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Better Than Welfare? »
Work and livelihoods for Indigenous Australians after CDEP
Edited by: Kirrily Jordan
Publication date: August 2016
The end of the very long-standing Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in 2015 marked a critical juncture in Australian Indigenous policy history. For more than 30 years, CDEP had been among the biggest and most influential programs in the Indigenous affairs portfolio, employing many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. More recently, it had also become a focus of intense political contestation that culminated in its ultimate demise.
This book examines the consequences of its closure for Indigenous people, communities and organisations. The end of CDEP is first situated in its broader historical and political context: the debates over notions of ‘self-determination’ versus ‘mainstreaming’ and the enduring influence of concerns about ‘passive welfare’ and ‘mutual obligation’. In this way, the focus on CDEP highlights more general trends in Indigenous policymaking, and questions whether the dominant government approach is on the right track.
Each chapter takes a different disciplinary approach to this question, variously focusing on the consequences of change for community and economic development, individual work habits and employment outcomes, and institutional capacity within the Indigenous sector. Across the case studies examined, the chapters suggest that the end of CDEP has heralded the emergence of a greater reliance on welfare rather than the increased employment outcomes the government had anticipated. Concluding that CDEP was ‘better than welfare’ in many ways, the book offers encouragement to policymakers to ensure that future reforms generate livelihood options for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians that are, in turn, better than CDEP.
The Fijian Colonial Experience »
A study of the neotraditional order under British colonial rule prior to World War II
Authored by: Timothy J. Macnaught
Publication date: June 2016
Indigenous Fijians were singularly fortunate in having a colonial administration that halted the alienation of communally owned land to foreign settlers and that, almost for a century, administered their affairs in their own language and through culturally congenial authority structures and institutions. From the outset, the Fijian Administration was criticised as paternalistic and stifling of individualism. But for all its problems it sustained, at least until World War II, a vigorously autonomous and peaceful social and political world in quite affluent subsistence — underpinning the celebrated exuberance of the culture exploited by the travel industry ever since.
New Mana »
Transformations of a Classic Concept in Pacific Languages and Cultures
Edited by: Matt Tomlinson, Ty P. Kāwika Tengan
Publication date: April 2016
‘Mana’, a term denoting spiritual power, is found in many Pacific Islands languages. In recent decades, the term has been taken up in New Age movements and online fantasy gaming. In this book, 16 contributors examine mana through ethnographic, linguistic, and historical lenses to understand its transformations in past and present. The authors consider a range of contexts including Indigenous sovereignty movements, Christian missions and Bible translations, the commodification of cultural heritage, and the dynamics of diaspora. Their investigations move across diverse island groups—Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Hawai‘i, and French Polynesia—and into Australia, North America and even cyberspace. A key insight that the volume develops is that mana can be analysed most productively by paying close attention to its ethical and aesthetic dimensions.
Since the late nineteenth century, mana has been an object of intense scholarly interest. Writers in many fields including anthropology, linguistics, history, religion, philosophy, and missiology have long debated how the term should best be understood. The authors in this volume review mana’s complex intellectual history but also describe the remarkable transformations going on in the present day as scholars, activists, church leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs take up mana in new ways.
Brokers and boundaries »
Colonial exploration in Indigenous territory
Publication date: April 2016
Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers’ motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred.
'This collection breaks new ground in its emphasis on Indigenous agency and Indigenous–explorer interactions. It will be of value to historians and others for a very long time.'
— Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney
'In bringing together this group of authors, the editors have brought to histories of colonialism the individuality of these intermediaries, whose lives intersected colonial exploration in Australia and New Guinea.'
— Dr Jude Philp, Macleay Museum
Engaging Indigenous Economy »
Debating diverse approaches
Edited by: Will Sanders
Publication date: April 2016
The engagement of Indigenous Australians in economic activity is a matter of long-standing public concern and debate. Jon Altman has been intellectually engaged with Indigenous economic activity for almost 40 years, most prominently through his elaboration of the concept of the hybrid economy, and most recently through his sustained and trenchant critique of policy. He has inspired others also to engage with these important issues, both through his writing and through his position as the foundation Director of The Australian National University’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy research from 1990 to 2010.
The year 2014 saw both Jon’s 60th birthday and his retirement from CAEPR. This collection of essays marks those events. Contributors include long‑standing colleagues from the disciplines of economics, anthropology and political science, and younger scholars who have been inspired by Jon’s approach in developing their own research projects. All point to the complexity as well as the importance of engaging with Indigenous economic activity — conceptually, empirically and as a strategic concern for public policy.
Experiments in self-determination »
Histories of the outstation movement in Australia
Edited by: Nicolas Peterson, Fred Myers
Publication date: January 2016
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.
This volume will be a great addition not only to the origins and history of outstations, but in light of the closing of over 100 Aboriginal communities in Western Australia, it should be a required bedtime reading for all politicians across Australia. The contributors do not simply concentrate on the so-called outstations movement of the 1970s, but rather help the reader understand why in the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, Aboriginal people moved away from cattle stations, missions and settlements to reconstruct their moral compass in settings which made more contemporaneous sense, not only to them but often to the whites who were there as well.
—Professor Francoise Dussart, University of Connecticut.
In Defence of Country »
Life Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Servicemen and Women
Authored by: Noah Riseman
Publication date: January 2016
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been protecting country since time immemorial. One way they have continued these traditions in recent times is through service in the Australian military, both overseas and within Australia. In Defence of Country presents a selection of life stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ex-servicemen and women who served in the Australian Army, Navy and Air Force after World War Two. In their own words, participants discuss a range of issues including why they joined up; racial discrimination; the Stolen Generations; leadership; discipline; family; war and peace; education and skills development; community advocacy; and their hopes for the future of Indigenous Australia. Individually and collectively, the life stories in this book highlight the many contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women have made, and continue to make, in defence of country.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 39 »
Edited by: Liz Conor
Publication date: December 2015
Volume 39 presents a special section on Aboriginal war service, edited by Allison Cadzow, Kristyn Harman and Noah Riseman. The contributors reappraise narratives and foster new avenues of inquiry, particularly on the impact of war service on families and communities, and explore how the entrance of Aboriginal men into Australian military service disrupted accustomed notions of defence of country. John Maynard extends this service back to the South African Anglo-Boer War. Andrea Gerrard and Kristyn Harman track the aftermath of the First World War for Tasmanian soldiers of Aboriginal descent. Philippa Scarlett challenges the ‘mateship myth’ of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) of the First World War. The denial of repatriation benefits fuelled Aboriginal people’s post-war disenchantment and the political agitation of the 1920s and 1930s, as Jessica Horton shows. She finds it was demand for land exacerbated by the Soldier Settlement Scheme that precipitated the closure of reserves, creating a new ‘home front’ for Gunditjmara veterans resisting ongoing dispossession. Kristyn Harman looks at correspondence between white women and Aboriginal soldiers during the Second World War as overseen by the Aborigines Uplift Society’s national comforts auxiliary.
In the other articles in this volume, Sharon Delmege investigates policy implementation at Allawah Grove Native Settlement (1957–69). Anne O’Brien focuses on provisioning at Ernabella mission, South Australia in 1937. Steven Anderson looks at Indigenous executions in colonial South Australia, where public hangings were reintroduced, but only for Indigenous capital offenders. Greg Blyton casts light on the little-known story of Harry Brown, guide to Ludwig Leichhardt on two expeditions into the interior. Robin Barrington provides a corrective to the colonial visual archive in her examination of public constructions of Yamaji individuals by Daisy Bates and Alexander Morton.
Aboriginal History Inc. is a publishing organisation based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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A Mission Divided »
Race, Culture and Colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission
Authored by: Dr Kirstie Close-Barry
Publication date: December 2015
This book provides insight into the long process of decolonisation within the Methodist Overseas Missions of Australasia, a colonial institution that operated in the British colony of Fiji. The mission was a site of work for Europeans, Fijians and Indo-Fijians, but each community operated separately, as the mission was divided along ethnic lines in 1901. This book outlines the colonial concepts of race and culture, as well as antagonism over land and labour, that were used to justify this separation. Recounting the stories told by the mission’s leadership, including missionaries and ministers, to its grassroots membership, this book draws on archival and ethnographic research to reveal the emergence of ethno-nationalisms in Fiji, the legacies of which are still being managed in the post-colonial state today.
Analysing in part the story of her own ancestors, Kirstie Barry develops a fascinating account of the relationship between Christian proselytization and Pacific nationalism, showing how missionaries reinforced racial divisions between Fijian and Indo-Fijian even as they deplored them. Negotiating the intersections between evangelisation, anthropology and colonial governance, this is a book with resonance well beyond its Fijian setting.
– Professor Alan Lester, University of Sussex
This thoroughly researched and finely crafted book unwraps and finely illustrates the interwoven layers of evolving complexity in different interpretations of ideals and debates on race, culture, colonialism and independence that informed the way the Methodist Mission was run in Fiji. It describes the human personalities and practicalities, interconnected at local, regional and global levels, which influenced the shaping of the Mission and the independent Methodist Church in Fiji. It documents the influence of evolving anthropological theories and ecumenical theological understandings of culture on mission practice. The book’s rich sources enhance our understanding of the complex history of ethnic relations in Fiji, helping to explain why ethnic divisive thinking remains a challenge.
– Jacqueline Ryle, University of the South Pacific
A beautifully researched study of the transnational impact of South Asian bodies on nationalisms and church devolution in Fiji, and an important resource for empire studies as a whole.’
– Professor Jane Samson, University of Alberta, Canada
Journeys into the Rainforest »
Archaeology of Culture Change and Continuity on the Evelyn Tableland, North Queensland
Authored by: Åsa Ferrier
Publication date: November 2015
This monograph presents the results of archaeological research that takes a longitudinal approach to interpreting and understanding Aboriginal–European contact. It focuses on a small but unique area of tropical rainforest in far north Queensland’s Wet Tropics Bioregion, located within the traditional lands of the JirrbalAboriginal people on the Evelyn Tableland. The research integrates a diverse range of data sources: archaeological evidence recovered from Aboriginal open sites occupied in the pre- to post-contact periods, historical documents of early ethnographers, settlers and explorers in the region, supplemented with Aboriginal oral history testimony. Analyses of the archaeological evidence excavated from three open sites facilitated the identification of the trajectories of culture change and continuity that this investigation focused on: Aboriginal rainforest material culture and technology, plant subsistence strategies, and rainforest settlement patterns.
Analyses of the data sets demonstrate that initial use of the rainforest environment on the Evelyn Tableland occurred during the early Holocene period, with successful adaptation and a change towards more permanent Aboriginal use of the rainforest becoming established in the late Holocene period. European arrival and settlement on traditional Aboriginal land resulted in a period of historical upheaval for the Aboriginal rainforest people. Following an initial period of violent interactions and strong Aboriginal resistance from the rainforest, Jirrbal Aboriginal people continued to adapt and transform their traditional culture to accommodate for the many changes forced upon them throughout the post‑contact period.