Beyond Narratives of Aboriginal Self-deliverance: Land Rights and Anthropological Visibility in the Australian Public Domain

Abstract

The central role that anthropologists play in Aboriginal land and native title claims is becoming less visible. In some ways, this is not surprising since minorities that need the help of others, if they are seeking recognition of their rights, are often uncomfortable being the beneficiaries of assistance, and the narratives they come to cherish are those of self-deliverance. However, the public discourses in which anthropology is involved also contribute to this decreasing visibility, particularly because the most important of them is the technical discourse that comes with being an expert witness in land and native title claims, where the contribution of lawyers and the law have a higher profile. A third factor is that for those people Emma Kowal (2015 Kowal, E. 2015. Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. New York: Berghahn. [Google Scholar]) calls white anti-racist, a category into which many anthropologists might be thought to fall, self-effacement is a foundational value, so that any contribution to improving Aboriginal circumstances should be obscured. But is that how anthropologists and the beneficiaries of this assistance think?

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