EDITORIAL: Elusive issues of identity

Abstract

The concept of the ‘indigenous public sphere’ is intended to describe the highly mediated public ‘space’ for developing notions of Indigeneity, and putting them to work organising and governing the unpredictable immediacy of everyday events (Hartley and McKee, The Indigenous Public Sphere, 2000, p. 3)

One of the major conclusions of John Hartley and Alan McKee’s study is that, in the Australian media, indigenous people are central to a drama about Australian national identity. Stars rather than victims, indigenous people are caught up in a media narrative over which ‘they have little individual control, but which is nevertheless telling their story’ (p. 7).