In this award-winning work Carlson explores the complexities surrounding Aboriginal identity today. Drawing on a range of historical and research literature, interviews, and surveys, The politics of identity explores Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginality and the way these are produced and reproduced across a range of sites and contexts.

Carlson points to the multiple, yet narrow definitions of Aboriginal identity that have existed throughout Australia's colonial history and its continuing impact upon contemporary Aboriginal identities. Emphasising Indigenous debates and claims about Aboriginality, The politics of identity explores both the community and external tensions around appropriate measures of identity and the pressures and effects of identification.