There is a problem with a democracy that has failed to enrol more than 67,000 of its constituents, the Aboriginal minority. Especially when the Australian democracy claims to be bringing all the benefits of democratic government to the people.
The evidence for turnout on voting day is shocking: 56 per cent Indigenous as compared to 92 per cent total Australia.
These figures come from a study of unrealised Indigenous electoral power by Francis Markham and Bhiamie Williamson published by CAEPR (2022). They are totalled from the 15 electorates where Indigenous voters could change the course of any federal election and a conservative estimate.
My American friend gave me a book remaindered by the local library. Yiwara: Foragers of the Western Desert (1969) is the result of research by a postgraduate anthropology student, Richard A. Gould from New York. He spent a year with the Ngatatjarra speakers of the Western Desert documenting the lives of people who had not yet abandoned their cultural ways
Yiwara is a word with multi-level meanings for "track" - that of an animal, of people, of the ancestral heroes who laid down the country and left "songlines" for people to follow. This word yiwara epitomises the hunting and gathering, nomadic lifestyle of the people at that time, and their sacred day-to-day lives.
It is just over 50 years since the publication of this book. Two generations. The NSW government began to let Aboriginal children into schools in the 1960s.
It has been a hard road for Aboriginal people to get a western education in this time.
Between 1949 and 1965 the prohibition on Aboriginal people voting was lifted in states and territories across the country.
The successful referendum of 1967 saw our people properly recognised as citizens, included in the census and officially incorporated into the Australian democratic state.
However, democracy demands a certain level of literacy and education in civics. What is the point of being able to vote if you can't read the ballot paper? If the candidates do not know you and the struggles you face day to day? High level literacy, both verbal and literate, is required to influence policy.
The truth is politics in Australia is almost wholly co-opted to serve the urban centres near the coasts. Aboriginal people know their marginalisation only too well.
Markham and Williamson reveal that Aboriginal enrolments fall below 70 per cent in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. While the non-Indigenous enrolment rate is uniformly above 90 per cent nationally, only in NSW and the ACT does the Indigenous enrolment rate sit above 80 per cent.
While Markham and Williamson reveal unrealised Indigenous voting power that has huge potential to determine the fate of governments, is it defendable to have people enrol to vote without giving them the civics education needed to fully participate in a democracy?
It would be cynical to encourage people to enrol to vote when after more than 50 years of having the right to vote, they have not had an opportunity to participate in the democracy.
Dr Victoria Grieves Williams is Warraimaay from the midnorth coast of NSW and an historian.
