Current Socioeconomic Status of Australian Indigenous Peoples

Let’s begin by trying to understand what is meant by the terms

• Australian Indigenous Peoples
• Current socioeconomic status

Australian Indigenous Peoples include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The reference is to Peoples because within the broad categories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Groups, there are many language groups with distinct cultures.

Australia is a vast continent with a variety of geographical features and climates, cities and towns and country and outback areas. Indigenous Australians can be found in all parts of Australia.

Australia has remote/isolated and crowded areas. It is a multicultural country whose inhabitant’s ethnic origins derive from all continents except Antarctica. Australia is also an industrialised nation, which offers most of its citizens a high standard of living and access to technology. However Australia is experienced differently by rich and poor. Indigenous Australians are a part of this complicated society.

Indigenous Australians may have some other ethnic background such as English, Chinese, Afghan, African or Italian background. They may be rich or poor. They may work with cutting edge technology, they may have a more traditional lifestyle or they may have a mixture of both lifestyles.

When studying about Indigenous Australians try not to stereotype. Currently, Australia is a complex nation with complex Peoples, so it is unfair to the individual and an over simplification of a complex situation to use stereotypes.

Indigenous Australians are complex Peoples but how are they identified and how many are their number? It has only been since the 1967 referendum that Indigenous Australians gained the right to be counted in the census. Up until then there were no accurate figures kept and knowledge as to their well being could be hidden from statistical analysis, but not any more. Who are they, is a more difficult question. Due to the racist Australian government policies of the past it is logical that many Indigenous Australians would not have known of their background or would have hidden their ethnicity from their children. Now in a different political climate people are more likely to find their ancestry and to acknowledge it.

How is Aboriginality defined?

In the 1992 Mabo Case the High Court stated that three criteria were required to satisfy the status of Aboriginality.

1. there had to be an ongoing connection to their traditional land,
2. the individual had to be accepted by the Aboriginal Community as being Aboriginal and
3. they had to identify as an Aboriginal.

This definition is problematical because those indigenous who have suffered the most find it difficult to meet these criteria for Aboriginality. The glaring example of the difficulty in establishing identity is the plight of the ‘Stolen Generation’. How does an indigenous person maintain a connection to their ancestral lands, gain acceptance by the Aboriginal community and identify as an indigenous person when they have been taken from their family through government policy? Another example of the difficulty in proving identity arose in the 2003 ATSIC Tasmanian elections when some individuals applying for the right to vote were upset because their claim to be Aboriginal was rejected.

A more widely used definition of an Indigenous Australian is the definition included in the Aboriginal Studies Syllabus glossary.

" An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person is someone who:

• is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, identifies himself or herself as an Aboriginal person or Torres Strait Islander,
• is accepted as such by the Indigenous community in which he or she lives.

So who is an Aboriginal and how many do they number?

Prior to colonisation archaeologists have estimated that up to 750,000 Indigenous individuals lived in Australia. Colonisation and the policies of successive Australian governments drastically reduced the number of Indigenous Australians. Accurate records of the number of Indigenous Australians were only kept after the 1967 referendum and presently they make up approximately 2% of the Australian population. Controversy continues to surround the question of the definition Australian Indigenous identity. Will the numbers grow in the future as more people acknowledge their ancestry? Or, will numbers diminish as the Indigenous blend into the rest of the Australian population? I’ll leave you to ponder the answer.

To understand the situation of Australian Indigenous Peoples, we need to understand how they are affected economically and socially and to also gain an understanding of their current status in society.

• economically
  Economics refers to the world of money, transactions, buying and selling, working, the business world, savings and lending and international business.
• socially
  Social refers to the world of people, the community and how people relate to each other in the community.
• status
  Status refers to prestige and social standing. If you think about someone’s status you would be asking ‘are they respected by the community? Status can vary across culture. In some cultures elders are given greater status, in others age diminishes status.

Socioeconomic status thus refers to the prestige/respect that a person has because of his/her social and economic position. So how do you study socioeconomic status in a scientific way? How do you measure or socioeconomic status? The answer is that you measure criteria in order to rank a person’s, or a Peoples' socioeconomic status.

What are these criteria (Criteria are standards by which something can be judged)?

They are the indicators, the socioeconomic indicators.

Question 1

1. How do you establish the identity of an Indigenous Australian?
2. What percentage of the Australian population are Indigenous Australians?
3. Define the meaning of socioeconomic status.

Go to the word document to type your answers.

Resource

Australian Bureau of Statistics: Themes: Indigenous
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/c311215.nsf/20564c23f3183fdaca25672100813ef1/293f0bdc00246e9fca2568a900799f96!OpenDocument

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