Policy ghosts and decolonisation

What are the policy possibilities for decolonisation, given how colonial hauntologies underpin the extractive relations which feed and shelter globalised populations? Drawing on concepts developed to make sense of the insensibilities of Indigenous social policy in Australia, this chapter explores how Indigenous sacrifice subtends the Australian settler’s abundance and comfort, a good life which is annexed to extensive networks of extractive relations birthed in coloniality. To capture this complexity, this chapter briefly turns to policy ecology as a concept and methodology. Considering policy ecologies is also a way of contemplating the possibilities of “bloodless” decolonisation, a desire which subtends many analyses of Indigenous endurance under settler occupation and the call for “better policy” as a reconciliation measure. If policy is both part of the problem and a useful reshaping tool to redistribute the burdens associated with adaptation and survival across communities, what then?