'What do we want?' is the first study of the most far-reaching and innovative Aboriginal land rights laws in the country. Heidi Norman tells a story full of possibility, tensions and entanglements as Aboriginal people took up the political demand of self-determination and worked to address their community disadvantage, all the while grappling with the expectations of government.

The laws, passed in 1983 by the Wran Labor Government, provided a mechanism for recovering land and the fifteen-year funding stream, to compensate for loss of land and culture, was intended to fund the more than 120 representative Aboriginal land councils, as well as support Aboriginal-run enterprises.

Yet chronic disadvantage continues for many Aboriginal people in NSW and Aboriginal land councils are yet to fully realise the expectations of their members.

'What do we want?' reveals the challenges of Aboriginal adjustment to modernity as Land Councils focus their efforts on profitable enterprises to resource community social and cultural initiatives.

Production Details

• Paperback
• 288pp
• Released May 2015
• ISBN 9781922059901

Contents

Illustrations between pp. 112 and 113
Acknowledgments
Acronyms and abbreviations
Introduction: from extrinsic to intrinsic
Chapter 1: Aboriginal Land Rights: from ‘reserves’ to ‘country’
Chapter 2: Government, Aborigines and power: the 1978 Land Rights Inquiry
Chapter 3: The Aboriginal Land Rights Act: politics and the art of the possible
Chapter 4: Working with the Act: self-determination and modern rule
Chapter 5: Justice, tradition, progress: shifting land strategies under the Act
Chapter 6: Defending the Act: Aboriginal civil society and the market
Chapter 7: Aboriginal governmentality: technologies of the self
Chapter 8: What do we want? Land Rights!
Notes
Index

About The Cover

Front cover: 'Children protesting: Wran Give Us Our Land'. Photograph by Elaine Syron, NSWALC.

Back cover: Heidi Norman. Photograph by Barbara McGrady.