ABSTRACT
The author traces some patterns of interaction on the 'cultural borderlands' to illustrate how anthropologists, pastoralists and government officials squabbled about Aborigines as they intruded into their country, controlled aspects of their lives, and dominated the way they were represented in the public realm. The glimpses of Rembarrnga responses in the field work are neither complete nor definitive. The author believes that there are limitations in the enterprise, and she discusses the indeterminacy and opacity of culture in the conclusion. The shifting boundaries of the non-exclusive categories of race and the engagement of brown people in the racialised cultural dynamics of the Territory are discussed in this final chapter. Finally the author should make clear that a major intention in this work is to replace a complacent superiority about racism with a sense of curiosity about the pervasive and persistent forms of racial differentiation which continue, albeit in a changed form, as an active principle in modern society.
