The rhetoric of benevolence as an impediment to the protection of indigenous cultural rights : a study of Australian literature and law

An examination is undertaken of how the rhetoric of benevolence impedes concepts essential to property relationships acknowledged by the Australian common law tradition and thereby sunders attributes of ownership and personhood from Indigenous communities. It is argued that this rhetoric did not just perpetuate paternalism, a colonising strategy that subordinated Indigenous culture to non-Indigenous protectors but deflected debate from the harm caused by the distortion of Indigenous knowledge and appropriation of cultural rights.