Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Inequality: an overview
- 2 Remote Australia I: government settlements and missions
- 3 Remote Australia II: pastoral stations
- 4 Remote Australia III: decentralised communities
- 5 Settled Australia I: urban and rural communities
- 6 Settled Australia II: the major urban areas
- 7 Some economic issues
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Settled Australia I: urban and rural communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Inequality: an overview
- 2 Remote Australia I: government settlements and missions
- 3 Remote Australia II: pastoral stations
- 4 Remote Australia III: decentralised communities
- 5 Settled Australia I: urban and rural communities
- 6 Settled Australia II: the major urban areas
- 7 Some economic issues
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Don't treat us all the same. There's good and bad amongst us, same as with you whites. Comment by part-Aboriginal, reported in F. Gale, A Study of Assimilation
An inherent fact of Aboriginal life… is the constant pressure of living among a white majority where low status is always ascribed and acceptance must always be achieved. L. Lippman, Oceania, 42
The preceding three chapters have been concerned with Aborigines in ‘remote’ Australia. In Chapters 5 and 6 attention is directed to Aborigines in the more closely settled areas which Taylor (1947, p. 4) has called ‘economic’, in contrast to (on the basis of land use patterns) ‘empty’ Australia. The Aboriginal inhabitants of ‘economic’ Australia are predominantly of part-Aboriginal descent, whereas those in ‘remote’ Australia are mostly of full Aboriginal descent.
In Map 1, the heavy line represents the division between ‘remote’ and ‘settled’ Australia; it will be noted that New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory and parts of South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland are within settled Australia. This division between remote and settled regions seems important since there are distinctions between the Aboriginal populations in the two parts. In the northern and inland regions, Aborigines often form the majority of discernible population groups, especially away from urban areas. By contrast, in ‘settled’ regions, as Monk (1974, p. 158) has noted, Aborigines are usually in small minority groups of one or two hundred people in ‘white’ towns or increasingly (as discussed in Chapter 6) as migrants to capital cities.
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- Information
- The Economic Status of Australian Aborigines , pp. 101 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979