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The Australian Federal Native Title Act 1993 marked a revolution in the recognition of the rights of Australia's Indigenous peoples. The legislation established a means whereby Indigenous Australians could make application to the Federal Court for the recognition of their rights to traditional country. The fiction that Australia was terra nullius (or'void country'), which had prevailed since European settlement, was overturned. The ensuing legal cases, mediated resolutions and agreements made within the terms of the Native Title Act quickly proved the importance of having sound, scholarly and well-researched anthropology conducted with claimants so that the fundamentals of the claims made could be properly established. In turn, this meant that those opposing the claims would also benefit from anthropological expertise.This is a book about the practical aspects of anthropology that are relevant to the exercise of the discipline within the native title context. The engagement of anthropology with legal process, determined by federal legislation, raises significant practical as well as ethical issues that are explored in this book. It will be of interest to all involved in the native title process, including anthropologists and other researchers, lawyers and judges, as well as those who manage the claim process. It will also be relevant to all who seek to explore the role of anthropology in relation to Indigenous rights, legislation and the state.

People and Change in Indigenous Australia arose from a conviction that more needs to be done in anthropology to give a fuller sense of the changing lives and circumstances of Australian indigenous communities and people. Much anthropological and public discussion remains embedded in traditionalizing views of indigenous people, and in accounts that seem to underline essential and apparently timeless difference. In this volume the editors and contributors assume that “the person” is socially defined and reconfigured as contexts change, both immediate and historical.Essays in this collection are grounded in Australian locales commonly termed “remote.” These indigenous communities were largely established as residential concentrations by Australian governments, some first as missions, most in areas that many of the indigenous people involved consider their homelands. A number of these settlements were located in proximity to settler industries—pastoralism, market-gardening, and mining—locales that many non-indigenous Australians think of as the homes of the most traditional indigenous communities and people. The contributors discuss the changing circumstances of indigenous people who originate from such places, revealing a diversity of experiences and histories that involve major dynamics of disembedding from country and home locales, re-embedding in new contexts, and reconfigurations of relatedness. The essays explore dimensions of change and continuity in childhood experience and socialization in a desert community; the influence of Christianity in fostering both individuation and relatedness in northeast Arnhem Land; the diaspora of Central Australian Warlpiri people to cities and the forms of life and livelihood they make there; adolescent experiences of schooling away from home communities; youth in kin-based heavy metal gangs configuring new identities, and indigenous people of southeast Australia reflecting on whether an “Aboriginal way” can be sustained. By taking a step toward understanding the relation between changing circumstances and changing lives of indigenous Australians, the volume provides a sense of the quality and feel of those lives.

This volume traces the complex reasons behind the disturbing discrepancy between the health and well-being of children in mainstream Australia and those in remote Indigenous communities. Invaluably informed by Boulton's close working knowledge of Aboriginal communities, the book addresses growth faltering as a crisis of Aboriginal parenting and a continued problem for the Australian nation. The high rate and root causes of ill-health amongst Aboriginal children are explored through a unique synthesis of historical, anthropological, biological and medical analyses. Through this fresh approach, which includes the insights of specialists from a range of disciplines, Aboriginal Children, History and Health provides a thoughtful and innovative framework for considering Indigenous health.

Encountering Aborigines: A Case Study: Anthropology and the Australian Aboriginal details the concerns in contemporary anthropological research of aboriginal Australians. The title covers the various aspects of anthropological studies conducted on Australian Aboriginals. The text discusses the contemporary attitude of the modern world toward Aborigines. The selection also details the social system, cultural practices and traditions, and religion of Aborigines. The book will be of great use to anthropologists, sociologists, and behavioral scientists.

Written by Australia's leading anthropologists, this valuable examination explores the Australian government's intervention in terms of health, safety, and education of the nation's remote Aboriginal citizens via the Northern Territory National Emergency Response. Dissecting the notion of difference and probing the idea of indigenous disadvantage and autonomy, this record questions the role of anthropology in provoking policy change and unflinchingly confronts the policies that have failed these communities. An urgently needed dialogue, this account argues that anthropology can still provide hope.