The frontier’s distinctive annexation of nature, it has been argued by Elizabeth Lawrence, has its performative expression in rodeo. In Lawrence’s words, ‘rodeo embodies the frontier spirit as manifested through the aggressive conquest of the West, and deals with nature and the reordering of nature according to this ethos. It supports the value of subjugating nature, and re-enacts the taming process where the wild is brought under control’.^[20] While the rural pageantry of Australian rodeos undoubtedly lends itself to this analysis, there is significantly more occurring in rodeos in both performative and social terms than the symbolic control of an abstract ‘Nature by Culture’. At a symbolic level the riding, catching and roping of cattle and horses performatively expresses the resolution of the crisis of national anxiety that is implicit in the frontier. These eight second events then, within the ludic structure of rodeo, are also crisis events. As I have suggested, the wild in this instance is simultaneous with the Aboriginal and the environment. Within frontier theory there is little room to consider what constitutes relationships between these two as they are fundamentally differentiated from settler-colonists and their nation-forming activities. If the function of rodeo is to performatively resolve national crisis and replay the colonial venture then how does one explain what is occurring in Kimberley rodeos, where Aborigines compete in and organise rodeos which are sometimes exclusive, but tend to be inclusive? A general answer to this is that Lawrence’s argument rests on a series of presumptions about the categorical separation of humans and nature that she regards as uniquely Western. A more substantial response though is possible if rodeo competition is regarded as more than human dominance over animals, as many riders experience a relationship to the animal they ride where the boundaries between animal and human are fluid, and that distinctive Aboriginal perceptions of land, that underlie their participation in rodeo events, further erode this classical opposition.