Outline

Unit code	GOVT3998
Academic unit	Government and International Relations
Credit points	6
Prohibitions ?	None
Prerequisites ?	12 credit points at 2000 level in Politics or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Diversity Studies or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Indigenous Studies or 12 senior credit points from Government and International Relations
Corequisites ?	None
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	Yes

Coordinator	Zac Gillies-Palmer, zac.gilliespalmer@sydney.edu.au
Lecturer(s)	Zac Gillies-Palmer, zac.gilliespalmer@sydney.edu.au
Tutor(s)	Zac Gillies-Palmer, zac.gilliespalmer@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Assignment	Case analysis essay Tutorial presentation and class hand-out. See Canvas page for specifics.	30%	-	1200 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Final summative essay Long-form essay. See Canvas page for specific essay questions & more info.	55%	Formal exam period Due date: 14 Nov 2022 at 23:59	2300 words
Outcomes assessed:
Presentation	Policy case Presentation From Week 2 - Weekly 100 word reflections on assigned readings via Canvas	15%	Weekly	1000 words (cumulative)
Outcomes assessed:

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Introduction - First Nations & Settler-Colonialism in Australia	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 02	Political Theory, 'Aboriginality', and the State	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 02	How and why do First Nations Peoples contest the question of 'what it means to be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander'?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 03	What does it mean to 'decolonize'?	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 03	What does the history of Redfern & 'The Battle For the Block' reveal about the diversity of First Nations Peoples?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 04	Political Theory: Colonial Structures & Ideologies	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 04	What can we learn about decolonisation from First Nations' campaigns against deaths in custody & coal seam gas projects on Gomeroi Country?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 05	Aboriginality & The ‘Hinterland’ Pastoral Industry	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 05	How do settler-colonial structures and ideologies relate to the political agency of First Nations Peoples?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 06	1960's - 1970's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Activism	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 06	How and why did First Nations Peoples challenge pastoralists in the Northern Territory between WWII & the 1960's?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 07	1980's - 1990's Activism and Government Responses	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 07	What do the Gurindji Strike & Tent Embassy reveal about the political strategies of First Nations Peoples in the 1960's & 70's?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 08	1990's ATSIC , Land Rights and Native Title	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 08	What does an understanding of the campaign for Commonwealth Land-Rights Legislation reveal about the history of First Nations Politics in the 1980's?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 09	The End of ATSIC & the NT Intervention	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 09	How and why did the Native Title Act emerge in the context of neoliberal restructuring in the 1990's?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 10	Defence of Country & Culture	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 10	How did antecedent Commonwealth Indigenous Affairs policies shape the NT Intervention?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 11	Treaties and Constitutional Recognition	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 11	What is the relationship between 'catch-up development', climate change, and contemporary First Nations Activism?	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 12	Feminist Perspectives	Lecture (2 hr)
Week 12	How and why does the 'Voice, Treaty, Truth' campaign challenge contemporary settler-colonisation in Australia?	Tutorial (1 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
Lecture recording: Most lectures (in recording-equipped venues) will be recorded and may be made available to students on the LMS. However, you should not rely on lecture recording to substitute your classroom learning experience.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Week 1 – Introduction

An overview of the course structure and assessments followed by an introduction to settler colonial studies in an Australian context.

Please read Maddison and Pascoe before you come to this lecture.

READING LIST:

Required: Preface & Introduction Chapters (Author: Sarah Maddison) in The Colonial Fantasy: Why White Australia can’t solve Black problems (2019) pages: xvii-xv
Required: Chapter 6: Whiteness, epistemology, and Indigenous representation (Author: Aileen Moreton-Robinson) in Whitening Race (2004) pages: 75-88
Required: Black Power, Land Rights and Academic History (Author: Garey Foley) in Griffith Law Review
Recommended: Chapter 25: Australian Settler-Colonialism Over the Long Nineteenth Century (Author: Penelope Edmonds and Jane Carey) in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (2017) pages: 371-389

Week 2 - Political Theory, Aboriginality, and the Settler State

How do different people understand what it means to be ‘Aboriginal’ in Australia.

How are prevailing theories of ‘Aboriginality’ related to the functioning of the settler-colonial state.

What are the merits and limitations of these perspectives?

READING LIST:

Required: Layered Identities (Author: Noel Pearson) in Quarterly Essay 55 A Rightful Place Race, recognition and a more complete commonwealth (2014) pages: 19-55
Required: Imagining the Good Indigenous Citizen: Race War and the Pathology of Patriarchal White Sovereignty (Author: Aileen Moreton-Robinson) in Cultural Studies Review
Required: Identity Categories: How Activists Use & Refuse Them (Author: Clare Land) in Decolonizing solidarity: dilemmas and directions for supporters of Indigenous Struggles (2015) pages: 84-111

Week 3 - What does it mean to 'decolonize'?

Australia is said to be a postcolonial state. But is it?

What does it mean to decolonise approaches to research in social science?

READING LIST:

Required: Decolonization is not a metaphor (Author: Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang) in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society Volume/Issue (1:1) (2012) pages: 1-40
Required: Commodification of Country: An Australian Case-Study in Community Resistance to Mining (Author: Ingrid Matthews) in Property, Place and Piracy (2017) pages: 106-122
Required: Unsettling allyship, unlearning and learning towards decolonising solidarity (Author: Jenalee Kluttz, Jude Walker & Pierre Walter) in Studies in the Education of Adults Volume/Issue: (52:1) (2020) pages: 49-66
Recommended: The frontline of refusal: Indigenous Women Warriors of Standing Rock (Author: Temryss MacLean Lane) in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Volume/Issue: (31:3) (2018) pages: 197-214

Week 4 - Political Theory: Colonial Structures & Ideologies

This week extends the concepts canvassed in Week 2 and Week 3 to consider how colonial structures and ideals relate to the evolution of settler-colonial society as a whole.

Exploring competing perspectives on the nature of colonial structures and agents provides an insight into the processes that shape Indigenous Policy and Politics in Australia.

This week pays specific attention to the juridical structures of property and their historical connection with First Nations Resistance, colonial ideals, and discourses of economic ‘development’.

READING LIST:

Required: Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates (Author: Stuart Hall) in Critical Studies in Mass Communication Volume/Issue(2:2)(1985) pages: 91-114
Required: Chapter 2: Propertied Abstractions (Author: Brenna Bhandar) in Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (2018) pages: 77-113
Required: Chapter 5: Nullifying Native Title (Author: Aileen Moreton-Robinson) in The white possessive: property, power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (2015) pages: 65-77

Week 5 - Aboriginality & The ‘Hinterland’ Pastoral Industry

This week applies the concepts discussed in previous weeks in relation to the participation of First Nations Peoples in the 20th century pastoral industry.

The readings explore how Aboriginal People in Northern Australia exercised their agency to challenge the structural and ideological foundations of this specific form of colonisation commonly referred to as ‘assimilation’.

Further attention is paid to how long-term changes in Australia’s economy shaped the agency of First Nations Peoples, pastoralists, and the Australian state in this context.

READING LIST:

Required: When Wages Were Clothes: Dressing Down Aboriginal Workers in Australia’s Northern Territory (Author: Julia Martinez) in International review of social history Volume/Issue(52:2)(2007) pages: 271-286
Required: Chapter 7: Assimilation (Author: Tim Rowse) in White Flour, White Power (2011) pages: 107-117
Required: Chapter 7: The Conditions of Production & The Production of Conditions (Author: James O'Connor) in Natural causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (1998) pages: 144-157
Recommended: Chapter 4: Pastoralists (Author: Andrew Markus) in Governing Savages (1990) pages: 50-65
Recommended: "Strike Strike, We Strike": Making Aboriginal Domestic Labor Visible in the Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike, Western Australia, 1946-1952 (Author: Victoria Haskins & Anne Scrimgeour) in International Labor and Working-Class Volume/Issue (88:Fall 2015) (2007) pages: 87-108

Week 6 - 1960's to 1970's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Activism

This week considers the agency of First Nations Peoples in the context of the Land-Rights movement. The material has a specific focus on grassroots political strategies in the Northern Territory pastoral industry and its relationship with urban forms of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Activists.

The readings explore how First Nations Leaders’ of the Land-Rights struggle navigated the changing political economy of Australia to secure the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land-Rights Act and other forms of recognition within the bureaucracy of the Australian state.

The intertwined histories of the Gurindji Strike, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and the campaign for Equal Wages in the pastoral industry shape this week’s discussion.

READING LIST:

Required: Chapter 8: The Crisis of Managed Consumption (Author: Tim Rowse) in White Flour, White Power (2011) pages: 118-146
Required: A Short History of the Australian Indigenous Resistance 1950 - 1990 (Author: Gary Foley) (2010) link: http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/229.pdf
Required: Chapter 1, Struggles for Recognition: Bridging Three Separated spheres of Discourse (Author: ) in Transnational Struggles for Recognition: New perspectives on civil society since the twentieth century (2017) pages: 51-84
Recommended: The Aboriginal Embassy: An Account of the Protests of 1972 (Author: S. Robinson) in Aboriginal History Volume/Issue (18) (1994) pages: 49-63
Recommended: The Articulation of Land-Rights in Australia: The Case of Wave Hill (Author: Bain Attwood) in Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology Volume/Issue(44:1)(36617) pages: 3-39

Week 7 - 1980's to 1990's Activism and Government Responses

Students will consider how Indigenous Policy and Politics evolved in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The readings consider how First Nations Peoples exercised their agency to shape Australian society following the election of the Hawke Labor Government. A focus on the limitations of land-rights legislation and neoliberal restructuring foregrounds the relationship between Indigenous Sovereignty and the globalisation of Australia’s economy. Students will consider how these processes affected First Nations led campaigns for Commonwealth land-rights legislation modelled on the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act.

READING LIST:

Required: Land rights and Aboriginal voices (Author: Gary Foley & Tim Anderson) in Australian Journal of Human Rights Volume/Issue (12:1) (2006) pages: 83-108
Required: Chapter 2: Neoliberalism and Indigenous rights in New South Wales (Author: Barry Morris) in Protest, land rights and riots: postcolonial struggles in Australia in the 1980s (2013) pages: 68-111
Recommended: Chapter 6: Pretend Economy (Author: Gary Johns) in Aboriginal self-determination: The Whiteman's Dream (2011) pages: 205-248

Week 8 – The 1990's, ATSIC, Land Rights and Native Title

This week focusses on the relationship between the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993, neoliberalism, and the agency of First Nations Peoples in the 1990’s. Students will consider how settler-colonialism in Australia evolved in this context. A comparative analysis of the Native Title Act and the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 provides an insight into the ascendant political power of the mining industry and its impact on Land-Rights. Students will consider how and why the Native Title Act limited the rights of First Nations Owners to sub-surface minerals. An attendant focus on the evolution of Government Policies based on ‘Reconcilation’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous society reveals the limitations of preceding Self-Determination policies enacted by the Australian State.

READING LIST:

Required: Chapter 10: Indigenous sovereignty and the Australian state: Relations in a globalising era (Author: Maggie Walter) in Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters (2007) pages: 155-167
Required: Chapter 5: Periodising Neoliberalism (Author: Elizabeth Humphrys) in How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement, and the Neoliberal Project (2018) pages: 74-108
Required: Unmasking the Politics of Native Title: The National Native Title Tribunal's application of the NTA's arbitration provisions (Author: Ciaran O’FAIRCHEALLAIGH; Tony CORBETT) in University of Western Australia Law Review Volume/Issue(33:1)(2006) pages: 153-177
Recommended: Chapter 6: The High Court & The Yorta Yorta Decision (Author: Aileen Moreton-Robinson) in The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (2015) pages: 79-92

Week 9 – Reading Week

Mid-Semester break. No assigned readings.

Week 10 - The End of ATSIC & the NT Intervention

This week turns to the relationship between the Northern Territory Intervention and antecedent Indigenous Affairs policies. Students will explore how Prime Minister Howard and other political agents diffused a specific discourse of ‘Aboriginality’ premised on a distinction between ‘practical reconciliation’ and ‘symbolic reconciliation’. The readings consider how these ideals generated consent for significant changes in the structure of Australian settler-colonisation including the suspension of the anti-discrimination act, additional limitations on the rights of First Nations Peoples in the NT, and greater state power over Aboriginal Land.

Students will draw on the concepts and histories outlined in previous weeks to analyse the way that the NT Intervention unfolded following the demise of ATSIC. The readings also ask students to analyse how and why these conditions affected the agency of First Nations Peoples. The Ampilatwatja walk-off provides an invaluable case-study for students concerned with the endurance of grassroots resistance to the Intervention despite the state’s attempts to ‘stabilise, normalise, and exit’ Aboriginal Communities in the NT.

READING LIST:

Required: Aboriginality and the Northern Territory Intervention (Author: Alissa Macoun) in Australian Journal of Political Science Volume/Issue (46:3) (2011) pages: 519-534
Required: The Trojan Horse (Author: Turner, P. and Watson, N) in Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exist Aboriginal Australia (2007) pages: 205-212
Required: A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention (Author: Rebecca Stringer) in Borderlands Volume/Issue (6:2) (2007) pages: n/a
Required: Patrick Wolfe and the settler-colonial intervention (Author: Elizabeth Strakosch and Alissa Macoun) (2017)
Recommended: Chapter 10: Securing Sovereignty: Private Property, Indigenous Resistance, and the Rhetoric of Housing (Author: Jillian Kramer) in Security, Race, Biopower (2016) pages: 185-205
Recommended: The Ampilatwatja walk-off: why the Intervention doesn’t work (Author: Bob Gosford)

Week 11 - Defence of Country & Culture

This week considers how First Nations Peoples are confronting the political and economic challenges of contemporary Australia. Critical perspectives on ‘catch-up development’ inform the required readings. Students will analyse how First Nations Peoples are challenging the intensification of climate change to defend their Country and Culture. The course material develops a specific focus on three contemporary political issues: 1) First Nations’ campaigns against coal-seam gas vis-à-vis Australia’s ‘gas-fired recovery’ from the COVID-19 pandemic. 2) Campaigns against Black Deaths in Custody in the context of the global Black Lives Matter Movements, and 3) linkages between the NT Intervention and the Commonwealth ‘Our North, Our Future’ economic ‘development’ programme in Northern Australia.

READING LIST:

Required: Chapter 1: People on country as alternative development (Author: Jon Altman) in People on Country: Vital Landscapes | Indigenous Futures. (2012) pages: 44583
Required: Chapter 10: No more yardin' us up like cattle (Author: Jack Green & Jimmy Morrison) in People on Country: Vital Landscapes | Indigenous Futures. (2012) pages: 190-201
Required: Two visions of Indigenous economic development and cultural survival: The ‘real economy’ and the ‘hybrid economy’ (Author: Katherine Curchin) in Australian Journal of Political Science Volume/Issue (50:3) (2015) pages: 412-426
Required: Is ‘Closing the Gap’ Enough? Ngarrindjeri ontologies, reconciliation and caring for country (Author: Daryle Rigney & Steve Hemming) in Educational Philosophy and Theory Volume/Issue (46:5)(2014) pages: 536-545

Week 12 - Treaties and Constitutional Recognition

The purpose of this week is to historicise the Uluru Statement from the Heart and ‘Voice, Treaty, Truth’ campaign in relation to the concepts and histories explored in previous weeks. Students will consider the competing perspectives of First Nations Peoples on the slated constitutional referendum.

READING LIST:

Required: Constitutional Recognition Does Not Foreclose on Aboriginal Sovereignty (Author: Megan Davis) in Indigenous Law Bulletin Volume/Issue (8:1) (July/August 2012) pages: n/a
Required: Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada (Author: Glen Sean Coulthard) in Contemporary Political Theory Volume/Issue (6:4) (2007) pages: 437-460
Required: Chapter 14: Is the Constitution a better tool than simple legislation to advance the cause of Aboriginal Peoples? (Author: Michael Mansell) in It's Our Country: Indigenous Arguments for Meaningful Constitutional Recognition and Reform (2016)
Required: Egalitarian nationhoods: a political theory in defence of the voice to parliament in the Uluru Statement from the Heart (Author: Harry Hobbs & Benjamin T. Jones) in Australian Journal of Political Science Volume/Issue (57:2) (2022) pages: 129-144
Recommended: Gamil means No: An interview with the next generation Gamilaraay, Ian Brown (Author: Paul Gregoire)

Week 13 – Feminist Perspectives

The course will conclude by reviewing the material canvassed in previous weeks through an explicitly feminist lens. While feminist perspectives are woven throughout the course, the purpose of this week is to consolidate students’ understanding of the gendered nature of settler-colonisation. The assigned readings encourage students to adopt a feminist lens in their approach to First Nations Politics and Policy.

READING LIST:

PLEASE READ BEFORE LECTURE

Required: The Devaluation of Women's Labour (Author: Silvia Fedirici) in Eco-sufficiency & global justice: women write political ecology (2009) pages: 43-65
Required: Chapter 5: Always A Good Demand (Author: Shirleene Robinson) in Colonization and domestic service: historical and contemporary perspectives (2015) pages: 97-112
Required: Chapter 2: Privatisation and dispossession in the name of indigenous women’s rights (Author: Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez) in The Neoliberal State, Recognition, & Indigenous Rights (2018) pages: 43-58
Recommended: Towards an Australian Indigenous Women's Standpoint Theory (Author: Aileen Moreton-Robinson) in Australian Feminist Studies Volume/Issue(28:78)(2013) pages: 331-347
Recommended: Imprisoned Indigenous women and the shadow of colonial patriarchy (Author: Eileen Baldry & Chris Cunneen) in Australian & New Zealand journal of criminology Volume/Issue (47:2) (2014) pages: 276-298

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Current students

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Additional information

Additional information

Work, health and safety

Disclaimer

On this page

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Media

Student links

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Current students

GOVT3998: Aboriginal and TSI Politics and Policy

Semester 2, 2022 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Additional information

Additional information

Work, health and safety

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

Media

Student links

About us

Connect