Given that the history of Australia began with the British occupation of Aboriginal land, under the pretext that prior to Captain Cook’s discovery of the continent in 1788 the land belonged to no one, the question of race is inextricably bound up with the essence of Australian history itself. This is because, fundamentally speaking, the colonies of Australia and their subsequent federation into a nation all took place under the assumption that the Aboriginal people were not there in the process: phenomenologically speaking, they were denied Dasein. This horrific nullification of an entire indigenous Volk in the establishment of a nation implies that Australia was born from the spoils of an imperialist conquest by the British Empire.