In 2000 Bruce Rigsby presented a seminar titled ‘Not Indigenous, merely born here’, borrowing from Australian poet Les Murray’s verses. The issues canvassed the application of the concept of nativeness in biology as well as in anthropology and the particular circumstances of this question in the post-settler society of Australia. Around the same time, Rigsby provided an expert opinion in an American legal case about skeletal remains that raised related matters. This chapter presents my own reflections on indigenous identities and overlapping shared histories in the Gulf Country of northern Australia. The vehicle for the discussion is an innovative experimental workshop that brought together writers and locals to consider issues of ancestry, story telling and senses of belonging in the Gulf Country.

My studies in the Northern Territory/Queensland border region of Australia's Gulf Country indicate continuing tense negotiations among Waanyi/Garawa people concerning the inclusion/exclusion of particular persons as traditional owners and recipients of benefits from various economic ventures. Despite commonly expressed Indigenous views that stress the importance of sustaining continuity of traditional ‘law’, this points to the importance of addressing change, as assuming that the model of traditional ownership articulated in a land claim 40 years ago will not undergo modification would be naïve. Subsequent generations have come to define connections to Country more flexibly than the earlier documented system of inheritance through patrilines and mother's patrilines. Native title, land claims, and mining negotiations on the Queensland side of the border have influenced this outcome. I address risks of legal rigidification of customary law driven by the practical availability of the original Northern Territory land rights research. That earlier completed work has become a focus for appeals to cultural authenticity and strategic traditionalism among Indigenous protagonists fuelled in part by competition for money and related resources. While research such as mine from the 1980s remains essential in decision‐making, it needs to be updated and approached with a methodology open to the significance of cultural change. This difficult area of anthropological work deserves more analytical attention, recognition, and support.

Cultural institutions have long employed a range of copying technologies to safeguard and improve access to archival materials. This paper moves discussion beyond debates about institutional copying focused on a specific technology and raises questions about the trustworthiness of copies of archival photographs. This study uses differences between a source photograph and four copies to show that copying practices shape how copies of archival photographs can be used. It is situated within the Australian legal context of native title to sharpen the interrogation of the trustworthiness of copies; and, to demonstrate one implication of how copying shapes the evidential value of photographs. It considers how a witness may respond if asked to testify that one or all of these copies are trustworthy or to outline their shortcomings as evidence. It explains that while standards for microfilm copying documents valued creating trustworthy copies, the transition to digital copying was a missed opportunity to re-establish those standards for creating digital surrogates of photographs. While questions raised have yet to be tested in legal native title procedures, this paper argues that the promise of photographs for native title outcomes will come to rest with the trustworthiness of institutionally created copies.

Reflecting on several decades of my applied research, expert witness roles and a forensic methodology, this article addresses the application of anthropological studies in Australian legal cases concerned with various aspects of Indigenous customary law. In the context of traditional land claims, cultural heritage assessments and native title, both the achievements and challenges for anthropological inquiries are canvassed. Against arguments from some academics that applied work is intellectually inferior and politically compromised, the article reports my experiences in an arena of complex and enriching social science inquiry. The article engages with Indigenous land aspirations in a settler society while considering the implications of cultural change and adaptation, strategies of recuperation of customary knowledge, and the robustness required for successful anthropological studies of this kind.

Genealogies that demonstrate a continuous historical lineage play a critical role for native title evidence as well as contemporary negotiations concerning Indigenous identity. The complexities of this genealogical research are compounded in regions with lengthy histories of disruption from traditional lands and contestation concerning the forebears of Indigenous individuals, families and wider groups. This article presents a case study that introduces a forensic methodology to demonstrate challenges facing researchers and family members investigating Indigenous histories. It explores a history of the renaming of an Aboriginal man photographed wearing a breastplate inscribed with a name, Jackey Jackey. In this review of the extant historical data, we outline our genealogy of names that have been attached to Jackey Jackey. We suggest that two men named Jackey from different parts of the Logan Valley region, south-east Queensland, have been conflated into a single person's identity and then renamed firstly as Bilinba and then as Bilin Bilin. We explore what these symbolic acts of renaming mean for the first wave of Indigenous descendants researching their family history, pose questions about the significance of this renaming, and identify the consequential issues for those now seeking legal recognition of traditional rights in land.

10. Aboriginal Responses to Mining in Australia: Economic Aspirations, Cultural Revival, and the Politics of Indigenous Protest was published in Politics and Government in Germany, 1944-1994 on page 192.

The Australian Journal of AnthropologyVolume 32, Issue 1 p. 66-70 OBITUARY Obituary: Athol Kennedy Chase (1936-2020) David Trigger, Corresponding Author David Trigger d.trigger@uq.edu.au dstrigger.associates@gmail.com University of Queensland, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author David Trigger, Corresponding Author David Trigger d.trigger@uq.edu.au dstrigger.associates@gmail.com University of Queensland, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 April 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12386Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume32, Issue1April 2021Pages 66-70 RelatedInformation

Roger M. KEESING, Custom and Confrontation: The Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 254 pages, U.S. $49.95 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). An article from journal Culture (Volume 13, Number 2, 1993, pp. 5-128), on Érudit.

The ideological struggle between pro-development sentiments and environmentalist challenges to them is a complex mix of consciously articulated beliefs and commonsense assumptions about what land isfor and how it should be managed. The paper presents an ethnographic approach to documenting expressions of this intellectual contest in contemporary British Columbia. I address the question of how pro-development and pro-wilderness views seek to establish moral authority, focusing on both the symbolic importance of key themes about forestry and mining in Canadian history and the cooption of alleged aboriginal ethics concerning land use.

Century Mine, in the lower Gulf of Carpentaria region of far northwest Queensland, was once the third largest zinc mine in the world. It provides a distinctive example of the evolution of resource relations between governments, miners and local communities. It also evidences tensions in Australia between conceptions of the state’s responsibilities to ensure economic development on the one hand and the well-being of regional populations, particularly Indigenous people, on the other hand. It is therefore a suitable empirical case for exploring the complex sociopolitical process that unfolds over time as multiple state actors engage with the private sector and remote regional communities, including Indigenous Australians, residents of regional towns and pastoralists. Reflecting upon his involvement in this project, the lead negotiator for the company described Century Mine as a classic example of the recent trend for ‘social, environmental, cultural and heritage issues [to play] ... a significant part in the development of major projects, particularly in mining’ (Williams 1996: 1).

Can native title, across remote, rural and urban settings, complement and overlap with current and future Australian senses of belonging? This is to explore a form of cultural coexistence that is potentially in tension with a sharp and mutually exclusive categorical distinction between those who embrace Indigenous identity and others. Can such cultural coexistence reinforce legal and economic achievements of land justice for the Indigenous minority yet also contribute to rich senses of place and belonging across the broader Australian society? While anthropology as a social science has a substantial and important practical research role in negotiations for, and outcomes of, particular native title claims, a further challenge is understanding the extent to which post‐claim coexisting identities and interests might enrich Australia's trajectory in resolving legacies of colonialism.

It is 1789, one year after British colonisation began. Arthur Phillip, Governor of the British settlement of New South Wales, has befriended Bennelong, a local Aboriginal man whose name has since been etched into wider Australia’s social and physical history by the area which bears his name at Bennelong Point in Sydney. Less well-known is Bennelong’s wife, Barangaroo; she is pregnant. One day Bennelong approaches Governor Phillip and requests permission for his and Barangaroo’s child to be born at Government House. Such a request is based on Indigenous custom whereby the site of one’s birth becomes one of the ways in which an association to land is established. By giving birth at Government House, Barangaroo and Bennelong will, in accordance with their own beliefs and practices, provide their child with rights to an important piece of land, not only as a Dreaming site but also as a potential ‘increase site’, an area where British resources are thought to be plentiful. Governor Phillip, who has been incorporated into the kinship system by Bennelong and Barangaroo, refuses on perhaps well-meaning but naive grounds. In his view, Barangaroo will be better off giving birth at a nearby hospital away from Government House. Governor Phillip cannot agree to the request because he believes that 158Barangaroo will be more comfortable at the hospital. Archival records do not show where Barangaroo eventually gave birth but she is sighted some days later wandering the settlement with a newborn child in her arms (Grimshaw et al., 1994, pp. 9-11).

In the Australian context, training for employees to impart 'cultural awareness' concerning Indigenous people has recently become a common feature of workplace inductions within the mining industry. The training aims to foster good relationships between companies and Aboriginal Traditional Owners of land and increase Aboriginal employment within the industry by educating miners about 'Aboriginal culture'. However, there have been few investigations focused on how the training is constructed, delivered, its content, or efficacy. This article presents an overview of how this training is being implemented at several major Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) mines in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The study finds that the corporate sector's commitment to educating workers about cultural difference is difficult to achieve in this highly politicised setting. The paper argues for an understanding of the complexities and strategic politics involved in implementing Aboriginal cultural awareness training to avoid both naive expectations and unintended negative consequences.

Under the long-term leadership of Professor Jon Altman, the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at The Australian National University has had an impressive publication output. The Centre has consistently focused on the important but challenging intersection of academic research and policy development relevant to Indigenous people in Australia. This paper engages with some of the intellectual concepts employed in the Centre’s recent work, concentrating particularly on the volume edited by Jon Altman and Seán Kerins (2012) People on country: vital landscapes, Indigenous futures. The book promotes one of CAEPR’s key pieces of recent policy advice: that Indigenous involvement in environmental work through ranger programs promotes improved environmental health as well as healthier human lifestyles, while bringing alternate forms of economic development for regionaland remote-living Indigenous people.