Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviors inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
While colonial imposition of the Canadian legal order has undermined Indigenous law, creating gaps and sometimes distortions, Indigenous peoples have taken up the challenge of rebuilding their laws, governance, and economies. Indigenous conceptions of land and property are central to this project. Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics. Through detailed analysis, the authors illustrate that unexamined and unresolved contradictions between the historic and the present have created powerful competing versions of Indigenous law, legal authorities, and practices that reverberate through Indigenous communities. They have identified the contradictions and conflicts within Indigenous communities about relationships to land and non-human life forms, about responsibilities to one another, about environmental decisions, and about wealth distribution. Creating Indigenous Property contributes to identifying the way that Indigenous discourses, processes, and institutions can empower the use of Indigenous law. The book explores different questions generated by these dynamics, including: Where is the public/private divide in Indigenous and Canadian law, and why should it matter? How do land and property shape local economies? Whose voices are heard in debates over property and why are certain voices missing? How does gender matter to the conceptualization of property and the Indigenous legal imagination? What is the role and promise of Indigenous law in negotiating new relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada? In grappling with these questions, readers will join the authors in exploring the conditions under which Canadian and Indigenous legal orders can productively co-exist.
Over the last decade, Australian governments have introduced a series of land reforms in communities on Indigenous land. This book is the first in-depth study of these significant and far reaching reforms. It explains how the reforms came about, what they do and their consequences for Indigenous landowners and community residents. It also revisits the rationale for their introduction and discusses the significant gap between public debate about the reforms and their actual impact. Drawing on international research, the book describes how it is necessary to move beyond the concepts of communal and individual ownership in order to understand the true significance of the reforms. The book's fresh perspective on land reform and careful assessment of key land reform theories will be of interest to scholars of indigenous land rights, land law, indigenous studies and aboriginal culture not only in Australia but also in any other country with an interest in indigenous land rights.
Settling with Indigenous People describes the making of ten contemporary, mostly Australian, local and regional agreements and details the avenues through which such agreements can be implemented and sustained.The Australian regional agreements concern South West Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin, and Cape York. There is a chapter about the return of the Maralinga lands to its traditional owners and one detailing two local government agreements in central and southwest Australia. Urban agreements in Darwin and Vancouver are compared and there are also chapters on the North West Territories and Northern Quebec in Canada and the Ngai Tahu in the South Island of New Zealand.The discussion addresses:governance and leadershipnegotiation strategies, including the role of formal negotiating frameworksthe importance of process and outcomethe crucial impact of politics and timingthe significance of private sector engagementimplementation mechanismsThe chapters show how agreement-making has provided a forum in which indigenous groups can negotiate their needs and aspirations, including fundamental issues of recognition, inclusion and economic opportunity.The authors include indigenous and non-indigenous academics, and others who have been involved in negotiating agreements.
Conventional approaches to managing protected areas have often seen people and nature as separate entities. They preclude human communities from using natural resources and assume that their concerns are incompatible with conservation. Protected area approaches and models that see conservation as compatible with human communities are explored. The main themes are co-managed protected areas and community conserved areas. Practical guidance is offered, drawing on recent experience, reflections and advice developed at the local, national, regional and international level.
Between Indigenous and Settler Governance addresses the history, current development and future of Indigenous self-governance in four settler-colonial nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Bringing together emerging scholars and leaders in the field of indigenous law and legal history, this collection offers a long-term view of the legal, political and administrative relationships between Indigenous collectivities and nation-states. Placing historical contingency and complexity at the center of analysis, the papers collected here examine in detail the process by which settler states both dissolved indigenous jurisdictions and left spaces – often unwittingly – for indigenous survival and corporate recovery. They emphasise the promise and the limits of modern opportunities for indigenous self-governance; whilst showing how all the players in modern settler colonialism build on a shared and multifaceted past. Indigenous tradition is not the only source of the principles and practices of indigenous self-determination; the essays in this book explore some ways that the legal, philosophical and economic structures of settler colonial liberalism have shaped opportunities for indigenous autonomy. Between Indigenous and Settler Governance will interest all those concerned with Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial nations.
A comprehensive, relevant, and accessible look at all aspects of Indigenous Australian history and culture What is The Dreaming? How many different Indigenous tribes and languages once existed in Australia? What is the purpose of a corroboree? What effect do the events of the past have on Indigenous peoples today? Indigenous Australia For Dummies, 2nd Edition answers these questions and countless others about the oldest race on Earth. It explores Indigenous life in Australia before 1770, the impact of white settlement, the ongoing struggle by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to secure their human rights and equal treatment under the law, and much more. Celebrating the contributions of Indigenous people to contemporary Australian culture, the book explores Indigenous art, music, dance, literature, film, sport, and spirituality. It discusses the concept of modern Indigenous identity and examines the ongoing challenges facing Indigenous communities today, from health and housing to employment and education, land rights, and self-determination. Explores significant political moments—such as Paul Keating's Redfern Speech, Kevin Rudd's apology, and more Profiles celebrated people and organisations in a variety of fields, from Cathy Freeman to Albert Namatjira to the Bangarra Dance Theatre and the National Aboriginal Radio Service Challenges common stereotypes about Indigenous people and discusses current debates, such as land rights and inequalities in health and education Now in its second edition, Indigenous Australia For Dummies will enlighten readers of all backgrounds about the history, struggles and triumphs of the diverse, proud, and fascinating peoples that make up Australia's Indigenous communities. With a foreword by Stan Grant, it's a must-read account of Australia’s first people.
The main theme of this volume is a discussion of the ways in which legal mechanisms, such as the Land Groups Incorporation Act (1974) in PNG, and the Native Title Act (1993) in Australia, do not, as they purport, serve merely to identify and register already-existing customary indigenous landowning groups in these countries. Because the legislation is an integral part of the way in which indigenous people are defined and managed in relation to the State, it serves to elicit particular responses in landowner organisation and self-identification on the part of indigenous people. These pieces of legislation actively contour the progressive evolution of landowner social, territorial and political organisation at all levels in these nation states. The contributors to this volume provide in-depth anthropological case studies of social structural and cultural transformations engendered by the confrontation between states, developers and indigenous communities over rights to customarily owned land.
This book chronicles the extraordinary story of indigenous activism in the late twentieth century. Taking their claims for justice to law, indigenous peoples transformed debates about national identity and reframed the terms of belonging in settler states. - from the back cover.
Indigenous peoples have occupied their territories for thousands of years, territories that are increasingly being mined by an industry applying the most modern extractive, marketing, and transport technologies on a scale that can be difficult to comprehend. Mining reshapes landscapes, literally moving mountains and diverting rivers; the Indigenous owners of these landscapes often believe them to have been originally shaped by ancestor beings who still reside at mining locations. This book seeks to understand the political, social, economic, and cultural dynamic that is created by the relentless expansion of mining into Indigenous territories. Contributing to such an understanding involves a task of global significance: Indigenous peoples embody a large part of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity; their lands cover an estimated 25 per cent of the world's land surface, intersect with about 40 per cent of all ecologically intact landscapes, and contain a large proportion of the world's mineral resources. Must interaction between Indigenous peoples and mining involve the destruction of Indigenous peoples, territories, and cultures? Can the remarkable resilience that has allowed Indigenous peoples to survive for millennia enable them not only to survive, but to capitalize on the development opportunities offered by mining? What role are governments, international organizations, and civil society playing in shaping relations between mining and Indigenous peoples? Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh addresses these and other questions by drawing on his own 30 years of experience working with Indigenous communities as they deal with mining projects, and on the experiences of Indigenous peoples in some 15 countries from different regions of the globe.
