Cultural Expertise and Indigenous People in Australia

Abstract

This chapter addresses several ways that anthropologists in Australia have been engaged as expert witnesses in Indigenous land claims and in cultural defences against prosecutions for hunting protected fauna for subsistence. It outlines, with the help of case studies, some illustrations of the types of methodological approaches for anthropological work in legal matters. Anthropologists in Australia are engaged as expert witnesses particularly in relation to issues involving Indigenous people and culture. Applied anthropology in Australia has over recent decades also included work on short-term fieldwork projects where inquiries are done without the researcher having established lengthy relationships with the relevant Indigenous groups. Much anthropological work in the area of Australian Indigenous land and cultural issues involves assessing fieldwork-based reports by others against what is known in the anthropological literature.