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This thesis concerns Indigenous agency, socio-political and cultural systems, and their reproduction by means of performances within the contemporary Australian state. It examines the cultural politics of Indigeneity developed by Kimberley Aboriginal people through their regional organisations. It presents an ethnographic study of Indigenous modes of representation and organisation based on fieldwork carried out with the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, a grass-roots Indigenous regional organisation federating thirty distinct groups, between 2005 and 2007. As such, the thesis gives particular attention to contemporary Indigenous practices of cultural representation and political action. The study aims at providing an anthropological understanding of the continuing cultural and political salience of the difference between Aboriginal people and Kartiyas. Engaging with the concept and practice of Law and Culture, initial research questions have been reframed in terms of the reproduction of the Kimberley as a set of Indigenous countries. Developing a relational approach, using a regional and a local perspective, the thesis provides with accounts of the relational field of interdependencies between the Australian State and its Indigenous habitants. Experiential and historical constructions of Country, cultural logics of Indigenous ritual and political agency, processes of indigenisation of the Australian modernity and current models of Indigenous sustainable development in the Kimberley are successively examined in order to allow for a processual and performative understanding of Indigenous articulations of their subjectivity, agency and identity. The thesis develops a theoretical framework discussing intercultural and ontological models of Indigeneity and argues for a territorialising and performative approach to the definition of Indigenous singularities, drawing on the Indigenous concepts of Country and Law and Culture to frame anew notions of orality, culture and land. ; Cette thèse interroge les ...

This thesis concerns Indigenous agency, socio-political and cultural systems, and their reproduction by means of performances within the contemporary Australian state. It examines the cultural politics of Indigeneity developed by Kimberley Aboriginal people through their regional organisations. It presents an ethnographic study of Indigenous modes of representation and organisation based on fieldwork carried out with the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, a grass-roots Indigenous regional organisation federating thirty distinct groups, between 2005 and 2007. As such, the thesis gives particular attention to contemporary Indigenous practices of cultural representation and political action. The study aims at providing an anthropological understanding of the continuing cultural and political salience of the difference between Aboriginal people and Kartiyas. Engaging with the concept and practice of Law and Culture, initial research questions have been reframed in terms of the reproduction of the Kimberley as a set of Indigenous countries. Developing a relational approach, using a regional and a local perspective, the thesis provides with accounts of the relational field of interdependencies between the Australian State and its Indigenous habitants. Experiential and historical constructions of Country, cultural logics of Indigenous ritual and political agency, processes of indigenisation of the Australian modernity and current models of Indigenous sustainable development in the Kimberley are successively examined in order to allow for a processual and performative understanding of Indigenous articulations of their subjectivity, agency and identity. The thesis develops a theoretical framework discussing intercultural and ontological models of Indigeneity and argues for a territorialising and performative approach to the definition of Indigenous singularities, drawing on the Indigenous concepts of Country and Law and Culture to frame anew notions of orality, culture and land. ; Cette thèse interroge les ...

Despite a recent return to 'colonial facts' studies after a period of major theoretical innovations, it is still often a blind point in the analysis of imperial or colonial 'encounter' situations of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries: the field of "indigenous" practices and hearing (we will say rather: vernacular) little or not finalised by the report, forced or voluntary, to Europeans. However, taking into account this 'indigenous off-field' of the colonial world — thought here as a configuration of situations governed by distinct 'historicity regimes' — allows a renewed understanding of the historicity of Asian, oceanian or African political societies. In particular, it involves interpreting the colonial moment of these societies in the light of their own long-lasting trajectories, spread over centuries, and thus started well before the 'arrival of Europeans' (which does not always, far from being, 'event' among local letters). This research perspective also makes it necessary to rethink, to its fair extent, the still partial and precarious roots of colonial dominance, and in so doing not to make meeting with Europe the unique focus of extra-European chronologies. Lastly, it makes it possible, in contrast to the misleading convenience of the now dominant paradigm of 'indigenous ownership of colonial/European modernity', to push the analysis beyond the mere assignment of an agency (individualised capacity to act) to the Indigenes, and in particular to question local, vernacular structures, intentionality and timing. ; The field of colonial studies has gone through tremendous theoretical upheavals in the past three decades. Yet something is still too often missing in the study of 17th, 18th and 19th century situations of colonial or imperial "encounter", namely this vernacular domain of thought and actions that was kept out of reach of the colonizer's power and knowledge tools, and that was not geared toward the (whether coerced or not) commercial, political or military interaction with the Europeans. ...

Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the participation of Indigenous community members as a key component of Indigenous Education reform. Guided by sharing circles conducted with Indigenous Elders, families, teachers, and support workers, we present community voices and experiences of Indigenous Education in an urban school board through poetic transcription. Our research suggests that four key barriers will have to be overcome in efforts to improve urban Indigenous Education: unwelcoming schools, professionalization of classroom teaching, colonized classrooms, and unilateral decolonization. Poetic transcription is used in this article to centre the voices of Indigenous participants as well as attempt to decolonize our approach to data dissemination of Indigenous voices as white, Euro-Canadian university-based researchers. La littérature savante, les politiques d'éducation et les documents curriculaires canadiens actuels encouragent la participation des membres des communautés autochtones comme élément-clé de la réforme en matière d'éducation autochtone. À partir des cercles de partage auxquels participaient les aînés, les familles, les enseignants et les agents de soutien, nous présentons, par l'intermédiaire de la transcription poétique, les voix et les expériences d'une communauté autochtone en milieu scolaire urbain. Notre recherche suggère quatre barrières à surmonter dans le but d'améliorer l'expérience scolaire en milieu urbain : écoles non accueillantes, professionnalisation de l'enseignement en salle de classe, salle de classe colonisée et décolonisation unilatérale. L'utilisation de la transcription poétique dans cet article a comme objectif de mettre en valeur les voix des participants de la communauté autochtone et de tenter de décoloniser, à titre de chercheurs universitaires blancs euro-canadiens, notre approche de dissémination des données reliées aux voix autochtones.

Les sentiments anti-chinois sont devenus une caractéristique commune du discours des nations occidentale. Menés par les Etats-Unis et les think tanks américains, ces sentiments sont à présent propagés parmi les amis et alliés de Washington. La Chine est fréquemment désignée comme ne respectant les règles de l'ordre international, à travers par exemple les supposées restrictions sur les libertés de navigation ainsi que sur son incapacité à accepter les décisions du Tribunal arbitral dans l'affaire entre elle et les Philippines en mer de Chine méridionale. Cet acharnement sur la Chine nourrit le manque de confiance. Mais, à l'exception du Vietnam, les nations sud-est asiatiques n'ont jusqu'ici pas adopté de ligne anti-chinoise.