Peter Sutton winner of 2010 John Button Prize — 04.09.2010
Anthropologist and linguist Peter Sutton has won the 2010 John Button Prize for his most recent book, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the end of the Liberal Consensus. Peter won from a short list of four that comprised March of Patriots by Paul Kelly, Tensions escalate over Rudd’s kitchen cabinet by Laura Tingle and Noel Pearson’s Quarterly Essay, Radical Hope.
In this groundbreaking book, Sutton asks why, after three decades of liberal thinking, has the suffering and grief in so many Aboriginal communities become worse? The picture Sutton presents is tragic. He marshals shocking evidence against the failures of the past, and argues provocatively that three decades of liberal consensus on Aboriginal issues has collapsed. He combines clear-eyed, original observation with deep emotional engagement. The Politics of Suffering cuts through the cant and offers fresh insight and hope for a new era in Indigenous politics.
Nobel literature laureate JM Coetzee, one of the judges for the prize said the book was a “trenchant attack on welfare dependency and a penetrating loook at the 1970s when the last generation fully in command of Aboriginal culture was dying and the management of Aboriginal affairs was taken over by bureaucrats”.
Sutton has lived and worked closely with Aboriginal communities since 1969. He speaks three Cape York languages and as an expert on Aboriginal land ownership he has assisted with fifty land rights cases. He has authored or edited twelve books, including Native Title in Australia: an Ethnographic Perspective, regarded as the most authoritative work in its field. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Anthropological Society, and Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London.