Indigenous Australia

Lives of Diversity: Indigenous Australia Maggie Walter This is the second in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics Occasional Paper 4/2008 Census Series # 2 The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Canberra 2008 © The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia 2008 ISSN 1323-7136 Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction rights should be addressed to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, GPO Box 1956, Canberra 2601. Tel 02 6249 1788; Fax 02 6247 4335; Email [email protected]. The Academy is not responsible, as a body, for the opinions expressed in any of its publications. All articles appearing in the Occasional Paper Census Series are peer reviewed. Lives of Divers ity: Indig enous Aust ralia Maggie Walter 1. Locating Indigenous lives he continuance of substantial diversity between the lives of Indigenous1 and non- TIndigenous Australians is manifest within data from the 2006 Census. The national picture is one of difference across nearly all the Census dimensions. The Indigenous population is significantly younger and growing at a faster rate; the economic items reveal broad-scale division; cultural differences are apparent around language and family life and there are discernible disconnections across the spatial dimensions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous lives. But this aggregate perspective does not tell the full diversity story. An Australian Indigenous population analytical base, with its national patterns and trends, obscures the broader diversity of Indigenous lives. Standard disaggregation to state and territory level elicits the same limitations. While Indigenous lives are obviously lived within national and state and territory boundaries, it is their locations in specific places and spaces that most influence their shape, context and circumstances. Geographical place, at the level of the town, the region, the sector of the city or the community, is central to the conditions and milieus in which those lives are lived. For most Indigenous Australians, such locations are urban. While media and public understandings are firmly directed towards discrete Indigenous communities, with an emphasis on the remote, most reside outside such places. Sydney is the place with the largest Indigenous population and the primary sites of current population increase are the cities of Brisbane, Broome and Coffs Harbour, not remote communities in the Northern Territory or Western Australia. Yes, Indigenous people remain significantly more likely to live in remote areas than other Australians, but nearly a third live in metropolitan areas, nearly half reside in regional areas and only a little over one quarter live their lives in remote sites. Indigenous individuals, families and communities have been urban residents since early colonial times and overall population trends indicate an ongoing Indigenous drift to the larger urban centres. 1.1 Places and people and people in places The pattern of Indigenous locational spaces raises two related, but different, questions. First, how do the lives of Indigenous people living in different places and spaces compare with those of Indigenous people living in other geographical locations? Second, how do Indigenous lives, lived across different categories of place, compare with those of non- Indigenous people in the same locations? It is the mosaic of similarities and differences between Indigenous lives and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous lives emerging from these two questions that gives substance to the picture of diversity that can be unearthed from the Census 2006 data2. And it is these two questions that are addressed in this essay. These questions are important because locational diversity is missing from most analyses of Indigenous census data. The broad-stroke labelling under the bland and essentialising category of the ‘Indigenous population’ inherent in national, state or even geographical categories such as remote or urban, decontextualises and depersonalises the diversity of lived experience by place. Such categorisations also blunt the compelling impact of statistical data about Indigenous lives. More critically, even a cursory understanding of Indigenous Academy of the Social Sciences 2008/1 Lives of Divers ity: Indigenous Aust ralians Australia makes evident that such categorisations are statistical conveniences, not a reflective picture. For while Indigeneity is shared, and this shared status is acknowledged and recognised, it is Indigenous peoples, each with a unique history, affiliation to country and cultural identity, who make up the Australian Indigenous population. It is as Walpiri, Noongar, Yorta Yorta, Yolgnu, Quandamooka and many other peoples that Indigenous Australians primarily identify. Strong links to the home country of the broader family group is retained and maintained, even if individuals or families are not presently physically living in those locations. For example, data from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey of 2002 finds that nearly three quarters of Indigenous people recognise homelands or traditional country. Place also has meaning and the interpretive meanings of place, in both their current and past context, are fundamental to contemporary Indigenous lives. The relationship between a specific population and its location – that is, the story of how, when and why this particular group of Indigenous people came to be living in this place at this time – is a vital underpinning facet of current life circumstance, both for the individual and the family and community of that individual. These spatial and temporal aspects structure Indigenous lives within these places in 2006. History and place are entwined. Concepts of spaces and places also provide a useful division on which to found this essay’s two questions: diversity within and without Indigenous lives. In order to personalise these data and bring the realm of the lived experience of the individuals and communities that they represent to the fore, the task is here anchored to three specific locations: one remote – Maningrida in the Northern Territory; one regional – Dubbo in New South Wales; and one metropolitan – Perth, in Western Australia. These particular sites are primarily chosen as exemplars for their geographic spread across the continent. The distinction between a discrete Indigenous township, such as Maningrida, with Indigenous/non-Indigenous shared geographic locations, such as Perth and Dubbo, also allows dimensions not usually examined within census collections to come to the fore. Examining spatiality, for example, captures elements of the interaction between populations. Such analyses provide insights into the lived terrain of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations and a spatial interpretative frame also permits a comparative view of the diversity of Indigenous lives within and alongside the broader social, cultural, political and economic factors of particular places. 1.2 Indigenous Australians and the census The general Australian definition states that an Indigenous person is one who: • has Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent • identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person • is accepted as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander by the community in which he or she lives. This definition is widely accepted within government departments, statutory bodies and institutions, but sometimes contested by Aboriginal groups. Since 1996 the ABS has adopted a standard question which asks: ‘Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin?’ and responses to this question determine Indigenous status within the broader data. ABS figures for June 2006 estimate that 517,200 people, or 2.5 per cent of the total Australian population, are Indigenous. The majority identify as Aboriginal, with six per cent (33,267 people) identifying as being of Torres Strait Islander origin only and another 4 per cent (20,070 people) advising that they are of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin3. It is important to note that, while conventionally combined for statistical purposes, the 2/Academy of the Social Sciences 2008 Lives of Divers ity: Indigenous Aust ralia Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations are not homogeneous and have substantial demographic, social and cultural differences. Over half of all Indigenous Australians reside in just two states: New South Wales and Queensland. Sheer numbers, however, are not reflective of population proportions or their geographic distributions. As shown in the figures below, while 28 per cent of Indigenous people live in New South Wales, Indigenous people make up less than three per cent of that State’s population. Conversely the Northern Territory is home to 13 per cent of the national Indigenous population but nearly one in three Territorians is Indigenous. In other states less than five per cent of the population is Indigenous. And while 95 per cent of the New South Wales Indigenous population lives in major cities or regional areas, in Western Australia 41 per cent lives in remote areas. Figure 1. Indigenous population by state and as a proportion of population Figure 2. Indigenous population by state and residency area Academy of the Social Sciences 2008/3 Lives of Divers ity: Indigenous Aust ralians While remaining proportionally small, the Indigenous population is growing. Total numbers increased in the Census period 2001-2006 by 11 per cent and this followed substantial rises

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