Since the 1970s the federal political response to conditions in many Aboriginal communities has escalated from one of concern to today's rhetoric of 'national emergency'. In the intervening decades, policy had been repeatedly reoriented, from self-determination to mainstreaming, and from reconciliation to intervention. The result has been successive and unambiguous policy failures. This paper outlines ten areas of complexity in Aboriginal political culture that should have complicated the mainstream political response, and argues that the history of policy failure in Indigenous affairs is the direct result of successive governments' failure to come to terms with these complexities

Please note: This seminar is available in both Streaming Audio and MP3 formats.