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During the first century of Australia's colonization, settler thanatopolitics meant both casual killing of individual Natives and organized massacres of Aboriginal clans. From the mid-nineteenth century, however, Aboriginal Protection Boards sought to disappear their charges by more covert means. Thus, biopolitics of biological absorption, cultural assimilation, and child removal, designed to bring about the destruction of Aboriginal peoples, came to be represented as being in the victims' best interests. Even today, coercive assimilation is framed in the now-threadbare terms of welfare discourse. Yet, Australia's Indigenous peoples have survived the genocidal practices of the frontier era and continue to resist the relentless succession of normative policies deployed to eradicate their "recalcitrant" lifeways. This essay presents a brief historical overview of settler Australia's biopolitics and analyzes the sociocultural factors enabling Aboriginal Australians both to survive the devastating impact of settler biopower and to resist the siren call of assimilationist rhetoric. Drawing on Kim Scott's Benang and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise, I discuss how that resistance is reflected in contemporary Indigenous life-writing and fiction.

In 2007, 144 UN member states voted to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US were the only members to vote against it. Each eventually changed its position. This book explains why and examines what the Declaration could mean for sovereignty, citizenship and democracy in liberal societies such as these. It takes Canadian Chief Justice Lamer's remark that 'we are all here to stay' to mean that indigenous peoples are 'here to stay' as indigenous. The book examines indigenous and state critiques of the Declaration but argues that, ultimately, it is an instrument of significant transformative potential showing how state sovereignty need not be a power that is exercised over and above indigenous peoples. Nor is it reasonably a power that displaces indigenous nations' authority over their own affairs. The Declaration shows how and why, and this book argues that in doing so, it supports more inclusive ways of thinking about how citizenship and democracy may work better. The book draws on the Declaration to imagine what non-colonial political relationships could look like in liberal societies.

Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Pre-European: Australia's first naturalists -- Chapter 2: Naturalists: 1788-1837 -- Caley and Moowattin -- Chapter 3: Naturalists: 1838-1887 -- Gould, Natty, Jemmy & Gilbert -- MacGillivray, Neinmal & Paida and Kennedy & Galmarra -- Blandowski, Krefft & the Nyeri Nyeri -- Chapter 4: Naturalists 1888-1939 -- The Horn Scientific Expedition & Peter & Harry -- Spencer, Gillen & an Army of women and children -- Finlayson, Butcher, Jimmy & various women & man -- Chapter 5: Epilogue Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land and Sea Managers -- Notes -- List of illustrations -- index of Native Species.

AbstractSince the 1990s, the term "nation" for Indigenous Australian groups has emerged, along with an increasingly common phrase "First Nations," used both by Indigenous groups in self‐reference and by others in reference to them. This article examines the multiple sources of nation and its emergence in Australia as a contemporary form of Indigenous political discourse. Following a history of repeated dismissal of representative organizations by the Australian state, collective gains in recognition and legal visibility of Indigenous people, globally and nationally, have motivated a search for persuasive forms of organization that can command political authority between local social forms and governments, businesses, and other entities. Treaties are commonly understood as between distinct "nations," but—notoriously—the Australian state did not negotiate treaties with Indigenous people. The emergence of "nation" is aspirational and double‐sided: it responds to dominant Australian conditions and political demands but retains much that is distinctive of Aboriginal social process rather than erasing it in the socio‐political innovation of nationhood. The rise of Australian Indigenous "nations," recent and partial, sheds light both on persistence in Indigenous action and extension of governmental power into Indigenous domains—the "post‐" of settler colonialism.

Unemployment amongst Indigenous Australians is one part of a bleak and worrying picture of economic and social divide in this country. Since the early 1970s the Australian Government has increasingly invested in policies to address Indigenous disadvantage in employment and other areas. Terms such as 'stakeholder engagement' and 'participation' have become part of the government lexicon in addressing Indigenous disadvantage. In light of the nominal importance placed on stakeholder engagement, it is important to question what the concept means in practice -that is, what mechanisms exist for incorporating stakeholders in policy development. More specifically, this report investigates how stakeholders can be involved in employment policy development. CDEP The CDEP program has dual roles of providing employment and welfare services to Indigenous people. It has become .an integral part of many local economies, particularly in remote communities. The scheme is also an important mechanism for stakeholder engagement. It enhances the potential for regional perspectives to inform economic development and employment decision-making. The Rudd Government is currently phasing out the CDEP scheme. This decision is partly based on the scheme's failure to function as a job-readiness program in communities where local economies are small and jobs are very scarce. The removal of CDEP in these remote regions will force many people onto unemployment benefits. It may also jeopardise key representative Indigenous organisations in remote communities. Recommendation 1: limited exceptions should be made to the removal of CDEP, specifically in those communities without an established economy. Regional agreements In the last two decades, the Canadian Government has begun to negotiate regional agreements with Indigenous people occupying the land. These agreements involve an exchange of property interests on the part of Indigenous people for greater control in economic development and environmental planning processes. Increasing Indigenous people's capacity to regulate land use has promoted the growth of Indigenous enterprise. It has also led to employment agreements between corporations and Indigenous people. Recommendation 2: the use of negotiated regional agreements should be considered as a means of giving Indigenous Australians greater control of their land for economic development and employment initiatives. Regional representation The newly-formed National Congress of Australia's First Peoples (NCAFP) is an important step to improving Indigenous stakeholder engagement mechanisms. This body differs from the previous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission model in two key respects. It does not have a policy-implementation role and it does not establish regional representative branches. The experience of Canada's core Aboriginal representative body, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) demonstrated that regional viewpoints can be overlooked in a national representative body. Without a regional planning strategy developed by Indigenous stakeholders, there is a risk that government policy will override the views and interests of regional stakeholders. Recommendation 3: a pilot regional representative authority should be established. This would be a public authority that would liaise with the NCAFP. The authority would be responsible for developing a regional economic development plan.