Negotiating Indigeneity: Culture, Identity, and Politics

Abstract

Defining “indigeneity” has recently been approached with renewed vigor. While the field can involve quite passionate commitment to advocacy among scholars, theoretical clarity is needed in understanding just who might be thought of as indigenous, and the reasons why this is so. Does “indigeneity” make sense only if it is understood in relation to the “non-indigenous,” and if so, how useful is the latter category across societies and nations with very different cultural histories? Two edited volumes, one which addresses this question in global perspective and another focused exclusively on Australia, are reviewed and contextualized within broader debates.

KEYWORDS:

• archaeology
• Australia
• cultural identity
• indigenous peoples
• nativeness

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Michael Williams, Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, has generously discussed the issues in this article with David S. Trigger over many years. Ian Lilley, also at the Unit, kindly advised on relevant sources for discussion of approaches in contact archaeology.