Introduction

This webreview originated from a desire, after a travel in Australia, to understand why Aborigines suffer from such poor living conditions. We planned on comparing their lives in rural and urban areas, but it came out that the issues they are facing are quite comparable in both cases.

We will not talk in detail about the Aboriginal civilisation and culture, or the dramas of colonisation. Even if they are obviously crucial in the occurence of current problems, the point here is to identify day-to-day issues, solutions offered for the future and different opinions about them. However, we encourage readers willing to find more information to check the Mujik website, which offers a large number of links to all aspects of Aboriginal culture, history, life and issues.

Population

However, we believe it is necessary to introduce the Aboriginal population with a few numbers, keeping in mind that it is extremely heterogenous, just as diverse as the Australian population is as a whole.

The Aboriginal population declined dramatically after European settlement, mainly due to new diseases, brutal treatment by the settlers, and social and cultural disintegration. The estimated Indigenous population in 2001 was over 450,000, or about 2.4 % of the total Australian population.
The life expectancy, on average, is over 15 years lower in Aboriginal communities than in « white » Australian society. In 2001, 40 % of the Indigenous population was under 15, compared to 20 % of the non-Indigenous population. The age structure is therefore much younger than that of the total Australian population, due to higher levels of fertility and mortality. Hence the importance of focusing on the conditions facing the youth in those communities. The following pyramid was taken from the website of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and is an estimate of the resident population of Australia in 2001.

The Indigenous population is much more widely spread across Australia than the total Australian population, which is mainly concentrated along the East coast. This reflects the fact that Aboriginal people tend to live in very remote areas, and that their level of urbanisation is very low compared to non-Indigenous people. Roger Sandall, a New Zealand anthropologist, compares the hundred-inhabitants Aboriginal villages in central Australia to South Pole scientific stations.

Map : Distribution of Indigenous population, 1996 (Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Around 30% of the Indigenous population lives in New South Wales, especially in Western Sydney. Less than 30% live in Queensland (North East). But Aborigines represent the highest proportion of the population in the Northern Territory, almost 30%.

Note : the Indigenous population of Australia is often mentioned as « Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders ». The latters are the original inhabitants of the Torres Strait islands, located between Australia and Papua New Guinea. They constitute about 5 % of the total Aboriginal population.