ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of the relationship between police and Indigenous people in Australia through a detailed examination of particular policing practices such as over-policing, the adverse use of police discretion, the use of paramilitary police in communities and the role of police culture in the criminalisation of Indigenous people. A number of themes have dominated the struggle of Indigenous people in Australia. These include the struggle for land, the struggle for recognition of citizenship rights and the struggle for recognition of the collective right of Indigenous people to self-determination. In particular the fight for citizenship rights and the fight for self-determination have fundamental implications for the question of policing. A major political impact of the operation of criminal justice processes is that it removes and annihilates the political status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Indigenous people.
