A Story in and on Signs: Making Resistance and Acquiescence Legible as Forms of Resilience

In this chapter, I aim to consider resilience within the neo-colonial circumstances that Warlpiri people, the Australian Indigenous people I have been conducting research with since the mid-1990s, find themselves in today. I am interested in the meanings of resilience in Warlpiri people's lives, what forms it may take, and whether and how it may be recognized by the anthropologists as well by those against whom it may be practiced. Clearly, these are questions of considerable proportions and in order to keep focused, I will explore them here through one single case study; local responses (Warlpiri, non-Indigenous and wider Aboriginal) to road signage ereced as a part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), a sweeping policy announced by the federal Australian government on 21 June 2007.