Undergraduate
Indigenous Australian Studies
From the moment of Australia’s discovery by Europeans, the history, life and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been a subject of extreme intellectual fascination. In the nineteenth century their social and cultural practices were widely believed to open up a window onto the origins of religion and European social institutions and had an important influence in the production of European social theory. More recently they have become the sociological, ecological and evolutionary prototype of the hunting and gathering way of life yet, paradoxically, they are also often seen as unique among hunting and gathering peoples.
Since the late 1960s, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people formally achieved equal rights, indigenous issues have come to play a central role in the political and cultural life of the state and the nation. The failure of the first European settlers to come to terms with them about the conditions for their settlement of the continent left a moral taint on the nation’s title which is now being addressed through land rights, native title and other government initiatives. But other issues such as the stolen generation, self-determination and the recognition of specifically indigenous rights remain under negotiation. Australia’s identity as a nation is now inextricably linked to its treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through a process associated with globalisation and the commoditisation of art and culture.
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