Offerings
View how LA4036 is offered in 2004
(Also shows pre-requisites and inadmissible combinations if applicable)

LA4036:03

Indigenous People and Law in Australia

Townsville, Cairns

HECS Band 3

26 hours lectures, 12 hours tutorials. Semester 1.

Staff:

Professor P Havemann.

The subject examines the impact of Australian law on Indigenous peoples. Policies and practices for building cross-cultural awareness, doing ethical research, professional best practice and promoting reconciliation are outlined. Major topics addressed by the subject include: Terra Nullius and dispossession; the Constitution and the race power; sovereignty and citizenship rights; a Treaty and international human rights law; governance and self determination; criminal law and over-representation; child welfare law, assimilation and genocide; native title and property rights; intellectual property law and traditional knowledge; heritage law and sacred sites; social, economic, cultural rights and social exclusion; biodiversity conservation law and caring for country; rights and/or mediation; social justice and reconciliation.

Learning Objectives:

to enable students to understand the historical development of the law relating to the Indigenous peoples of Australia in a local and international context;

to develop a cross-cultural awareness for practice and co-existence as citizens;

to enable students to understand the key areas of Australian law that impact on Indigenous people;

to enable students to contrast competing systems of governance, norms, values and beliefs operating in the contemporary Australian context;

to enable students to critique the appropriateness of state law and legal institutions and processes for Indigenous people.

Assessment by end-of-semester examination (40%); presentations (10%); essays (40%); essay proposal (10%).