of a white scholar or artist, and if it is expressly relevant for my argument, I have included the designation ‘white’ whether or not the person uses it themselves. I recognise that the politics and practices and my own understanding of the issues around designations in academic writing are always shifting and that the approach I have taken may already be out of date.2
Wiradjuri (Australian) scholar Sandy O’Sullivan offers a succinct and useful explanation of the problematics of each of these terms in her text “Recasting identities: intercultural understandings of First Peoples in the national museum space.” Sandy O’Sullivan, “Recasting Identities: Intercultural Understandings of First Peoples in the National Museum Space,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research, ed. Pamela Burnard, Kimberly Powell, and Elizabeth Mackinlay (Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis, 2016), 43n1.
I particularly appreciate Michif (Canadian) scholar Max Liboiron’s thinking on this topic which, following the work of Yaqui and Chicanx (American) scholar Marisa Duarte, proposes using the word “unmarked” when introducing scholars who don’t assume a designation. This is an example of the ways in which these practices are shifting. Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 3–4n10.