When the city calls : mapping Indigenous Australian queer placemaking in Sydney

The concept of migration is not typically understood as an Indigenous Australian experience; rather discourses of removal and dispossession have been the focus. Drawing from research with Indigenous Australian sex workers, and secondary sources, I will locate and discuss the ways in which queer Indigenous Australians migrate to the city to create new communities and spaces of belonging. This chapter explores the narratives of Indigenous Australian queer peoples to unpack the motives and personal experiences of ‘placemaking’ in the city for this group of people. In doing so, I will discuss how notions of identity, community and relationships are understood, shared and (re)produced by those who migrate to the city, and thereby draw attention to the experiences that shape Indigenous Australian queer mobilities. This chapter finds the act of coming to the city and building new communities becomes one of the ways in which Indigenous queer peoples have asserted themselves and their identities. The building of new communities is, in effect, the principal ways that Indigenous queer people have refuted the notions of social and cultural order. In this sense, migrating to the city is a distinctly politicalised, and a routine practice, whereby Indigenous queer people are seen to weave their own routes through the city and its spaces.