Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian nation

In 1938, while settler Australians celebrated their 150-year occupancy of the continent, Aboriginal activists Jack Patten and Bill Ferguson asserted the claims of the Indigenous inhabitants: 'We ask — and we have every right to demand — that you should include us, fully and equally with yourselves, in the body of the Australian nation.' For the next three decades, the quest for national inclusion headed the Aboriginal agenda. As understood at the time, inclusion in the nation entailed more than legal equality, important though that attainment was. It required Aboriginal people to be treated with respect and dignity, to be welcomed as full participants in the life of the community. This book recounts that multifaceted quest for national inclusion up to the early 1970s