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The forcible removal and detention on reserves of many of Australia's Indigenous people during much of the 20th century was pervasive and, according to Penny Pether, influenced her understandings of indefinite detention in other areas. She was interested in proliferating regimes of indefinite detention used as a technique to govern 'dangerous' populations. In this article, we examine how alcohol management schemes introduced in the 21st century in the Northern Territory, under the guise of welfare, continue the systemic confinement and control of Indigenous lives. The feared population has been reconstituted from one requiring protection as the remnants of a dying race, to one comprising vulnerable and criminogenic alcoholics who need to be detained for their own and others' safety, and so they can be treated. We trace the genealogy of laws enabling the civil commitment of inebriates and addicts to show that in the form taken in the Northern Territory, the law has been aimed at the control and containment of a perceived antisocial population, rather than their treatment. Rather than protecting vulnerable people, the regime relied on techniques of detention and coercive treatment that continued the colonial state's production of their Indigenous 'vulnerability'. We examine this through the lens of the findings of a coronial inquiry into the death of an Indigenous woman in 2014, while detained for treatment and the subsequent evaluation of the Northern Territory's Alcohol Mandatory Treatment Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following World War II, the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board sought to house and employ Aboriginal Victorians as part of its assimilation policy. Crucial to these efforts was controlling Aboriginal mobility, which the Board saw as problematic, being unsettling in its disregard of state borders and its refusal to conform to settler-capitalist ideologies of private property, wealth accumulation and individualism. This is an attitude that permeates descriptions of Aboriginal people's movement in the settler-colonial archive. This article investigates discussions of housing and employment in the Board's papers, drawing together the disparate references that pepper the manuscripts to suggest an alternative interpretation of archival descriptions of Aboriginal mobility. That interpretation centres Aboriginal decision-making and comprehends the unbroken nature of Aboriginal movement to, within and across ancestral lands – a continuation of pre-invasion Indigenous mobility that involved adapting to and incorporating the pressures of the settler-capitalist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by new histories of Indigenous mobility that emphasise how movement was an important feature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experience, this article examines how mobility enables us to better understand the legal status of exemption. It shows the way non-Indigenous families seized on exemption in Queensland between 1897 and 1914 as a way to maintain control over the movement of the women and girls who worked for them as domestic servants. It also examines how those women and girls negotiated, refused and embraced the policy of exemption and used it to gain freedom to move around Queensland, driven by their family connections, ambitions and cultural and community ties. These two different uses of exemption show that even though the 1897 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act made the movement of Indigenous people fraught, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continued their efforts to be mobile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980s Aboriginal Australians experienced setbacks in their quest for the restoration of their land rights. Neoliberal politics reframed such demands as special interests seeking to gain a material advantage at the expense of the general community and as a threat to the economic security of the nation. As a consequence, politicians failed to pass legislation that would formalize the national land rights system that would guarantee Aboriginal economic self-sufficiency. This paper argues that it was in this context that Aboriginal memoir emerged to prompt social action by recounting experiences of discrimination and exploitation erased by official history and by challenging the imposed racist stereotypes used to marginalize Aboriginal claims. These memoirs prompted sympathy and understanding among a broad readership, which enabled the formation of a political solidarity over the recognition of Aboriginal land rights. These memoirs also expressed a commonality of Aboriginal experience that served to unite an increasingly frayed Aboriginal activist movement eroded by neoliberal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aboriginal affairs has always been a sore point in Australia. Ever since the first Governor attempted to put in place the Colonial Office's instructions to treat the inhabitants with 'amity and kindness' the exercise has been fraught. There is a text-book version of the changing policy landscape and rote school lessons on the gradual acquisition of Aboriginal rights and freedoms. These go some way to conveying the contested ground, political conflict and personal anguish on which this history was built. Yet, they give the impression of evolution and progress. At the same time, the history wars magnified the fractiousness without carving a pathway through. In this paper I recover an important part of the history, which often goes unremarked. I reflect on the role of humanitarian intervention in this politics. Not only has it been critical to the policy landscape - for good and ill - but there are also historical connections and lineages between then and now, which deserve attention. Closely aligned to a history of human rights in Australia, recovering this history seems more pertinent than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an essay on the emergence of the Black Power Movement in Australia in the late 1960s under the leadership of human rights activist Malcolm X and the role of the Australian Black Panther Party. Topics include Black Power movement, trans-nationalism, and impacts on urban politics. Also discussed is the impacts of the movement on Aboriginal communities and the struggle faced by aboriginals during the British colonization.

A bibliography on the subject of political science is presented which includes the books "The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Sovereignty, Black Power, Land Rights and the State," edited by Gary Foley, Andrew Schaap and Edwina Howell, "Australia and the World: A Festschrift for Neville Meaney," edited by Joan Beaumont and Matthew Jordan and "The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy," edited by Lyn Carson, John Gastil, Janette Hartz-Karp and Ron Lubensky.

The Fraser era represents a defining moment in Australia's approach to the issues of uranium exports and non-proliferation policy. In contrast to some well-established positions in the literature, this essay argues that the Fraser government's August 1977 decision to approve the export of uranium was framed not only by domestic political considerations stemming from the Ranger Environmental Inquiry but also by important international factors. In particular, I argue that the non-proliferation initiatives of the Carter administration presented the Fraser government with an opportunity to portray the export of Australian uranium as means to strengthen the non-proliferation regime and enhance Australia's influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order for Aboriginal rights and interests to be recognised under the Native Title Act (1993), such rights and interests must arise from laws and customs that can be shown to have continuity with the particular set of laws and customs that existed at the time of sovereignty, or, at least, at the time of first European contact. This interpretation of continuity has been applied in Australian native title cases since the High Court's Yorta Yorta decision (Yorta Yorta v the State of Victoria [2002] HCA 58). Yet today's Aboriginal native title claim groups are also required to participate in other statutory ventures outside of the native title domain. For example, ‘tribal’ representatives in north Queensland are obliged to represent their interests on the Wet Tropics Management Authority, and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. In native title terms, however, the activity and time spent participating in these ventures do not ‘count’ as instantiations of traditionally based rights and interests. Furthermore, the powers and rights granted to Aboriginal groups under these statutory ventures are often in conflict with the strictures of current native title interpretations of ‘traditional law and custom and rights and interests’. The effect is to elicit versions of Aboriginal action that may contradict each other legally. In this paper, I discuss some examples of these institutional conflicts engendered by the statutory actions of state and federal government, and comment on the implications for the contemporary Aboriginal articulations of identity and tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a comparative study of Communism and race within the U.S. and Australian Communist movements between 1928 and 1934. The author examines the activities of the Communist Party of the U.S. (CPUSA) and the Australian Communist Party and how the elimination of racial exclusion became a part of the public objectives of Communists, if not the official party program. The article explores the role of Communists in fighting Jim Crow laws in the U.S. and supporting Aboriginals in Australia. The author argues that the communist parties in the U.S. and Australia were the sole white organizations to adopt the cause of racial equality, as well as giving racial equality a place in the overall Communist movement.

Essentialism has become a fundament of Aboriginal activism in modern Australia, with the result that informed, first-hand empirical observations of anthropologists who chronicle the deterioration of life in many Australian Aboriginal communities tend not to be taken seriously simply because their authors are not ethnically 'Aboriginal'. This problem has contributed to a relative absence of analysis of the economic history of Aboriginal Australians, fostering instead an approach that prioritises the political and cultural rights of indigenous people above the kinds of life-enhancing circumstances that are necessary for them to participate in the economy and create wealth. This kind of essentialism has also resulted in a disregard for the rights of indigenous people as individuals, rather than as communities seeking self-determination, especially with regard to the rights of women and children. The work of Professor Ronald M. Berndt and Dr Catherine Berndt should serve as an example for today's anthropologists in encouraging broader expert participation in debates on indigenous disadvantage, despite the threat of admonishment or criticism by Aboriginal rights activists wielding the weapon of racial priority or essentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the traditions and significance of Aboriginal narrative law in the development of the Australian continent in relation to identity and sovereignty. The author contrasts the establishment and application of the culture and laws of the Northern Hemisphere to those of the Southern Hemisphere and argues for the necessity of engaging with the ancient history and traditions of Aboriginal Australians. It is suggested by the author that Australians are in need of mature direction and that incorporating Aboriginal Australians into the formal government of Australia would balance governance. Examples of Aboriginal narrative law are provided, including "A Two-Dog Dreaming Story," "That Apache Story" and "Where is the Woman?"

This article presents a comparative analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal political protests from 1830 to 1865. It argues that British ethnologist James Cowles Pritchard's evolutionary ethnology was critical to understanding the various reform movements and organizations against the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in favor of Aboriginal Australian rights. Commentary is given regarding the points at which African Americans and Australian Aborigines both encountered issues of settler colonialism. A background of Pritchard and evolutionary ethnology is also included, as well as those of defenders of aboriginal equality.

The article presents the author's insights on the perceived deprivation of the self-determination right of Aboriginals in Australia. The author explores the alleged false Aboriginal life expectancy and defunding. She argues that the state does not provide the right for aboriginals although it signed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She says that the Indigenous Peoples Organisations of Australia calls for legislation that will assure the declaration's implementation.