Encounters with Indigeneity

In this valuable collection renowned Australian scholar, Professor Jeremy Beckett, draws together some of his best writing from the 1970s to the present. The collection distils 50 years of history, blending cultural analysis with narrative in two regions of Australia. One of the regions covered, the Torres Strait, was catapulted from obscurity to the centre of Australian attention by the Mabo case. Beckett remains one of the country's most authoritative expert witnesses and is still consulted for his expertise. As a series of discrete studies, the material of the book evokes Indigenous agency on a number of fronts: cultural, political, economic, religious. The breadth of content reflects the changing conditions in which Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders have been living and the changing perspectives of anthropologists, and the wider scholarly world more generally.

'Jeremy Beckett is one of the most accomplished and insightful writers on Australian Indigenous matters. He has been a trailblazer in his academic field in a number of ways.' — Dr Melinda Hinkson, ANU