This book focuses on Indigenous self-determined and community-owned responses to complex socioeconomic and political challenges in Australia, and explores Indigenous policy development and policy expertise. It critically considers current practices and issues central to policy change and Indigenous futures. The book foregrounds the resurgence that is taking place in Indigenous governing and policy-making, providing case studies of local and community-based policy development and implementation. The chapters highlight new Australian work on what is an international phenomenon. This book brings together senior and early career political scientists and policy scholars, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars working on problems of Indigenous policy and governance.
Globally, far too many discussions about Indigenous governance and development are dominated by accounts of disadvantage, deficit and failure. This book paints a different international picture, testifying to Indigenous peoples as agents of governance innovation and successful developers in their own right, telling stories in their words, from their own experiences and countries. From Indigenous voices, we hear alternative concepts and measures of effectiveness, legitimacy, success and sustainability. Indigenous stories and voices are captured as case study chapters, written in lively, clear language about what is happening that is promising and productive in Indigenous self-determined governance for self-determined development in Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the USA; all English colonial–settler countries.
Singularizing progressive time binds pasts, presents, and futures to cause-effect chains overdetermining existence in education and social life more broadly. Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place disrupts the common sense of "futures" in education or "knowledge for the future" by examining the multiplicity of possible destinies in coexistent experiences of living and learning. Taking place is the intention this book has to embody and world multiplicity across the landscapes that sustain life. The book contends that Indigenous perspectives open spaces for new forms of sociality and relationships with knowledge, time, and landscapes. Through Goanna walking and caring for Country; conjuring encounters between forests, humans, and the more-than-human; dreams, dream literacies, and planes of existence; the spirit realm taking place; ancestral luchas; Musquem hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ Land pedagogies; and resoluteness and gratitude for atunhetsla/the spirit within, the chapters in the collection become politicocultural and (hi)storical statements challenging the singular order of the future towards multiple encounters of all that is to come. In doing so, Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place offers various points of departure to (hi)story educational futures more responsive to the multiplicities of lives in what has not yet become. The contributors in this volume are Indigenous women, women of Indigenous backgrounds, Black, Red, and Brown women, and women whose scholarship is committed to Indigenous matters across spaces and times. Their work in the chapters often defies prescriptions of academic conventions, and at times occupies them to enunciate ontologies of the not yet. As people historically fabricated "women," their scholarly production critically intervenes on time to break teleological education that births patriarchal-ized and master-ized forms of living. What emerges are presences that undiscipline education and educationalized social life breaking futures out of time. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indigenous studies, future studies, post-colonial studies in education, settler colonialism and coloniality, diversity and multiculturalism in education, and international comparative education.
Over the past four decades Aboriginal people living in remote and regional Australia have been empowered by land rights and native title laws to claim back large tracts of their ancestral lands. Today the Indigenous estate covers over 20 per cent of the continent and includes areas of globally significant biodiversity and cultural value, many now declared as Indigenous Protected Areas in the National Reserve System. But none of the Indigenous estate is in its pre-colonial condition and it faces a myriad of environmental threats.People on Country, Vital Landscapes, Indigenous Futures draws on a diversity of perspectives to document a significant social and environmental movement that is quietly gathering momentum across this vast Indigenous estate. This series of essays, drawn from an unusual collaboration between university researchers and Indigenous land owners, tells a little-known story about Aboriginal people who are living on, working on and caring for the lands and seas that they own and manage. The ongoing struggles by Indigenous people to conserve and rehabilitate the outstanding natural and cultural values of their ancestral lands deserve wide recognition and acclaim.This book seeks to reposition Indigenous people and their caring for country activities from the margins to the very core of the growing national conversation on issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion. It challenges the Australian public, policy community and politicians to re-imagine the role that the Caring for Country movement, deploying a mix of western scientific and Indigenous ecological knowledge systems and techniques, must play in the proper environmental management of Australia in the 21st century.______________________________________________________** A short video of Garawa and Waanyi fire management in the Gulf country was released November 2013 as part of the work done by Dr Kerins with the National Environmental Research Program. They have achieved significant results in a highly challenging area. Read Media Release... Watch Video...______________________________________________________*** 2015 Peter Rawlinson Award winner: Jack Wongili Green Read more..."Jacky Wongili Green from Borroloola in the southwest region of the Gulf of Carpentaria is the most worthy winner of the 2015 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award. Some of Jack's important achievements were regaining ownership of land, the forming of ranger groups, implementing management practices to avoid more vast wildfires and bringing about environmental and social changes in a remote part of Australia. Jacky has used his talent as an artist to express his concerns for the land and culture, especially at McArthur River where the mining is polluting the water and land, and also damaging sacred sites. It has taken bravery and sustained personal effort to speak out and to question government legislation affecting the region. Jacky has truly made an outstanding contribution." - Marnie Rawlinson, Peter Rawlinson Award Presentation, ACF AGM 2015
In the public debate about the success or failure of Australia's Indigenous policies, opinions have been grounded more often in personal experience than in social scientists' research. This work asks: What vision of the good life should guide an assessment of policy?
This ground-breaking Handbook explores the key legal, political and policy questions concerning the implementation of Indigenous rights across the world. An exciting mix of expert Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors analyse the complex dynamics of contestation, engagement, advocacy and refusal between governments and Indigenous peoples, presenting a profound challenge to mainstream policy scholarship. Chapters employ both country-level case studies as well as global analyses, covering key themes such as self-determination, sovereignty, culture, land and territory. They showcase the extensive evidence that policy imposed on Indigenous peoples without their involvement is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Through examining the ongoing impacts of colonisation, contributors identify future pathways for Indigenous public policy, including truth-telling processes, resurgence movements, and international human rights law. Ultimately, the Handbook highlights the vital importance and extensive policy benefits of treating Indigenous people as rights-bearing members of sovereign and self-determining Indigenous nations. The Handbook of Indigenous Public Policy will be essential reading for students and scholars of Indigenous studies, public policy, international relations, and political science. It will also be invaluable for policy-makers looking to centre Indigenous people and their rights in the policy-making process.
As the global ‘data revolution’ accelerates, how can the data rights and interests of indigenous peoples be secured? Premised on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this book argues that indigenous peoples have inherent and inalienable rights relating to the collection, ownership and application of data about them, and about their lifeways and territories. As the first book to focus on indigenous data sovereignty, it asks: what does data sovereignty mean for indigenous peoples, and how is it being used in their pursuit of self-determination? The varied group of mostly indigenous contributors theorise and conceptualise this fast-emerging field and present case studies that illustrate the challenges and opportunities involved. These range from indigenous communities grappling with issues of identity, governance and development, to national governments and NGOs seeking to formulate a response to indigenous demands for data ownership. While the book is focused on the CANZUS states of Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the United States, much of the content and discussion will be of interest and practical value to a broader global audience. ‘A debate-shaping book … it speaks to a fast-emerging field; it has a lot of important things to say; and the timing is right.’ — Stephen Cornell, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Chair of the Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona ‘The effort … in this book to theorise and conceptualise data sovereignty and its links to the realisation of the rights of indigenous peoples is pioneering and laudable.’ — Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Baguio City, Philippines
Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as ‘a people of the past’—their culture somehow ‘frozen’ in time, their identities tied to static notions of ‘authenticity’, and their communities understood as ‘in decline’. But this narrative erases the many ways that Indigenous people are actively engaged in future-orientated practice, including through new technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core themes—including identity, community, hate, desire and death—we seek to understand both the practice and broader politics of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler narratives of Indigenous ‘deficiency’, we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being ‘a people of the past’, we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.
This ground-breaking Handbook explores the key legal, political and policy questions concerning the implementation of Indigenous rights across the world. Expert contributors analyse the complex dynamics of contestation, engagement, advocacy and refusal between governments and Indigenous Peoples, presenting a profound challenge to mainstream policy scholarship.
