. Chapter 2. Imagining the frontier: comparative perspectives from Canada and Australia

The idea of the frontier reflects a uniquely colonial view of a place and process of encounter between colonising people, indigenous inhabitants, and natural landscapes.[1] Within this colonial context, the idea of the frontier has been variously developed through history by natural and social scientists, popular historians, artists, writers, and government officials. This volume draws together a similarly diverse group of people who bring somewhat different conceptual approaches and theoretical interests to their studies of the frontier, which raises the immediate question: what do we mean when we talk about ‘the frontier’? In the following pages, and before turning to the substantive matter of this paper, I wish to first explore this problem of conceptualisation and definition by surveying how scholars have used the concept of the frontier in studies of colonial societies. The idea of the frontier is not unique to Australia, but is one of the founding metaphors of all settler societies, finding its expression in a range of venues from official histories and literary and artistic productions to political discourse. In the remaining pages I take an ethnographic perspective on the idea of the frontier in settler cultures, and compare how the frontier is imagined within Canadian and Australian notions of national identity and history as expressed in the anti-native title discourse of two leading right-wing political parties: the One Nation Party in Australia and the Reform Party in Canada. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which a comparative analysis of frontier imagery can contribute to an understanding of the unique ways in which north Australian identity, history, and landscape are represented.