In this anthropology subject students analyse contemporary issues in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the Australian State. Are Indigenous Australians to be understood as citizens like other Australians, as the descendants of a dispossessed people with unsettled claims against the settler state, or both? What implications do these differing positions have for how the Australian nation is understood? We will examine these questions anthropologically by looking at some of the following: Indigenous Australia and the criminal justice system; the politics and law of land rights and native title; relations with the welfare state; the issues and problems surrounding self-management and self-determination; and the role of public Aboriginality in Australian nationalism. In this subject we will primarily use perspectives from anthropology and also from sociology, politics and legal studies.

Subject rules

Readings