Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic work from an Aboriginal community of the Australian Western Desert, I will discuss the differences between Indigenous and no-Indigenous notions of self and agencies. I will address the discrepancies between Aboriginal social order and civil society.

Paper long abstract:

In Australia, the granting of citizenship and equal rights to Aboriginal people (in the 1960s), the politics of self-determination and the Native Title have all represented major steps in the recognition of Aboriginal people within this modern Nation-State. However, matters of Indigeneity and Citizenship still remain unresolved and much debated issues. In 1998, Peterson had written that the question of the recognition of membership in their own indigenous social orders had remained unaddressed. Drawing from my ethnographic work in the Aboriginal community of Balgo (Western Desert), I will address that question and argue that such membership draws from ontological and cosmological principles and entails knowledge and set of responsibilities that come into conflict with those found in mainstream society and expected from the State; in other words, they represent differences that disturb. More specifically, I will start with a reflection on the concept of "difference" (and alterity) which is pivotal in our discipline; present an analysis of Aboriginal forms of agencies and subjectivities; discuss the distinction between a "relational self" and a "sovereign self"; and explore avenues for their negotiated coexistence.