Colonial accounting and postcolonial resistance: Aboriginal Stolen Wages in Australia

This paper advances critical accounting scholarship by exposing the constitutive role of accounting in producing and reproducing the racialised power structures of British settler colonialism in Australia. Australia remains the only ex-British settler colony without formal recognition of, or treaty with, its Indigenous population and Aboriginal Australians continue to experience inter-generational trauma underlined by extreme poverty, poor physical and mental health, and shorter life expectancy. We argue that colonial and postcolonial accounting systems have perpetuated racial biases and legitimised colonial institutions including racist protectionist legislation enabling a system of institutionalised peonage in Australia. Drawing on Bhabha's theorisation of hybridity and the ‘third space’ we conceptualise the Stolen Wages Case , a class action brought by Aboriginal pastoral workers in Queensland, as a site where colonised subjects strategically appropriate the epistemic tools of the State to contest the subjectivities imposed upon them. The case's recognition of oral testimony, its acknowledgement of Aboriginal epistemologies, and its calculation of the ‘reasonable value’ of stolen labour serve to rupture the ‘great Australian silence’ of Aboriginal labour exploitation. Our theoretical contribution lies in demonstrating how accounting functions as a colonial technology that fixes racial hierarchies while simultaneously providing openings for counter-hegemonic resistance. By adopting a hybrid epistemology, we emphasize the potential for collaborative resistance and recognition of historical injustices within a discursive ‘third space’. The successful resolution of the Stolen Wages Case exemplifies the emancipatory potential of legal and accounting mechanisms in addressing colonial legacies. This research contributes to understanding the role of accounting in sustaining colonial oppression and offers insights into pathways for postcolonial accountability and reconciliation in Australia and beyond.