Surprisingly little research has been carried out about how Australian Aboriginal children and teenagers experience life, shape their social world and imagine the future. This volume presents recent and original studies of life experiences outside the institutional settings of childcare and education, of those growing up in contemporary Central Australia or with strong links to the region. Focusing on the remote communities - roughly 1,200 across the continent - the volume includes case studies of language and family life in small country towns and urban contexts. These studies expertly show that forms of consciousness have changed enormously over the last hundred years for Indigenous societies more so than for the rest of Australia, yet equally notable are the continuities across generations.
Ute Eickelkamp is ARC Future Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Between 2004 and 2009 she was ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School for Social and Policy Research at Charles Darwin University. She studied Anangu children's imagination and social and emotional dynamics through a traditional form of sand storytelling in the Central Australian community of Ernabella, after therapeutic sandplay work with Tiwi children in Australia's north. Her current research focuses on the transformation of Australian Indigenous ontologies and subjectivities.