Indigenous Issues
Book Details

Crossing Boundaries

Cultural, Legal, Historical and Practice Issues in Native Title

Sandy Toussaint (ed.)

In Crossing Boundaries, editor Sandy Toussaint and twenty contributors have created the first cross-disciplinary exploration of native title work.

Opinion

'Crossing Boundaries gives leading thinkers and practitioners working in native title the chance to reflect on their experience (the book includes several case studies including positive role models) and calls for better communication between them, especially between lawyers working on native-title cases and their Aboriginal clients.' (Age, 17/4/2004)

'While this book is written for practitioners of native title it gives the lay person a good understanding of the quandries faced by these professionals.' (Message Stick, June 2004)

About this Title

The legal recognition of native title has given rise to issues and processes that provide challenges to anthropologists, linguists, historians and lawyers. Those issues not only cross the boundaries of these areas of expertise, but also involve the whole community.'--Fred Chaney

Ever since the 1992 Mabo decision put an end to the legal fiction that Australia was without owners before the arrival of the British colonisers, the work associated with resolving native title claims has developed as a significant but often difficult arena of professional practice. Increasingly, anthropologists, linguists, historians and lawyers have been encouraged to work collaboratively, often in the context of highly charged public controversy about who owns the land.

In Crossing Boundaries, editor Sandy Toussaint and her contributors have created a cross-disciplinary exploration of native title work. In all, twenty professionals share their experience and expertise. As Toussaint concludes, 'Chapters in this volume reveal the extent to which native title workers need to communicate more cogently and, in some cases, to redefine their practice.'

About the Author

Sandy Toussaint is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Western Australia. She has worked extensively on matters related to lands, waters and laws with Kimberley Indigenous communities. Her publications include Phyllis Kaberry and Me: Anthropology, History and Aboriginal Australia (MUP), and Applied Anthropology in Australasia (co-edited with Jim Taylor).

978-0-522-85074-1