Overview

This volume explores Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ interactions with public sector bureaucracies. The authors featured here consider how bureaucracy relates to colonialism, race, and sovereignty in a post-neoliberal world. They also consider the diverse ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working within and across these sectors negotiate and engage with bureaucratic structures. Some contributors offer critiques of bureaucratic hierarchies, and others provide insights into the complexity of bureaucratic culture, drawing attention to the complex strategies of Indigenous people who aim to make bureaucracy ‘work’ for themselves and their communities. The volume overall provides a nuanced and substantive analysis of the relation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ to the contemporary administrative state, and an innovative perspective from which to examine Indigenous-settler relations. For those concerned with Indigenous policymaking, this volume puts forward a new approach that focuses on policy relationships, rather than processes or outcomes.