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Overview
Australians know very little about how Indigenous Australians came to gain the civil rights that other Australians had long taken for granted. One of the key reasons for this is the entrenched belief that civil rights were handed to Indigenous people and not won by them.
In this book John Chesterman draws on government and other archival material from around the country to make a compelling case that Indigenous people, together with non-Indigenous supporters, did effectively agitate for civil rights, and that this activism, in conjunction with international pressure, led to legal reforms. Chesterman argues that these struggles have laid important foundations for future dealings between Indigenous people and Australian governments.
Synopsis
Chesterman (political science, U. of Melbourne, Australia) focuses on the twenty-year period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, when Indigenous Australians achieved formal equality as Commonwealth and state governments repealed their discriminatory laws. Based on extensive examination of governmental records from the period, the author examines why the civil rights changes occurred when they did and concludes that civil rights were won by Indigenous people, and not simply handed to them by governments. He also examines the question of why formal equality has not led to greater changes in the well-being of Indigenous Australians, and how their civil rights affect the recognition of Indigenous rights. Distributed in the U.S. by ISBS. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR