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In 1970, the Federal Government made preliminary moves to establish a broadcasting service in the Northern Territory for Indigenous Australians. However, Aboriginal people would not be invited to run this service themselves, nor would it be used to 'maintain' Aboriginal cultural traditions. Rather, these new facilities would deliver programs that 'informed' Aboriginals about 'plans for their future advancement'. By 1985, the position had changed dramatically. The government was now funding 'Aboriginal-controlled' media organisations throughout the country 'to restore and rebuild' Aboriginal 'cultural identity'. It was also underwriting the launch of an Aboriginal-owned commercial satellite service covering a third of the Australian continent. In this thesis, I have attempted to understand the policies that led to this remarkable change in government thinking. In undertaking this work, I have not attempted to construct a 'resistant' Aboriginal 'voice', positioned against 'the media establishment' and the state to explain these transformations in Aboriginal policy. Although such a voice routinely appears in the literature on Aboriginal broadcasting, I argue that such an approach simply replicates the rhetoric surrounding the state's own policies of 'Aboriginal self-determination' and, more problematically, masks the complex operations of government itself. It also assumes the pre-discursive existence of a particular kind of Aboriginal agency, without considering the specific conditions that gave rise to it. In this study, I have sought to demonstrate how this agency was largely constituted through the policies of Aboriginal self-determination. I argue that under these policies, the state would no longer act on Aboriginals as it had in the past. Rather, Aboriginals would be invited to act on themselves in managing programs proffered by the state. Through these means, the Aboriginal 'self' became an indispensable element in the operations of the government. However, since the Aboriginal self would be expected to carry out the work of the state, it also became the object of intense governmental scrutiny. Here, I show how a multiplicity of governmental technologies emerged throughout the 1970's that served to regulate, channel and enhance Aboriginal subjectivity in accordance with a number of governmental ends. In undertaking this task, I have focused primarily on the development of the 'incorporated Aboriginal association'. I will argue that such bodies not only allowed Aboriginal people a degree of 'self-management', but also provided the state with an institutional framework through which it could constitute both a competent and verifiable Aboriginal agency. The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, CAAMA, was one of numerous bodies established under these governmental technologies. The development of this complex organisation will serve as the main case study in this thesis. In taking this analytical approach, I have adopted one of Michel Foucault's primary objectives which is to examine the ways in which the human subject is constituted through relations of power, and attempted to respond to the following set of queries Foucault poses: How was the subject established, at different moments and in different institutional contexts, as a possible, desirable, or even indispensable object of knowledge? How were the experiences that one may have of oneself and the knowledge that one forms of oneself organised according to certain schemes? How were these schemes defined, valorised, recommended, imposed? (Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth, 2000:87)

Thesis (M.A.(Hons.))--Griffith University, 2003. / Title from title page of document; viewed 1/5/2007. "October 2003" Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-83).

Dreaming Tracks was chosen for the title of this history because of its reference to the journeys and routes taken by the ancestral founders of each of the extended family clans. As they travelled they recorded the events and situations they encountered along the way , which they left in story, painting, song lines and dances for the future survival of their people. The history of the Aboriginal/Islander Skills Development Scheme also pertains to a journey. This journey records the events that brought about the establishment of the longest surviving, urban Indigenous dance organization. It's a voyage that identifies the obstacles and accomplishments of its founding members, who dedicated themselves to the hard work to ensure the continuum of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance. It was their dream, to have an Australian Black Dance Company that would create a link between past and present, traditional and urban. The pathways they created equipped urban Indigenous Australians with a unique dance identity of their own, and established the path to continued contact with the traditional owners. Dreaming Tracks is contemporary Dreaming lore that begins with the contention for land rights in the early 1970's and follows the progress of the Aboriginal/Islander Skills Development Scheme to the end of the decade. It records the desires, dreams and conflicts that brought this organization into being. In parallel, the concerns of the founder, Carole Y. Johnson, sets the path for the journey, which by the end of the twentieth-century witnessed the establishment of an accredited dance course, two dance companies (The Aboriginal/Islander Dance Theatre and Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia) and students who are key participants in the artistic design of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney Australia / Master of Arts (Hons) (Performance)

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