Linking Culture and the Environment

A. Trau and R. Bushell 263
and in the case of countries like Australia and Canada, live under conditions
significantly different to the non-indigenous population.
We will discuss two cases in Australia; indigenous tourism enterprises in
a remote rural community and in a protected area that have worked to contribute
to the values of sustainable development for these people. As a capsulated
poor within a rich nation state (see Table 15.1), many indigenous
Australians, particularly those in rural or remote areas, suffer from extreme
and profound levels of poverty only comparable in ‘less developed’ countries
(Linacre, 2002; Trewin and Madden, 2005). The root causes of this poverty,
in addition to the nature of it, has been the subject of increasing debate
ever since indigenous people were ‘granted’ full Australian citizenship in
1967 (Healy, 1997; Reynolds, 2003; Moses, 2004; Pearson and Kostakidis-
Lianos, 2004; Attwood, 2005; Altman, 2007; Pearson et al., 2007). The impacts
of colonization, removal from land and family, exploitation, welfare together
with all the worst aspects of modern society – drugs, alcohol and cycles of
domestic violence and poor health – are linked to lack of incentive and hence
education and the opportunities that flow.
Table 15.1. Comparing key socio-economic indicators of indigenous and non-indigenous
Australians.
Indicators
Population
Life expectancy
Infant mortality
Birth weight
Year 12 completion
Child abuse and neglect
Access to health
Individual income
Imprisonment and juvenile
detention rates
Indigenous Australians compared with non-indigenous
Australians a
463,900 indigenous; 21,102,000 non-indigenous
Indigenous Australians die almost 20 years younger than
non-indigenous Australians
Indigenous infant mortality rate three times higher than
non-indigenous
Low to extremely low birth weight twice as likely for
indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are half as likely as non-indigenous
to continue to year 12
Indigenous children are nearly four times as likely as other
children to be the subject of abuse or neglect
Indigenous Australians suffer from markedly higher rates of
preventable chronic health conditions
Well over half of all indigenous people (62%) receive most
of their individual income through government welfare
programmes
Indigenous people were 13 times more likely than
non-indigenous people to be imprisoned; indigenous
juveniles were 23 times more likely to be detained than
non-indigenous juveniles
a
Comparisons are based on most recent figures available from the following sources: Linacre (2002),
ANTAR (2004), Australasia Economics (2004), Trewin and Madden (2005), Cape York Institute for Policy
and Leadership (2007), Oxfam Australia (2007), Steering Committee for the Review of Government
Service Provision (2007).