Shortlisted for the Stanner Award 2004.

Larissa Behrendt attacks the chasm which has grown between Indigenous lives and aspirations in Australia and the psychological terra nullius which continues, despite Mabo, to pervade so much of Australia’s mythology and policy. She proposes longer-term, aspirational initiatives leading to institutional change that will facilitate greater rights protection and the exercise of self-determination, including: a preamble to the Constitution, a treaty, the national self-image, economic redistribution, alternative institutional forms, regional framework agreements, a more energized politics, and constitutional protection.

Table of Contents

Dedication
List of key organisations and people

CHAPTER 1: Why Question the Rules?
Australians and the first Australians
Practical reconciliation or the rights agenda?
A belief in substantive equality
More than a 'noisy minority'
The concept of democracy
New approaches to Indigenous rights protection

CHAPTER 2: The Myth of Law's Neutrality: Why Formal Equality Doesn't Work
Different conceptions of justice
Different conceptions of property
Different conceptions of equality

CHAPTER 3: Nationalism and Identity: Why 'Western' Institutions Don't Work for Everyone
The Australian self-image
Challenging the Australian self-image
Why recognition matters

CHAPTER 4: Indigenous Aspirations: The Starting Point for Rights Protection
What 'Indigenous sovereignty' and 'self-determination' might mean
Deciphering the content of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination
The parameters of Indigenous claims

CHAPTER 5: New Strategies, Improved Rights Protection
A program for institutional change
Indigenous rights and aspirations
Some underlying principles

CHAPTER 6: Towards Improved Rights Protection: Some First Steps and Some Alternative Futures
Towards a new national self-image
Towards Constitutional change
Towards regional autonomy

CHAPTER 7: Some Conclusions

Bibliography
Index

"Behrendt provides perhaps the clearest articulation we have of what Indigenous Australians want and need--and how it might be achieved. This book will be debated, dissected, applauded and disagreed with in the years to come, and certainly quoted alongside the work of the most influential legal and social commentators in the field. For the moment, it is compulsory reading for anyone working or interested in Indigenous law and policy....
Most of the critical contemporary issues in Indigenous law and policy in Australia are discussed in the book … most of the significant contributions to the debate are interpreted and responded to.
Behrendt writes with an honesty and clarity that is sometimes lost in the Indigenous law and policy debate, and offers constructive proposals."

-- Simon Young, QUT Law Journal, Vol 4 No 1, 2004, 124