Seminal Years: Federal Multicultural Policies and the Politics of Indegeneity in Canada and Australia between 1988-1992

Examining the interaction of multiculturality and Indigeneity in Canadian and Australian federal politics, Seminal Years dispels the myth of success surrounding multiculturalism as a population management policy. On the one hand, minority interests in the two countries are much more complex than what a social policy unacknowledging legal, historical, and philosophical backgrounds can manage in the long run and, on the other, Indigenous interests?claims to land, identity, and political voice?cannot be fulfilled if they are perceived as threatening to fundamental national interests such as the maintenance of state sovereignty and protection of territorial integrity. Providing a comparative assessment of Indigeneity and multiculturality, this study fills in a thematic gap in the body of historical, political, and legal academic writing about Canadian and Australian multiculturalisms. At the intersection of history, law, politics, and cultural studies, this book would be useful for interdisciplinary courses on Canada and Australia at tertiary level: for graduate researchers and academics in and of these two countries. Area studies scholars in particular?Canadian Studies and Australian Studies?outside the two countries may find it useful as background to other cultural productions of the turn of the 1990s.