Suchergebnisse

NoelButlin radically altered the debate about the pre‐colonialAboriginal population when he provided a set of hypothetical demographic scenarios, which nonetheless were both grounded in economic theory or human ecological considerations and broadly consistent with what we know about the historical record. This research builds onButlin's legacy by exploring how his scenarios are consistent with both the medical understandings of the infectiousness and mortality of various diseases and the history of settlement. Another contribution from this paper is to highlight the possible role of chickenpox in theAboriginal depopulation in the early colonial period.

Practical reconciliation' and more recently 'closing the gap' have been put forward as frameworks on which to base and evaluate policies to address Indigenous disadvantage. This paper analyses national‐level census‐based data to examine trends in Indigenous wellbeing since 1971. There has been steady improvement in most socioeconomic outcomes in the last 35 years; a finding at odds with the current discourse of failure. Evidence of convergence between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous outcomes, however, is not consistent. For some outcomes, relatively rapid convergence is predicted (within 25 years), but for the majority of outcomes, convergence is unlikely to occur within a generation, if at all.