Diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia

Diversity 1
DIVERSITY
By (Student’s Name)
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College
Course
Date

Diversity 2
THE ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES
Introduction
The United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous matters have estimated 370 million
indigenous people around the globe. The persons inhabit across 70 countries with each
community practicing unique traditions with adverse social, economic, political and cultural
characteristics (Hall and Fenelon 2015). These people possess special attachment to their
traditional lands and territories. However, the word indigenous has not been in use since the UN
is more concerned by identification of these people rather than definition, this report focuses on
the country Australia’s indigenous peoples, of two distinct cultural groups, known as the Torres
Strait Islander and the Aboriginal people.
Demographic information
Population size
The population of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has been on the rising
trend since the 1971 census. By the year 2016, the census indicated their population to be
649,200 people, this was 18% rise from the census of 2011. According to 2016 census, the Strait
Islander and the Aboriginal people represented up to 2.8% of the total population of Australia,
this was a rise of 2.5% from the year 2011 and 2.3% from the year 2006 (Biddle and Crawford
2015). Among the population of 649200 people, 90.9% of the people were recognized to be of
the Aboriginal background with 5.0% being the Torres Islander and the remaining 4.1% were
identified to sharing the same origin of both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal.

Diversity 3
Population structure
Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islander population has a higher age profile of the young
when put in comparison with the non-native people. According to 2016 census, 53% which is
more than half of the Torres Strait Islander and the Aboriginal people were of 25 years of age
and below, this was higher than the younger population of non-indigenous people which stood at
31%. Similarly, the percentage of the native people who were aged 65 years and above were
considerably smaller compared to the people of the non-native population (O’Donnell and
Raymer 2015). The females’ population is almost similar to the male population; the population
shows very little disparity with the female population being slightly higher than the male
population with the population of the young being higher than the population of the elderly
people.
Religion
According to the census of 2006, 13% of Torres Strait Islander and the Aboriginal
population did not respond to the question of religious affiliation. 1% reported being of
Australian Traditional Aboriginal religion. 73% of the indigenous population reported being
affiliated by Christian denomination by the year 2006 (Kite and Davy 2016). Approximate of
one-third were Catholics and another one-third reported being Anglicans
Income brackets
According to the census of the year 2011, about 13 percent of Torres Strait Islander and
Aboriginal population whose ages were 15years and above reported gross personal income of