Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship

by John Chesterman , Brian Galligan

• ISBN13: 9780521592307
• ISBN10: 0521592305
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is the first comprehensive study of the ways in which Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have been excluded from the rights of Australian citizenship over the past 100 years. Drawing extensively on archival material, the authors look at how the colonies initiated a policy of exclusion that was then replicated by the Commonwealth and State governments following federation. The book includes careful examination of government policies and practice from the 1880s to the 1990s. It argues that there was never any constitutional reason why Aborigines could not be granted full citizenship.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	vi	(1)
Acknowledgments	vii	(2)
Abbreviations	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
1 The Citizenship Divide in Colonial Victoria	11	(20)
2 Under the Law: Aborigines and Islanders in Colonial Queensland	31	(27)
3 Is the Constitution to Blame?	58	(26)
4 The Commonwealth Defines the Australian Citizen (in association with Tom Clarke)	84	(37)
5 The States Confine the Aboriginal Non-citizen	121	(35)
6 The Slow Path to Civil Rights	156	(37)
7 From Civil to Indigenous Rights	193	(30)
Notes	223	(33)
Bibliography	256	(13)
Index	269