Australian Aboriginal Studies 

About: Australian Aboriginal Studies is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Indigenous & Project commissioning. It has an ISSN identifier of 0729-4352. Over the lifetime, 702 publications have been published receiving 6222 citations.

The wentworth lecture the end in the beginning: Re(de)finding aboriginality

Abstract: But this takes us too far ahead in the story, towards the end, 'although the end is in the beginning' (Ellison 1952, 9) Since first contact with the colonisers of this country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been the object of a continual flow of commentary and classification Even a fragment of the representation of and theory about Aboriginality captures the tenor of the visions

Anthropological texts and Indigenous standpoints

Abstract: 1998 marks the centenary of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait. This was an expedition of ambitious proportion and logistics, an expedition at the cutting edge of new scientific disciplines and knowledge emerging during the last century. The scholars (AC Haddon, W H R Rivers, CS Myers, W McDougall, S H Ray, A Wilkin, CS Seligmann) involved in this expedition were experts in a number of fields: zoology, ethnology, music, experimental psychology, and linguistics. Their work challenged and extended the intellectual boundaries of what was known and understood about 'primitive' peoples. The six-volume reports (hereafter Haddon Reports) produced from this expedition stand as one of the most comprehensive early attempts to document the lives and characteristics of a society of people before the onslaught of colonial expansion changed them forever and before Indigenous skills and knowledges were lost to the world.

Beyond Humbug: Transforming Government Engagement with Indigenous Australia

Abstract: Beyond Humbug: Transforming government engagement with Indigenous Australia Michael C Dillon and Neil D Westbury 2007 Seaview Press, West Lakes, SA, vii+243pp, ISBN 9781740084802 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Both Dillon and Westbury bring 30 years of close experience with remote Aboriginal communities to this book. (While they use the word 'Indigenous', Aboriginal Australians are the peoples meant). 'Humbug' is a good word in the book's title because of that longstanding poplar belief that a great deal of humbug is involved in dealings with Aboriginal peoples: humbug first on the part of government officials passing out money for benefit programs of uncertain value; humbug on the part of academics engaged in the 'Aboriginal studies industry'; humbug by Aborigines who have been swallowing too much misplaced welfare money; and, finally, looking from the Aboriginal side, a great deal of humbug by the White community that speaks fair words but avoids doing anything that might really support Aboriginal life and culture. The authors of Beyond Humbug give a verbal serve to all of the above because they find humbug in all of them. They do not claim to take up everything, warning also that each chapter is self-contained and can be read on its own, and the reader should not be surprised to find some divided opinions. The book is not just denunciation or shrill advocacy but, rather, an attempt to give reasons why so much labour, by so many well-intentioned persons, using so much money, has gone awry. In their introduction, Dillon and Westbury summarise some common half-truths about Aboriginal disadvantage. Economists say that Indigenous citizens should not be treated in separate legislative and administrative ways, since that only stymies their own economic development. Moreover, their culture, especially communal forms of property rights, is an obstacle to 'progress'. Historians and political scientists, for their part, have seen government intrusions as preventing Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty and as having dismantled their own normal authority networks. Anthropologists emphasise that cultural differences were not taken into account in making policy, with the result that the programs did not mesh with situations on the ground. Finally, a continuous diet of welfare has generated a climate of dependency that has sapped, fatally, all sense of personal responsibility and initiative. Attempts to overcome this passivity by coercion and imposition do not work, as Australian history has amply shown. If all these opinions say something about government failure, how can we develop, as they put it, a 'comprehensive re-engagement policy framework'? Dillon and Westbury note that WEH Stanner (1968) put his finger on a basic problem when he wrote in his Boyer Lectures of the 'cult of forgetfulness', and of the 'cult of disremembering' from the beginning in 1790; Dillon and Westbury accept his judgment (p.l). The core theme of this book is about a 'structural government disengagement' that has left the need, as they put it, 'for establishing effective institutional frameworks for nation identity' (p.5). To accomplish this, a transforming of present government disengagement between Aboriginal peoples and other Australians will be crucial. In small remote communities in northern Australia, the absence of police, nurses, teachers and other officials has left a veritable governance vacuum. Outside major towns and cities, local government is feeble, where it exists at all. The situation is serious enough, using World Bank and United Nations indices, to call into question the legitimacy of governance in northern remote communities and to run the risk of harbouring a failed state within our borders. Similar comments have been made recently by Lieutenant General John Sanderson (2008). Not only is national reputation at risk, but even national security (cf. Chapter 2, p.30). There are, of course, two radical ways of remedying disengagement: one path is to disengage completely and allow an independent Aboriginal state to form in the north with its own culture, its own government, its own way of doing things; the other path is to do just the opposite, to absorb and integrate Aboriginal Australians into the Australian mainstream until their culture effectively disappears. …

Weapons and Wunan: Production, Function and Exchange of Kimberley Points

Abstract: We describe the production, function and exchange of projectile points in the Kimberley region, northwestern Australia. Our aims are to identify problems in the interpretation of residues and use-wear, and to assess whether aspects of exchange can be inferred from microscopic study of these archaeological points. For the late prehistoric and contact periods, we identify change in production technique, artefact design and function. We also document microscopic traces (use-wear, resin, ochre, starch granules and apparent blood films) on glass, stone and ceramic points from museum collections and excavated artefacts. Although ethnography suggests that size and elaborate flaking may indicate production for exchange, we conclude that microscopic traces alone do not.

'We don't leave our identities at the city limits': Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban localities

Abstract: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who live in cities and towns are often thought of as 'less Indigenous' than those who live 'in the bush', as though they are 'fake' Aboriginal people - while 'real' Aboriginal people live 'on communities' and 'real' Torres Strait Islander people live 'on islands'. Yet more than 70 percent of Australia's Indigenous peoples live in urban locations (ABS 2007), and urban living is just as much part of a reality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as living in remote discrete communities. This paper examines the contradictions and struggles that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience when living in urban environments. It looks at the symbols of place and space on display in the Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane to demonstrate how prevailing social, political and economic values are displayed. Symbols of place and space are never neutral, and this paper argues that they can either marginalise and oppress urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, or demonstrate that they are included and engaged.