They keep changing the goalposts: inclusion, tokenism and intention in Aboriginal policy approaches
Gaynor Macdonald
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney
Contact Email:   gaynor.macdonaldanthropology.usyd.edu.au

The past three decades have seen an unprecedented attempt to incorporate Indigenous Australians into a fuller and fairer participation in Australian society, but with very mixed results. This paper examines how members of Aboriginal land councils in New South Wales found themselves caught between their initial aspirations and the reality of different State Governments’ expectations. Many came to believe that it was not intended that they ‘succeed’. I examine the often unanticipated disjunctures that arise in the processes whereby people and groups – as individuals and organisations – are included in certain forms of rights and practices. The outcome of beneficial policy is often simultaneous inclusion and exclusion as people grapple with the contestation over what it means to be the good citizen, bewilderment at unacknowledged successes, and the reproduction of marginalisation through its apparent redress. The paper draws on long-term ethnographic research and seeks to develop a framework through which to think about the ‘problem of inclusion’.

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