Urban Counter-Place within the 1988 Sydney Invasion Day Convergence

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates the history of the 1988 Invasion Day rally to understand the spatial and urbanistic implications of First Nations protest. By broadening the methods of architectural history to include the transient embodied acts of political actors within the context of the First Nations justice social movement, the article aims to read Sydney’s urban fabric against the grain of its established colonial meanings. Through this, a new historical reading that centralises the First Nations urban perspective is interrogated and analysed. The spatial experiences of colonised communities have previously been considered as “outside history” due to previously established norms within architectural historical collection. This article seeks to respond to these historiographic norms and present a case for one way to genuinely disrupt the Eurocentric foundations of architectural history and move to a reconciliatory discourse.