Author Description

This award-winning work explores the complexities surrounding contemporary Aboriginal identity. Drawing on a range of historical and research literature, interviews and surveys, The Politics of Identity explores Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginality and the way these concepts are produced and reproduced across a range of sites and contexts. Carlson discusses the multiple, yet narrow definitions of Aboriginal identity that have existed throughout Australia's colonial history and its continuing impact upon contemporary Aboriginal identities. Emphasizing Indigenous debates and claims about Aboriginality, the work explores both the community and external tensions around appropriate measures of identity and the pressures and effects of identification.