First Nations Resources

Just prior to the federal election of 2007, the Australian government led by John Howard decreed the “Northern Territory National Emergency Response”, commonly known as the Intervention, officially in reaction to an investigation by the Northern Territory government into allegedly rampant sexual abuse and neglect of Indigenous children. The emergency laws authorised the Australian government to drastically intervene in the self-determination of Indigenous communities in contravention of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Far from improving the living conditions of Indigenous Australians and children, the policies have resulted in disempowerment, widespread despair, criminalisation and higher unemployment. The Intervention and subsequent political measures have led to heated controversies and continue to divide the Australian nation. They have revived the trauma of the past—including of the Stolen Generations—and have substantially damaged the process of reconciliation.

Australians are the most incarcerated people on the planet. Indigenous men are fifteen times more likely to be locked up than their non-Indigenous counterparts; Indigenous women are twenty-one times more likely. Featuring vivid case studies and drawing on a deep sense of history, Black Lives, White Law explores Australia's extraordinary record of locking up First Nations people. It examines Australia's system of criminal justice -- the web of laws and courts and police and prisons -- and how that system interacts with First Nations people and communities. How is it that so many are locked up? Why have imprisonment rates increased in recent years? Is this situation fair? Almost everyone agrees that it's not. And yet it keeps getting worse. In this groundbreaking book, Russell Marks investigates Australia's incarceration epidemic.

A call for a radical restructuring of the relationship between black and white Australia.

Aboriginal people are grossly over-represented before the courts and in our gaols. Despite numerous inquiries, State and Federal, and the considerable funds spent trying to understand this phenomenon, nothing has changed. Indigenous people continue to be apprehended, sentenced, incarcerated and die in gaols. One part of this depressing and seemingly inexorable process is the behaviour of police. Drawing on research from across Australia, Chris Cunneen focuses on how police and Aboriginal people interact in urban and rural environments. He explores police history and police culture, the nature of Aboriginal offending and the prevalence of over-policing, the use of police discretion, the particular circumstances of Aboriginal youth and Aboriginal women, the experience of community policing and the key police responses to Aboriginal issues. He traces the pressures on both sides of the equation brought by new political demands. In exploring these issues, Conflict, Politics and Crime argues that changing the nature of contemporary relations between Aboriginal people and the police is a key to altering Aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justice system, and a step towards the advancement of human rights.

This book takes up the postcolonial challenge for law and explains how the problems of legal recognition for Indigenous peoples are tied to an orthodox theory of law. Constructing a theory of legal pluralism that is both critical of law's epistemological and ontological presuppositions, as well as discursive in engaging a dialogue between legal traditions, Anker focusses on prominent aspects of legal discourse and process such as sovereignty, proof, cultural translation and negotiation. With case studies and examples principally drawn from Australia and Canada, the book seeks to set state law in front of its own reflection in the mirror of Indigenous rights, drawing on a broad base of scholarship in addition to legal theory, from philosophy, literary studies, anthropology, social theory, Indigenous studies and art. As a contribution to legal theory, the study advances legal pluralist approaches not just by imagining a way to 'make space for' Indigenous legal traditions, but by actually working with their insights in building theory. The book will be of value to students and researchers interested in Indigenous rights as well as those working in the areas of socio-legal studies, legal pluralism and law and cultural diversity.

This examination of the role played by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in advancing indigenous peoples' self-determination comes at a time when the quintessential Eurocentric nature of international law has been significantly challenged by the increasing participation of indigenous peoples on the international legal scene. Even though the language of human rights discourse has historically contributed to delegitimise indigenous peoples' rights to their lands and cultures, this same language is now upheld by indigenous peoples in their ongoing struggles against the assimilation and eradication of their cultures. By demanding that the human rights and freedoms contained in various UN human rights instruments be now extended to indigenous peoples and communities, indigenous peoples are playing a key role in making international law more 'humanising' and less subject to State priorities.

In the planned colony of South Australia, Aboriginal people were to be British subjects, held accountable for their actions by English law and fully entitled to its protection. The reality, however, failed to meet the high expectations of London's reformers as British law struggled to protect the settlers; interests and failed to protect Aboriginal lives and birthrights. Revealing the efforts made by the judiciary to apply the legal equality policy as well as the frustrations of the Aborigines as they coped with the invasion of their lands, this account paints a clear picture of the South Australian frontier.

There is the country non-Indigenous people can see, and then there is the country Indigenous people see that the rest of us can barely comprehend, but glimpse through the vivid colours, shapes and imagery of their artworks, and their visual recounting of ancient stories and settings. The unauthorised use of Indigenous artworks is a global industry that damages cultural integrity and harms the livelihoods of artists and their communities. While the western idea of private or individual ownership can be at significant odds with tenets of Indigenous ownership and control, copyright remains one of the primary tools available to protect Indigenous visual artists from fakes, cultural threat and appropriation. In Protecting Indigenous Art, leading intellectual property barrister Colin Golvan provides a privileged insight into how legal protection of Indigenous art offers unique opportunities to empower Indigenous artists and their communities. Golvan gives a first-hand account of landmark legal campaigns such as the unauthorised reproduction of prominent Bulun Bulun artworks on T-shirts, the seminal carpets case, the campaign to recover the copyright of Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira and the extraordinary story of the Aboriginal flag. Altogether, we get an understanding of the importance of protection for this much-loved form of artistic and cultural expression.

Powerful and provocative, this is a beautifully written and very personal search to understand the men who were the protectors of Aboriginal people in Australia's north - their moral ambiguities, their good intentions and the devastating consequences of their decisions.

What does it mean to be a "rights-holder" and how does it come about? Remote Freedoms explores the contradictions and tensions of localized human rights work in very remote Indigenous communities. Based on field research with Anangu of Central Australia, this book investigates how universal human rights are understood, practiced, negotiated, and challenged in concert and in conflict with Indigenous rights. Moving between communities, government, regional NGOs, and international UN forums, Sarah E. Holcombe addresses how the notion of rights plays out within the distinctive and ambivalent sociopolitical context of Australia, and focusing specifically on Indigenous women and their experiences of violence.