Indigenous peoples and autonomy

Sample

H.C. Coombs

After more than two hundred years of white colonisation, one of the most important moral issues facing Australian society remains the need for reconciliation with indigenous Australians. In these essays H.C. Coombs reflects on the nature of Aboriginal identity and the ongoing importance of autonomy for contemporary Aboriginal society. He also suggests strategies by which self-determination meaningful to Aboriginal people might be achieved in practice. Some of the chapters have been written especially for this volume, including one in which Dr Coombs makes a thoughtful and provocative contribution to the Mabo debate, linking the High Court's historic decision to prospects for Aboriginal autonomy. Dr Coombs writes with the conviction that 'mainstream' Australia stands to gain as much as Aboriginal people, if not more, from the fulfillment of Aboriginal aspirations. It is a personal and passionate plea for a just society, from one of Australia's most influential and eloquent advocates of the rights of indigenous people.

Sample

Jeffery R. Webber

"Bolivia witnessed a left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005 that overthrew two neoliberal presidents and laid the foundation for Evo Morales' successful bid to become the country's first indigenous head of state in 2006. Building on the theoretical traditions of revolutionary Marxism and indigenous liberation, this book provides an analytical framework for understanding the fine-grained sociological and political nuances of twenty-first century Bolivian class-struggle, state-repression, and indigenous resistance, as well the deeply historical roots of today's oppositional traditions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 80 in-depth interviews with social-movement and trade-union activists, Red October is a ground-breaking intervention in the study of contemporary Bolivia and the wider Latin American turn to the left over the last decade."--Publisher's website.

Sample

Helen Hunt Jackson

Originally published over 100 years ago, A Century of Dishonor is Helen Jackson’s eye- opening sketch of the U.S. government’s often shameful mishandling of what was called the “Indian problem”. Using official documents as authentic research materials, Jackson asserts that the government and citizens of the United States were the cause of the “problems”, and not the Native peoples.

Sample

Mary E. Hull

Examines the contributions of soldiers, government officials, free blacks, abolitionists, women, and children to the Union cause during the Civil War.