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Governing Natives : Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia’s North by Ben Silverstein
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First known date:
2022...
2022
Governing Natives : Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia’s North by Ben Silverstein
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'Ben Silverstein’s Governing Natives: Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia’s North is a deeply researched, theoretically sophisticated and highly readable book, which makes the new and compelling argument that the Aboriginal New Deal, a major reform of Commonwealth policy in the Northern Territory in 1939, can be interpreted as a form of ‘indirect rule’. The book opens with an account of the death in 1937 of a Pintubi man at a pastoral station on the Ormiston River in Central Australia during an intra-tribal argument. This event prompted a visiting patrol officer, Ted Strehlow, to ponder what he should do when (as Silverstein puts it) ‘Aboriginal people had acted as though unconcerned by the spectre of his authority’ (p. 1). Strehlow was unsure as to whether any of those involved should be charged and tried; the applicability of settler law was at least questionable. The case highlighted the problems of physical and jurisdictional coexistence; of Aboriginal people who were essentially self-governing and were also choosing to move through settler spaces around pastoral stations.' (Introduction)
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Last amended 31 Jul 2023 17:09:31
https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n10914/pdf/book_review07_furphy.pdf
Governing Natives : Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia’s North by Ben Silverstein
Aboriginal History Journal
Review of:
- Governing Natives : Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia's North 2018 multi chapter work criticism
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