Indigenous-Settler Relations in Australia and the World – serie

This volume explores Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ interactions with public sector bureaucracies. The authors featured here consider how bureaucracy relates to colonialism, race, and sovereignty in a post-neoliberal world. They also consider the diverse ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working within and across these sectors negotiate and engage with bureaucratic structures. Some contributors offer critiques of bureaucratic hierarchies, and others provide insights into the complexity of bureaucratic culture, drawing attention to the complex strategies of Indigenous people who aim to make bureaucracy ‘work’ for themselves and their communities. The volume overall provides a nuanced and substantive analysis of the relation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ to the contemporary administrative state, and an innovative perspective from which to examine Indigenous-settler relations. For those concerned with Indigenous policymaking, this volume puts forward a new approach that focuses on policy relationships, rather than processes or outcomes.

This book privileges Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in research and serves as a voice in taking on some of the more marginal topics within methodologies. It is significant in that it is written by indigenous scholars themselves. The contributors shed light, for example, on Queer BlaQ bodies and place Indigenous women as central in reimagining fair academic practice; others return to their foundational texts to reflect on the growth of Indigenous Standpoint Theory. This book sees Indigenous Peoples as holding greater significance within research objectives and institutional practices and reimagines a research world embracing storytelling as foundational to academia. It is intended for students and early researchers, particularly Indigenous researchers, whilst also serving as an invaluable textbook for non-Indigenous people as it aids in explaining and outlining Indigenous research and is a valuable tool in the classroom and with research students. It demonstrates that Indigenous research approaches can sit beside and be equal to Western research, especially when engaging with the ethics process and for PhD students. This book is invaluable for non-Indigenous allies and researchers globally to further explain and outline Aboriginal (Australian) Indigenous research.

This book looks at deep-seated elements of racism in Indigenous-settler relations through detailed analyses of the October 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia and its outcome---and discusses what might come next. The Voice to Parliament referendum proposed a constitutional amendment to create an Indigenous advisory body in the Australian Parliament. The referendum met with a resounding defeat. Against this background, the book analyses survey results during the referendum that asked direct questions about attitudes towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as about policies and issues important to many Indigenous peoples. It situates Australia’s experience in this election with other research on attitudes towards Indigenous peoples, rights, and policy issues. The book also interrogates another major survey in the lead-up to the referendum, questioning those findings in relation to racism. It looks at possible learnings for the social sciences about Indigenous politics and examines the ways in which Australian settler nationalism created obstacles to the referendum’s success and considers the limits of deliberation for Indigenous political claims.

This edited collection is an essential resource for understanding contemporary Indigenous-settler relations across three major settler colonial contexts, bringing together First Nations and settler scholars, practitioners, artists and community organisations from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA. The book provides students and researchers with critical frameworks for analysing how colonial power relations shape contemporary injustices while exploring Indigenous-led pathways toward transformation.Organised into three sections – Words of the Land, Unmaking Extraction, and Restoring Country, Restoring Justice – the collection demonstrates how relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world are articulated through Indigenous water governance, cultural restoration projects, decolonial museum practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-controlled care systems. Chapters engage theoretical rigor with practical case studies, offering concrete examples of how Indigenous knowledge systems provide solutions to environmental and social challenges.Featuring majority Indigenous authorship and innovative cross-cultural collaborations, this collection models meaningful scholarly engagement while centring Indigenous perspectives. Essential for scholarships in Indigenous studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and social justice, this volume contains critical insights in envisioning more just futures grounded in relationality and care.

This book is a retelling of the history of Liberia’s formation through the lens of settler colonial theory to understand the antagonisms that continue to shape contemporary citizenship debates. It discusses Liberia as representing an interesting puzzle on the distinction between settler colonialism and postcolonialism. While Liberia is often heralded as one of two African countries that were never colonised, this book presents the country as a unique settler state established by free and formerly enslaved Black Americans, who, the author argues, were settler-colonists despite their positioning as Black people in the slaveholding regime. The book, therefore, complicates conventional perspectives by unravelling Liberia’s settler colonial “present”, highlighting the persistent impact of historical structures on the contemporary socio-political landscape. It shows that when the Black Americans dispossessed and marginalised the Africans they met upon arrival in Liberia, they established the antagonisms and enduring unequal structures that continue to shape citizenship and identity debates in the post-war era. By exploring Liberia's contemporary and contentious discourse on dual citizenship, the book delves into the nuanced terrain of claims and counterclaims surrounding proposed changes to the country's citizenship laws.

This collection brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and experts from Australia and beyond to examine the persistent settler-colonial patterns of denial, ignorance and antipathy that continue to constrain the possibilities of truth and justice in settler-colonial societies. Written from diverse cultural and disciplinary perspectives, the chapters identify and analyse the social, cultural and political barriers to listening, hearing, and responding on the part of settlers, and the settler state/s. Prompted by the unsuccessful 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and the constitutional recognition of the First Peoples of Australia as the First Peoples of Australia, the volume reorients the discussion. Rather than returning to questions of how truth-telling might be improved or made more persuasive, it shifts the focus towards the continuing refusal of settlers (and the settler state/s) to adequately and ethically engage with the truths that have already been told. The chapters investigate patterns of denial, deflection, and structural resistance, exposing their contradictions and points of vulnerability with the express aim of contributing to their undoing. While a number of contributions paint a sobering picture of the enduring impediments to meaningful change, others—particularly those from First Nations authors—highlight the continuing, generative, healing work of truth-telling and/as activism already underway. These contributions foreground the transformative potential of Indigenous-led truth-telling practices, not only as responses to settler inaction, but as active forces for reimagining and reshaping settler–Indigenous relations.

This edited collection discusses conceptual ambiguities related indigenous groups in India, known as Adivasis (original inhabitants), and focuses particularly on Central Indian indigenous groups. The chapters review and discuss colonial conceptions of primitive tribes in academic and policy literature from the West and from Indian scholars, and their continuing influence in the postcolonial India. The book analyses historical and contemporary academic and policy views on Adivasis, writings from indigenous scholar themselves, and looks at how indigenous groups have negotiated the Indian socio-political-economic space as subjects and objects of custom, forest, land, religion and art in the past two centuries. It discusses the various ways in which Adivasi cultural and political protest movements have redefined their spaces of existence, but also that much more reimagining is needed to situate Adivasi groups as diverse and distinct but as an integral part of the Indian mindscape.

This book examines contemporary Indigenous affairs through questions of relationality, presenting a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on the what, who, when, where, and why of Indigenous–settler relations. It also explores relationality, a key analytical framework with which to explore Indigenous–settler relations in terms of what the relational characteristics are; who steps into these relations and how; the different temporal and historical moments in which these relations take place and to what effect; where these relations exist around the world and the variations they take on in different places; and why these relations are important for the examination of social and political life in the 21st century.Its unique approach represents a deliberate move away from both settler-colonial studies, which examines historical and present impacts of settler states on Indigenous peoples, and from postcolonial and decolonial scholarship, which predominantly focuses on how Indigenous peoples speak back to the settler state. It explores the issues that inform, shape, and give social, legal, and political life to relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, both in Australia and globally.

This book examines contemporary Indigenous affairs through questions of relationality, presenting a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on the what, who, when, where, and why of Indigenous–settler relations. It also explores relationality, a key analytical framework with which to explore Indigenous–settler relations in terms of what the relational characteristics are; who steps into these relations and how; the different temporal and historical moments in which these relations take place and to what effect; where these relations exist around the world and the variations they take on in different places; and why these relations are important for the examination of social and political life in the 21st century.Its unique approach represents a deliberate move away from both settler-colonial studies, which examines historical and present impacts of settler states on Indigenous peoples, and from postcolonial and decolonial scholarship, which predominantly focuses on how Indigenous peoples speak back to the settler state. It explores the issues that inform, shape, and give social, legal, and political life to relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, both in Australia and globally.

This book is the first to celebrate the stories of this group of Aboriginal mentors and leaders and present them in a form that is accessible to both academic and general audiences. In this book, Aboriginal sport coaches from all over Australia share stories about their involvement in sport and community, offering insight into the diverse experiences of Aboriginal people in settler colonial Australia.This collection amplifies the public voice of Aboriginal coaches who are transforming the social, cultural, and political lives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. These stories have been overlooked in public discussion about sport and indigeneity. Frank and often funny, these intimate narratives provide insight into the unique experiences and attitudes of this group of coaches. This book deepens our understanding of the shared and contested history of Aboriginal peoples’ engagement with sport in Australia.

This book is the first to celebrate the stories of this group of Aboriginal mentors and leaders and present them in a form that is accessible to both academic and general audiences. In this book, Aboriginal sport coaches from all over Australia share stories about their involvement in sport and community, offering insight into the diverse experiences of Aboriginal people in settler colonial Australia.This collection amplifies the public voice of Aboriginal coaches who are transforming the social, cultural, and political lives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. These stories have been overlooked in public discussion about sport and indigeneity. Frank and often funny, these intimate narratives provide insight into the unique experiences and attitudes of this group of coaches. This book deepens our understanding of the shared and contested history of Aboriginal peoples’ engagement with sport in Australia.

This book takes us inside the complex lived experience of being a First Nations student in predominantly non-Indigenous schools in Australia. Built around the first-hand narratives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alumni from across the nation, scholarly analysis is layered with personal accounts and reflections. The result is a wide ranging and longitudinal exploration of the enduring impact of years spent boarding which challenges narrow and exclusively empirical measures currently used to define ‘success’ in education.  Used as instruments of repression and assimilation, boarding, or residential, schools have played a long and contentious role throughout the settler-colonial world. In Canada and North America, the full scale of human tragedy associated with residential schools is still being exposed. By contrast, in contemporary Australia, boarding schools are characterised as beacons of opportunity and hope; places of empowerment and, in the best, of cultural restitution.In this work, young people interviewed over a span of seven years reflect, in real time, on the intended and unintended consequences boarding has had in their own lives. They relate expected and dramatically unexpected outcomes. They speak to the long-term benefits of education, and to the intergenerational reach of education policy.This book assists practitioners and policy makers to critically review the structures, policies, and cultural assumptions embedded in the institutions in which they work, to the benefit of First Nations students and their families. It encourages new and collaborative approaches Indigenous education programs.

This book takes us inside the complex lived experience of being a First Nations student in predominantly non-Indigenous schools in Australia. Built around the first-hand narratives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alumni from across the nation, scholarly analysis is layered with personal accounts and reflections. The result is a wide ranging and longitudinal exploration of the enduring impact of years spent boarding which challenges narrow and exclusively empirical measures currently used to define ‘success’ in education.  Used as instruments of repression and assimilation, boarding, or residential, schools have played a long and contentious role throughout the settler-colonial world. In Canada and North America, the full scale of human tragedy associated with residential schools is still being exposed. By contrast, in contemporary Australia, boarding schools are characterised as beacons of opportunity and hope; places of empowerment and, in the best, of cultural restitution.In this work, young people interviewed over a span of seven years reflect, in real time, on the intended and unintended consequences boarding has had in their own lives. They relate expected and dramatically unexpected outcomes. They speak to the long-term benefits of education, and to the intergenerational reach of education policy.This book assists practitioners and policy makers to critically review the structures, policies, and cultural assumptions embedded in the institutions in which they work, to the benefit of First Nations students and their families. It encourages new and collaborative approaches Indigenous education programs.

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.

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.

This edited volume reflects on the profound effort undertaken by artists to contest settler denial and amnesia to disclose Australia's foundations in racialised violence and land theft. The book examines how First Nations creative and cultural practitioners have turned to the unique spaces of art and culture to remember and mourn the profound loss of life caused by British invasion and colonisation in the absence of official commemoration and public acknowledgement of the damage caused. It significantly focuses on a number of creative practitioners driving this powerful memory-work, containing contributions from some of the leading thinkers on truth-telling through creative practice, including Fiona Foley, Dianne Jones, Vicki Couzens, Julie Gough, r e a, Tony Birch, Paola Balla, Neika Lehman, Arlie Alizzi, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Kate Golding, Odette Kelada and Clare Land. An important contribution to scholarship on the public memorialisation of difficult histories, this significant edited collection foregrounds First Nations, female, queer, trans and gender diverse artists and scholars from the continent that is known as 'Australia'.Taken together these deeply researched, considered texts, poems and conversations lend vital, critical perspectives on the ways artists are confronting settler colonial Australia’s toxic colonial memorial culture of denial. This book recognises that through a range of creative means and mediums, artists and cultural practitioners are making essential contributions to truth-telling, devising evocative, sensitive ways to make the injustices committed against First Peoples not only visible and tangible, but also strongly felt and grieved.