An engaging account of the ways in which over hundreds of years Indigenous and Asian people across northern and central Australia have traded, intermarried and built hybrid communities. It is also a disturbing expose of the persistent--sometimes paranoid--efforts of successive national governments to police, marginalize and outlaw these encounters.

Indigenous Australians are increasingly finding in Islam the possibility of reconnection with lost Indigenous traditions and a model of community unavailable elsewhere. But this is not a new story. From the Makassan trepang fisherman of Arnhem Land, the Malay pearl-divers of Broome, through the Afghan camel drivers of the interior, Muslims have lived and worked in Australia for over three centuries, and were among the earliest peoples to form connections with Indigenous Australians. Islam Dreaming tells the stories of Australia's Indigenous Muslims.

The first comprehensive study of the nature and scope of the nationhood power, this book brings a fresh perspective to the scholarship on the powers of the executive branch in Australia. The question of when the Federal Executive Government can act without the authorisation of the Parliament is contested and highly topical in Australia. In recent judicial decisions, Australian courts have suggested that statutory authorisation may not be required where the Federal Executive Government is exercising the nationhood power; that is, the implied executive power derived from the character and...