ABSTRACT
Constructions of Indigenous 2 identity have been a preoccupation of both the Australian popular imagination and the Australian nation-state from the earliest days of colonization (McCorquodale 1997; Chesterman and Galligan 1998; Gardiner-Garden 2003). Historically, non-Indigenous approaches to defining and understanding Indigeneity have focused on the need to surveil and control the socialization, mobility and biological reproduction of those with some descent from pre-colonial people of Australia (Dodson 1994). In an analysis of over 700 pieces of legislation McCorquodale (1986) found 67 different definitions of Indigeneity. Much more recently Indigenous people have begun to mark out our own discursive space in which to debate the meaning of Indigeneity in contemporary Australia (Taylor 2001).
