Nicolas Peterson

Citizenship and indigenous Australians : changing conceptions and possibilities

1. Introduction Nicolas Peterson and Will Sanders Part I. Historical Conceptions: 2. Nineteenth century bureaucratic constructions of indigenous identities in New South Wales Marilyn Wood 3. From nomadism to citizenship: A. P. Elkin and Aboriginal advancement Geoff Gray Part II. Contemporary Conceptions: 4. Indigenous citizenship and self-determination: the problem of shared responsibilities Tim Rowse 5. Welfare colonialism and citizenship: politics, economics and agency Nicolas Peterson 6. Representation matters: the 1967 referendum and citizenship Bain Attwood and Andrew Marcus 7. Citizenship and the CDEP scheme: equal rights, difference and appropriateness Will Sanders 8. Citizenship and the logic of resource development: indigenous responses to mining in the Gulf country David Trigger Part III. Emerging Possibilities: 9. Whose citizen? Whose country? Peter Read 10. Citizenship and legitimacy in post-colonial Australia Richard Mulgan 11. International law context Garth Nettheim 12. Sovereignty Henry Reynolds.

Ethnographic Interpretations of the Prehistory of Western Arnhem Land

The prehistoric sequence in North West Arnhem Land is described. This is derived from archaeological excavations in stratified deposits of the rock shelters in two adjacent ecological zones: a coastal plain and a plateau. A marked cultural dichotomy emerges between the material in these two zones, and this difference apparently persisted for some 7,000 years until the ethnographic present, about 100 years ago. An attempt is made in this paper to account for this phenomenon by drawing on the field evidence, historical records, and modern ethnographic observations.

Experiments in self-determination: Histories of the outstation movement in Australia

Overview Outstations, which dramatically increased in numbers in the 1970s, are small, decentralised and relatively permanent communities of kin established by Aboriginal people on land that has social, cultural or economic significance to them. In 2015 they yet again came under attack, this time as an expensive lifestyle choice that can no longer be supported by state governments. Yet outstations are the original, and most striking, manifestation of remote-area Aboriginal people’s aspirations for self-determination, and of the life projects by which they seek, and have sought, autonomy in deciding the meaning of their life independently of projects promoted by the state and market. They are not simply projects of isolation from outside influences, as they have sometimes been characterised, but attempts by people to take control of the course of their lives. In the sometimes acrimonious debates about outstations, the lived experiences, motivations and histories of existing communities are missing. For this reason, we invited a number of anthropological witnesses to the early period in which outstations gained a purchase in remote Australia to provide accounts of what these communities were like, and what their residents’ aspirations and experiences were. Our hope is that these closer-to-the-ground accounts provide insight into, and understanding of, what Indigenous aspirations were in the establishment and organisation of these communities.

Community Development, Civil Society and Local Government in the Future of Remote Northern Territory Growth Towns

In 2008, community government was abolished in the remote Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory and centralised in large shires. It seems safe to assume that, for the foreseeable future, the population of most of these communities will remain predominantly Aboriginal. While such communities will continue to be centres of change, the co-residence of large populations of Aboriginal people also facilitates the reproduction of values and practices, some of which create a ‘seemingly intractable gulf between policy goals and actual community life’ (M and R Tonkinson 2010, 68). Ignoring this problem is not the answer. Despite past problems with community government, it is one of the few avenues for real community development and a chance to build a notion of civil society.

The German-language tradition of ethnography in Australia

Native title and statutory land claims under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) have been central to creating a renewed interest in early ethnographic accounts of Aboriginal life at a time when most current academic research into Aboriginal issues is focused on contemporary social problems, health matters and development. This is because to prove the existence of native title, Aboriginal claimants have to define the rights and interests in land that existed at sovereignty, identify the group that held these rights at that time, demonstrate a continued connection between these original rights holders, the contemporary claimants and their land and show how the rights and interests in the land are being exercised today. This has led anthropologists preparing claims to turn to the earliest ethnographic sources across the continent to establish what the original situation was likely to have been in a region and to demonstrate continuity of connection.

German Ethnography in Australia

1 Worms later Anglicised his Christian name to Ernest. SAC stands for Society of the Catholic Apostolate, colloquially referred to as the Pallottines, named after their Italian founder, (Saint) Vincent Pallotti. The author acknowledges the assistance of the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship ARC FT100100364. 2 Kurt Benesch, Mission Aktuell 1/1975, in Worms, Ernst, P. (1891–1963), pp. 1–27, Zentralarchiv der Pallottinerprovinz [hereinafter ZAPP], Limburg. 3 Worms to Nekes, Broome, 22 March 1932, in Nekes, Australien B7d, l(2), ZAPP. Historicising culture: Father Ernst Worms and the German anthropological traditions1 Thanks for reminiscences and other help to Reuben Brown, Pat Engberg, Erich Kolig, Jacqie Lambert, Merrin Mason, Anthony McCardell, Kirsty Murray, Ursula Oehme, Frank Rijavec, John Stanton, Dina and Henry Thieberger (for translations) and Anthony Thomas. Parts of this work have been supported by Australian Research Council grants DP0984419 and FT140100214. Carl Georg von Brandenstein’s legacy: The past in the present

Anthropology, Public Policy and Social Process in Indigenous Australia

These four papers were originally presented at a two-day celebration of sixty years of anthropology at the Australian National University as part of a session entitled ‘Anthropology, Publics and Aboriginal Policy: Evidence and Engagement’. Like much other work on indigenous policy in Australia over the past half-dozen years (for example, Altman and Hinkson 2010), this focus was prompted, in part, by the debate surrounding the drastic policy step taken in relation to Aboriginal communities and people in the Northern Territory in June 2007, formally known as the Northern Territory Emergency Response, but more generally known as the Intervention. This radical change to policy was brought about by wide concern over conditions in Aboriginal communities, including studies that concluded there were unacceptably high levels of domestic violence and child abuse among the Aboriginal population (Gordon et al. 2002; Anderson and Wild 2007; also see Sullivan, this issue, for more). Many among the general public and some in the anthropological community were concerned by the almost complete absence of anthropologists from the ensuing public debate about the Intervention and policy in Aboriginal affairs more generally. So we sought papers relating to policy, anthropology and the Northern Territory. At the conference, we began with three papers describing day-to-day aspects of the social problems facing Aboriginal people in Alice Springs*the centre of the troubles*from the perspectives of people working closely with Aboriginal people on issues of violence and community development. We expect that these detailed, valuable papers will appear elsewhere. After the conference, we began to realise that some of the papers*those we have ended up presenting here*spoke not only to our original question of the relation between anthropology and policy, nor simply to empirical and critical questions provoked by the Intervention and storm of proand counter-opinion following it. They were also products of our ongoing work towards understanding social processes