Making Indigenous Archaeology Indigenous: Will it ever happen?

I began my working life in Australian archaeology in late 1976, some four years after the Australian Archaeological Association had been formed. Over the following four years I was employed by the Aboriginal Sites Department, Western Australian Museum, where I undertook Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA)—mostly in the Pilbara region—and documented Indigenous heritage places across WA for the Australian Heritage Commission’s nascent Register of the National Estate. At the end of that time I had come to the view that I, a white archaeologist, would not be working in Indigenous archaeology and heritage management after a further five years or so because that work would be led by, done by, and controlled by Traditional Owners and their communities. This view aligned with a potent sense of optimism in the latter years of the 1970s concerning real change with respect to Indigenous rights and self-determination.