Aborigines and Citizens

Abstract

At the time of Australian Federation in 1901, Aborigines were described as 'a dying race'. However, by the mid-twentieth century it was clear that, even from the point of view of numbers alone, they were not to be so easily dismissed. in New England in 1910, there were said to be 262 Aborigines (including what were then called 'half-castes'), but by the 1950s there were nearly a thousand. Today, over 5 per cent of the regional population is of Aboriginal descent, and of those nearly half are under fourteen years old. From the point of memory and heritage their significance is far greater than even these numbers may suggest.