A Higher Authority Indigenous Transnationalism And Australia

This important book recovers the long tradition of indigenous transnationalism – contact with external people, institutions, ideas – throughout Australia’s history from before white settlement to the present.

This important book recovers the long tradition of indigenous transnationalism - contact with external people, institutions, ideas - throughout Australia's history from before white settlement to the present.

"What Good Condition? collects edited papers, initially delivered at the Treaty Advancing Reconciliation conference, on the proposal for a treaty between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, a proposal which has been discussed and dissected for nearly 30 years. Featuring contributions from prominent Aboriginal community leaders, legal experts and academics, this capacious work provides an overview of the context and legacy of the residue of treaty proposals and negotiations in past decades; a consideration of the implications of treaty in an Indigenous, national and international context; and, finally, some reflections on regional aspirations and achievements."--Publisher's description.

This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.

This collection of eleven original essays goes beyond traditional, border-driven studies to place the histories of Native Americans, indigenous peoples, and First Nation peoples in a larger context than merely that of the dominant nation. As Transnational Indians in the North American West shows, transnationalism can be expressed in various ways. To some it can be based on dependency, so that the history of the indigenous people of the American Southwest can only be understood in the larger context of Mexico and Central America. Others focus on the importance of movement between Indian and non-Indian worlds as Indians left their (reserved) lands to work, hunt, fish, gather, pursue legal cases, or seek out education, to name but a few examples. Conversely, even natives who remained on reserved lands were nonetheless transnational inasmuch as the reserves did not fully “belong” to them but were administered by a nation-state. Boundaries that scholars once viewed as impermeable, it turns out, can be quite porous. This book stands to be an important contribution to the scholarship that is increasingly breaking free of old boundaries.

This book investigates the discursive and performative strategies employed by Australian Indigenous rappers to make sense of the world and establish a position of authority over their identity and place in society. Focusing on the aesthetics, the language, and the performativity of Hip Hop, this book pays attention to the life stance, the philosophy, and the spiritual beliefs of Australian Indigenous Hip Hop artists as ‘glocal’ producers and consumers. With Hip Hop as its main point of analysis, the author investigates, interrogates, and challenges categories and preconceived ideas about the critical notions of authenticity, ‘Indigenous’ and dominant values, spiritual practices, and political activism. Maintaining the emphasis on the importance of adopting decolonizing research strategies, the author utilises qualitative and ethnographic methods of data collection, such as semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, participant observation, and fieldwork notes. Collaborators and participants shed light on some of the dynamics underlying their musical decisions and their view within discussions on representations of ‘Indigenous identity and politics’. Looking at the Indigenous rappers’ local and global aspirations, this study shows that, by counteracting hegemonic narratives through their unique stories, Indigenous rappers have utilised Hip Hop as an expressive means to empower themselves and their audiences, entertain, and revive their Elders’ culture in ways that are contextual to the society they live in.

Australia is rarely considered to have been a part of the great political changes that swept the world in the 1960s: the struggles of the American civil rights movement, student revolts in Europe, guerrilla struggles across the Third World and demands for women’s and gay liberation. This book tells the story of how Australian activists from a diversity of movements read about, borrowed from, physically encountered and critiqued overseas manifestations of these rebellions, as well as locating the impact of radical visitors to the nation. It situates Australian protest and reform movements within a properly global – and particularly Asian – context, where Australian protestors sought answers, utopias and allies. Dramatically broadens our understanding of Australian protest movements, this book presents them not only as manifestations of local issues and causes but as fundamentally tied to ideas, developments and personalities overseas, particularly to socialist states and struggles in near neighbours like Vietnam, Malaysia and China.'Jon Piccini is Research and Teaching Fellow at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include the history of human rights and social histories of international student migration.'