Since the 1980s, more than 20,000 Indigenous university graduates have joined the Australian labour force. In 2007 alone, almost 1,500 graduated, an average of four a day. The proportion of Indigenous students enrolled in degrees and post-graduate courses has risen to more than 90 percent of Indigenous university enrolments, signaling the terminal decline of ‘Aboriginal’...

Life expectancy at birth of Indigenous Australians was 67.2 years for men and 72.9 years for women for 2005–2007, according to experimental figures released by the ABS. The ABS reported that the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men is 11.5 years lower than for non-Indigenous men, while life expectancy of Indigenous women...

The literacy debate rarely addresses the critical social and historical factors that also account for why literacy levels among remote Indigenous youth are lower than their mainstream counterparts. The focus on schooling obscures the less obvious fact that we must also be cognisant of the broader sociocultural factors associated with literacy acquisition, maintenance and transmission...

The entire Australian continent was once covered with networks of Indigenous placenames. These names often evoke important information about features of the environment and their place in Indigenous systems of knowledge.

It argues for a very different policy framework that looks to openly combine three interlinked elements: needs-based citizenship rights, special Indigenous rights, and compensatory ‘social justice’ rights. This paper is based on a presentation to the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) National Conference, ‘Building a Fair Australia in Tough Economic Times’, Australian Technology Park...