In 1973, a newly-elected Australian Labor Party government led by Gough Whitlam described its new Aboriginal Affairs policy as one of Aboriginal self-determination. The policy proclaimed its intention to assist Aboriginal groups to achieve their own goals, and used the Northern Territory (over which the Commonwealth then had full control) as a proving ground for its implementation. Subsequently renamed self-management by the Fraser Government (1975–83), the policy was adapted in small but significant ways by every federal and Northern Territory Government in the period of this study (1973–86). The thinking of those who had formulated self-determination policy had been influenced by the situation and ambitions of the Gurindji people. The group had come to public attention following their Wave Hill Walk-off protest action of 1966, led by Vincent Lingiari. In the years afterwards, Lingiari and other Gurindji leaders articulated a number of goals, the achievement of which they saw as fundamental to their society’s wellbeing and viability. Those goals were: official recognition of their traditional rights to land; their operation of a cattle enterprise on that land; their establishment of an independent community there also; and the operation in that community of a ‘two-way’ school. This thesis recognises an apparent confluence of shared intentions among Gurindji leaders and government agencies in the self-determination era, and describes a zone of parallel Gurindji and government activity: ‘Gurindji self-determination’. Finding that three of Gurindji self-determination’s four goals were not or only fleetingly achieved, the task of this thesis is to identify the causes of this broad failure and singular success. To do this, the thesis draws on detailed empirical data, the policy history of the preceding decades, anthropological and ethnographic studies, and political theory. This thesis finds that Gurindji self-determination’s failure was caused by inchoate and emergent differences between the aims and methods of government agencies and the Gurindji. Equally, young Gurindji people’s social reform agendas were an important and unanticipated contributor to the failure of Gurindji self-determination. Increased cash incomes and broader policy shifts associated with ‘equal rights’ enabled younger Gurindji to conduct this reformation
