Tropes of friendship, undercurrents of fear : alternative emotions on the friendly frontier

This article examines a conciliation narrative at King George Sound in Western Australia that originated in the early nineteenth century during an era of European exploration when explorers had fleeting meetings with the Mineng. This friendship narrative has been continually re-presented and inscribed by settlers and later by historians without its imperial power dynamic being critiqued. This essay attempts a genealogy of this friendship motif  as well as exploring the destablising of this narrative by writers and community members. This essay also suggests ways of decolonising this narrative and searches for alternative emotions from this frontier.