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Black Politics: Inside the Complexity of Aboriginal Political Culture
Drawing on extensive interviews with activists and politicians, Black Politics explains the dynamics of Aboriginal politics. It reveals the challenges and tensions that have shaped community, regional, and national relations over the past 25 years. Since the early 1990s Aboriginal Australia has experienced profound political changes with very real and lasting implications, from the Mabo land rights case in 1992 and the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005, to more recent attempts to reduce the autonomy of remote communities. Sarah Maddison identifies the tensions that lie at the heart of all Aboriginal politics, arguing that until Australian governments come to grips with this complexity they will continue to make bad policy with disastrous consequences for Aboriginal people. She also offers some suggestions for the future, based on the collective wisdom of political players at all levels of Aboriginal politics.
294 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 28, 2017
I found this book fascinating, thought provoking and confronting. It revealed much that I had not thought about before, the complexities between Aboriginal politics as well as the real tensions that exist within those communities and the inevitable conflict of ideas and values. I was forced to re-evaluate my opinions on many issues and consider new perspectives, which was refreshing. Its effect will stay with me for a long time. Most confronting of all was how far apart my ideas and the perspectives expressed by some Aboriginal leaders are on some issues and I have been deeply challenged about those matters. I recommend all Australians read this, or something like it and think carefully about the need to engage with our First nations politically and be thoughtful about what that might look like as well as considering the effects of colonialism which persist to today and how you have benefited from our colonial past.
February 4, 2021
If you are not an avid reader my opinion is you will struggle to read this mind expanding, intelligent work by Sarah Maddison.
Written in 2009 but feels like it was written this year or maybe that's because we are slowly seeing a shift towards awareness?
I like the way she has approached the the issue drawing on interviews from various people. I like that she made me aware of things I wasn't aware of before.
this isn't the only book she has written on politics and policies however it is the first one I've read.
Written in 2009 but feels like it was written this year or maybe that's because we are slowly seeing a shift towards awareness?
I like the way she has approached the the issue drawing on interviews from various people. I like that she made me aware of things I wasn't aware of before.
this isn't the only book she has written on politics and policies however it is the first one I've read.
June 23, 2020
A deeply engaging read (although disappointing to find it 11 years after publication, in what feels like a new world). It's an academic work, with a lot of assumptions about readers' knowledge with regard to recent Australian history and theories of sociology, civil service, and community, but worth plugging away at.
At the heart of the challenge of Indigenous Australians seems to be the issue of number. That is, they make up at most 2.5% of the population. Inevitably, this means they will never have electoral power or financial power. And when 2.5% is divided amongst all of the different views people hold in this world, it makes it very hard for them to gain critical mass in any debate either.
Sarah Maddison sensitively teases out many of the strands that cause the current, seemingly endless stalemate in Australian racial politics. The history of white decision-making, the deeply-wrought issues with mainstream policy in this area, and the challenges that Aboriginal communities and leaders face themselves. It should be noted that, although Maddison does look at cultural challenges within Aboriginal communities, the focus of the book is on their communal struggle, the complexity of life for what remains of a complex chain of Indigenous cultures in a post-colonial world. Maddison also looks inside ideas of Aboriginal kinship, social connection, the "hybrid identity" of being from a collectivist group inside an individualist broader society. There were some areas of discussion regarding disputes within Indigenous communities that I would have liked to see more of, but we can't have everything.
On the negative side, I would have asked Maddison to put her references in either footnotes or endnotes. Her pages are clogged up with in-line citations like a first year undergraduate, and this makes the book look unattractive as well as, no doubt, seeming daunting to readers not familiar with the conventions of academia.
On the positive side, one can't help but admire Maddison's calm, rational examination of some of the issues which have been simplified and weaponised by the media. Chapter 3, for instance, examines what Aboriginal people mean when they say "sovereignty". To some young radicals in Australia this is used as a war-cry, as if to deny the right of non-Indigenous Australians to buy or sell land. To a disconcerting number of social conservatives, "Aboriginal sovereignty" is trumpeted on Sky News and social media websites as an affront to basic human rights of white people. In reality, Maddison discovers that it is a word used with complex meanings, usually in a less formal way than it would be understood in an international legal context yet at the same time very powerfully in what it indicates about the mainstream Indigenous view that sovereignty of the land was never ceded. Already here the water is murky. People on all sides are making noise about where Indigenous people stand on a spectrum between "citizen solely of the Commonwealth of Australia" and "citizens solely of their own Indigenous nation". Maddison attempts to encourage all points of view, while reaching a broad conclusion without being trapped by certainty. And that is just one of many examples in which she achieves this.
Ultimately, Maddison asks, why do "we" (the Australian non-Indigenous majority) keep implementing policies that don't succeed or, often enough, even make things worse? Why has public support for Indigenous self-determination seemingly decreased from its high point during the Whitlam era? And if we - like all good enlightened people in the 21st century - believe that Indigenous communities must be given the tools to redevelop their culture, take leadership roles in their own futures, and be judged on their own terms rather than those of their colonisers, why don't our governments act like they believe it?
At the heart of the challenge of Indigenous Australians seems to be the issue of number. That is, they make up at most 2.5% of the population. Inevitably, this means they will never have electoral power or financial power. And when 2.5% is divided amongst all of the different views people hold in this world, it makes it very hard for them to gain critical mass in any debate either.
Sarah Maddison sensitively teases out many of the strands that cause the current, seemingly endless stalemate in Australian racial politics. The history of white decision-making, the deeply-wrought issues with mainstream policy in this area, and the challenges that Aboriginal communities and leaders face themselves. It should be noted that, although Maddison does look at cultural challenges within Aboriginal communities, the focus of the book is on their communal struggle, the complexity of life for what remains of a complex chain of Indigenous cultures in a post-colonial world. Maddison also looks inside ideas of Aboriginal kinship, social connection, the "hybrid identity" of being from a collectivist group inside an individualist broader society. There were some areas of discussion regarding disputes within Indigenous communities that I would have liked to see more of, but we can't have everything.
On the negative side, I would have asked Maddison to put her references in either footnotes or endnotes. Her pages are clogged up with in-line citations like a first year undergraduate, and this makes the book look unattractive as well as, no doubt, seeming daunting to readers not familiar with the conventions of academia.
On the positive side, one can't help but admire Maddison's calm, rational examination of some of the issues which have been simplified and weaponised by the media. Chapter 3, for instance, examines what Aboriginal people mean when they say "sovereignty". To some young radicals in Australia this is used as a war-cry, as if to deny the right of non-Indigenous Australians to buy or sell land. To a disconcerting number of social conservatives, "Aboriginal sovereignty" is trumpeted on Sky News and social media websites as an affront to basic human rights of white people. In reality, Maddison discovers that it is a word used with complex meanings, usually in a less formal way than it would be understood in an international legal context yet at the same time very powerfully in what it indicates about the mainstream Indigenous view that sovereignty of the land was never ceded. Already here the water is murky. People on all sides are making noise about where Indigenous people stand on a spectrum between "citizen solely of the Commonwealth of Australia" and "citizens solely of their own Indigenous nation". Maddison attempts to encourage all points of view, while reaching a broad conclusion without being trapped by certainty. And that is just one of many examples in which she achieves this.
Ultimately, Maddison asks, why do "we" (the Australian non-Indigenous majority) keep implementing policies that don't succeed or, often enough, even make things worse? Why has public support for Indigenous self-determination seemingly decreased from its high point during the Whitlam era? And if we - like all good enlightened people in the 21st century - believe that Indigenous communities must be given the tools to redevelop their culture, take leadership roles in their own futures, and be judged on their own terms rather than those of their colonisers, why don't our governments act like they believe it?
July 1, 2017
This is a fantastic book. It covers a large range of issues, includes many different perspectives and people. While I've been reading a lot, so I knew some of it already, it still held a lot of new thoughts for me, and I think it would be a good starting point.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews