Aboriginal matrifocality: A situational analysis

Abstract

European settlement in Australia led to the rapid decline of the indigenous Aboriginal population estimated by Radcliffe-Brown and Elkin to have been no more than 300,000 in 1788 for the whole of the Continent.1 It is also estimated that in 1788 the Aboriginal population of New South Wales, the State in which the study reported in this thesis is set, numbered about 40,000, a figure today reduced to less than 200 full-blood Aborigines.2 Another effect that European settlement had on the Aborigines was the appearance of a part-Aboriginal population, that is, a people with an admixture of both Aboriginal and European blood. Part- Aboriginal numbers in New South Wales have increased over the years from an estimated 2,400 in 1882,3 the year of the first reliable estimate, to over 14,000 today.4 There is every indication that their numbers will continue to increase.