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The National Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, in recommending fundamental reforms of government policy, proposed a primarily political and administrative notion of Aboriginal empowerment or 'self‐determination'. That is, the Commissioner argued the fundamental importance of publicly‐funded Aboriginal organisations and urged governments to relax financial accountability requirements imposed on them. The paper quotes extensively from the National Report to argue that this, rather than 'land rights' or 'economic independence' is what the Commissioner meant by 'self‐determination'. But what is the place of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in such a view of Aboriginal and Islander political development? The paper demonstrates the Commissioner's ambivalence about ATSIC, and his failure consistently to project ATSIC's role when making his recommendations about health, alcohol and housing policies. It concludes by citing Commonwealth responses which indicate that ATSIC is likely to emerge as an obstacle in the Commissioner's scenario of Aboriginal and Islander political development.

As an Opposition member of parliament in the 1950s and 1960s, Gough Whitlam took a keen interest in Australia's responsibilities, under the United Nations' mandate, to develop the Territory of Papua New Guinea until it became a self-determining nation. In a chapter titled 'International Affairs', Whitlam proudly recalled his government's steps towards Papua New Guinea's independence (declared and recognised on 16 September 1975). However, Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea in the 1970s could also have been discussed by Whitlam under the heading 'Indigenous Affairs' because from 1973 Torres Strait Islanders demanded (and were accorded) a voice in designing the border between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Whitlam's framing of the border issue as 'international', to the neglect of its domestic Indigenous dimension, is an instance of history being written in what Tracey BanivanuaMar has called an 'imperial' mode. Historians, she argues, should ask to what extent decolonisation was merely an 'imperial' project: did 'decolonisation' not also enable the mobilisation of Indigenous 'peoples' to become self-determining in their relationships with other Indigenous peoples? This is what the Torres Strait Islanders did when they asserted their political interests during the negotiation of the Australia–Papua New Guinea border, though you will not learn this from Whitlam's 'imperial' account.

Intro -- Figures, tables and maps -- Acronyms -- Prefatory note -- How shall we write the history of self‑determination in Australia? -- Part One: Self‑determination as a project of colonial authority -- 1. Self-determination in action: How John Hunter and Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land anticipated official policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s -- 2. An emerging Protestant doctrine of self‑determination in the Northern Territory -- 3. The Aboriginal pastoral enterprise in self‑determination policy -- 4. Unmet potential: The Commonwealth Indigenous managed capital funds and self-determination -- 5. After reserves and missions: Discrete Indigenous communities in the self‑determination era -- 6. 'Taxpayers' money'? ATSIC and the Indigenous Sector -- Part Two: Self‑determination as an Indigenous project -- 7. Adult literacy, land rights and self‑determination -- 8. Taking control: Aboriginal organisations and self‑determination in Redfern in the 1970s -- 9. Beyond land: Indigenous health and self-determination in an age of urbanisation -- 10. Self-determination's land rights: Destined to disappoint? -- 11. 'Essentially sea-going people': How Torres Strait Islanders shaped Australia's border -- Part Three: Self‑determination as principle of international law and concept in political theory -- 12. Self-determination under international law and some possibilities for Australia's Indigenous peoples -- 13. Self-determination with respect to language rights -- 14. Self-determination through administrative representation: Insights from theory, practice and history -- 15. Who is the self in Indigenous self‑determination?.