Australian Native Title and the Discursive Misreading of Practices of Cultural Continuity

What is it about?

This article examines how Aboriginal people in the state of Victoria in South-Eastern Australia adopt and adapt ways of representing themselves from the Australian state's late colonial incorporation of Aboriginal people into the national story, confronting the state's own definitions of cultural continuity and authenticity. This article shows that the ways in which people use and communicate knowledge can exhibit cultural continuity even where the content of that knowledge has changed.

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Why is it important?

This article brings a fresh focus to scholarly debate regarding Australian native title recognition through questioning the 'content-based' approach to cultural continuity and authenticity that underlies native title legislation and the court-based recognition process. Through drawing attention to strategic communicative practices this paper points to ways in which implicit and embodied forms of knowledge can usefully be tapped to address the state's demand for demonstrative cultural continuity.