The educational and social disengagement of Indigenous youth in many remote communities in Northern Australia is well documented. A cursory reading of media reports and opinion pieces uncovers many who can be blamed: schools, parents, teachers, government, socialists, anthropologists, linguists and even film makers.

There exists a growing body of literature about the benefits to Indigenous people, as well as to the environment, of living on and caring for land and sea country. However, most of these findings emanate from Northern Australia, where Aboriginal people are usually working on their own Aboriginal-owned or -controlled land. NSW is the state with the largest absolute number of Indigenous people, but their landholdings comprise less than one per cent of the state.

The success of the Close The Gap Campaign for Indigenous Health Equality, an Indigenous-led initiative involving a coalition of 40 or so concerned organisations, is reflected in the commitment by the Rudd Government in 2008 to the campaign's Statement of Intent and its adoption of 'closing the gap' as the government's flagship Indigenous policy framework.

The recent development of a new sub-discipline of linguistics known as 'documentary linguistics' has placed a new focus on the recording of knowledge that speakers of endangered languages have across a range of semantic fields, including those in the natural sciences. The recording of Indigenous ecological knowledge is not new in Australia, but its application to land management has only recently been considered with any seriousness. The issue of Aboriginal burning practices is now (again) a rather poignant case in point.

According to the 2006 Census, around three quarters of Indigenous Australians live in regional areas or major cities. This represents a small, but noticeable increase from previous census years, especially in large regional towns. While most measured socioeconomic outcomes are advantageous relative to remote parts of the country, there are still substantial gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in regional and urban Australia.

The Yanyuwa language of the south west Gulf of Carpentaria is, as with many other Indigenous languages, critically endangered. This seminar describes the development of methods to record important stories about family and country. Beginning with the Yanyuwa atlas to more recent developments using animation as a tool to try and bridge knowledge gaps between older and younger generations.

This seminar will report on recent research about fresh water governance arrangements in the Maningrida region covering some 10,000 square kilometres in tropical Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. The seminar describes the region's water resources and then focuses on three linked broad perspectives on water: a historical analysis of the political economy of water; a sectoral analysis of water in the regional 'hybrid' economy; and a spatial analysis of water governance in Maningrida and the hinterland.

The NTER intervention is to be reviewed one year on, as promised by the ALP in the lead up to the election. According to the original terms of the emergency intervention, the one year anniversary also marks the end of the proposed 'stabilisation' phase (although all intervention measures have not yet reached all prescribed communities) and the point of transition to the 'normalisation' phase.

The recent passing away of a significant number of senior Aboriginal artists has raised concern about the future of Aboriginal art. This, together with reports of a market flooded with second-rate work and a lingering anxiety that the popularity of Aboriginal art may have run its course animates my research on the inter-generational shift in the production and market for Aboriginal art.

There is growing recognition that a 'development' approach to Indigenous communities could be useful, in contrast to (or to complement) a service delivery approach to Indigenous Affairs. But what does a development approach mean? There are many different ideas about what 'development' is and how it is achieved, and hence many different approaches to 'development'. This seminar will canvass some approaches to 'development' common in the international arena and critically explore how they are being articulated in Indigenous Australia, explicitly or implicitly.