Contemporary Aboriginal Intellectuals and the Language of Rights: Larissa Behrendt
Katarina Ferro, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University
Indigenous intellectuals have often spoken out for Indigenous rights in all areas of Indigenous policy, which is rarely acknowledged in scholarship. They are involved in academia, in policy-making and in the media, shaping the nature of discourse and placing issues on the political agenda. Larissa Behrendt is such an intellectual in the forefront of political debate, active as an academic and a journalist. She has contributed to a range of scholarly discussions in a variety of fields such as western feminism and Aboriginal women, the abolition of ATSIC and the treaty debate to name but a few. So far no in depth research has been undertaken with Aboriginal intellectuals and leaders whose stage is the one of public policy and academia. This paper explores Larissa Behrendt's intellectual development and her approach to Indigenous rights on the basis of her considerable corpus of academic and journalistic publications as well as radio and television interviews from 1995 onwards. Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony proves particularly useful in probing the way in which Larissa Behrendt shapes discourses to lift the profile of marginalised agendas. In this process, questions about definitions of leadership, strategies and development of core topics to push items on the political and media agenda are examined in relation to the ‘language of rights’. I argue that this process cannot be assessed without taking personal development into account and exploring the connection between advocacy and political commitment. This paper presentation highlights a part of my PhD thesis on the “Language of Rights with Current Aboriginal Intellectuals in the 21 Century”.
