At the 2021 Australian census, 278,043 people in New South Wales were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. New South Wales is Australia’s most populated state, also housing Australia’s largest city, Sydney. By comparison, Australia’s second largest state, Victoria, was home to around 66 thousand Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

There are around 800,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, which represents just over three percent of the Australian population. Indigenous people are often referred to as Australia's first people or the traditional custodians of the land in recognition of their ancestors inhabiting Australia more than 60,000 years ago. Australia's Indigenous peoples are represented by two distinct groups. Aboriginal people come from the Australian mainland. Torres Strait Islander people inhabit the group of Islands between the northern tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea and represent less than 40,000 people.

Closing the gap

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience significantly poorer health and wellbeing outcomes when compared to their non-Indigenous Australian counterparts. The average life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is around eight years shorter than that of the non-Indigenous population. In education, Indigenous Australians are also underrepresented, but attendance rates are improving and in 2019, full-time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students numbered well over 200,000 people.

The share of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in Australia in 2019 was highest in New South Wales with around 33 percent of the indigenous population in Australia living there. Comparatively, the Australian Capital Territory accounted for only one percent of the country's indigenous population in that year.

This dataset presents the estimates of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, non-Indigenous and total populations of Australia for the year ending at 30 June 2016, based on results of the 2016 Census of Population and Housing. The data is by Local Government Areas (LGA) following the 2016 Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS). The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of Australia comprises people who are of Aboriginal origin, Torres Strait Islander origin or both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin. The Commonwealth definition of an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person is: a person of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent who; identifies as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin and who is; accepted as such by the community with which the person associates. This data is Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data (catalogue number: 3238.0.55.001) used with permission from the ABS. For more information please visit the ABS Explanatory Notes. Please note: AURIN has spatially enabled the original data.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resident population in Australia was forecasted to increase to close to 1.1 million by 2031, based on 2016 population estimates. The forecasted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resident population for 2023 was approximately 919 thousand people.

In 2021, 24.3 percent of First Nations people aged 20 to 64 living in the Australian Capital Territory of Australia had a Bachelor degree in Australia. The national average for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was 9.8 percent. Just four percent of First Nations people living in the Northern Territory had a bachelor degree as of 2021.

This dataset has been developed by the Australian Government as an authoritative source of indigenous location names across Australia. It is sponsored by the Spatial Policy Branch within the Department of Communications and managed solely by the Department of Human Services.

The dataset is designed to support the accurate positioning, consistent reporting, and effective delivery of Australian Government programs and services to indigenous locations.

The dataset contains Preferred and Alternate names for indigenous locations where Australian Government programs and services have been, are being, or may be provided. The Preferred name will always default to a State or Territory jurisdiction's gazetted name so the term 'preferred' does not infer that this is the locally known name for the location. Similarly, locational details are aligned, where possible, with those published in State and Territory registers.

This dataset is NOT a complete listing of all locations at which indigenous people reside. Town and city names are not included in the dataset. The dataset contains names that represent indigenous communities, outstations, defined indigenous areas within a town or city or locations where services have been provided.

This dataset presents the estimates of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, non-Indigenous and total populations of Australia for the year ending at 30 June 2016, based on results of the 2016 Census of Population and Housing. The data is by Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) regions following the 2016 Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS). The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of Australia comprises people who are of Aboriginal origin, Torres Strait Islander origin or both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin. The Commonwealth definition of an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person is: a person of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent who; identifies as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin and who is; accepted as such by the community with which the person associates. This data is Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data (catalogue number: 3238.0.55.001) used with permission from the ABS. For more information please visit the ABS Explanatory Notes. Please note: AURIN has spatially enabled the original data.

Indigenous Locations (ILOC)

Indigenous Locations (ILOCs) represent small Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (urban and rural) that are near each other or that share language, traditional borders, or Native Title. Indigenous Locations (ILOCs) are geographic areas built from whole Statistical Areas Level 1 (SA1s).

ILOCs usually have a minimum population of about 90 usual residents. In some cases, they may have a smaller Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population to meet statistical requirements or to better represent the local community. ILOCs combine to form Indigenous Areas (IAREs).

Using ILOCs with Census data

Use ILOCs if you require very specific information about an area. Due to their small population size, there are limitations to the quality of data at this geography level.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics (Jul2021-Jun2026), Data services and APIs, ABS Website, accessed 25 July 2023.

https://www.abs.gov.au/website-privacy-copyright-and-disclaimer#copyright-and-creative-commons

The average life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia is just one indicator of the gap in health outcomes that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. From 2015 to 2017, the average life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island men and women in major cities in Australia was 72.1 and 76.5 years, respectively. By comparison, the non-Indigenous population lived around eight years longer on average. This divide is even more pronounced in rural and very remote areas where the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders drops to below 70 years.

Closing the gap

Over the past decade the federal, state and territory Governments of Australia have been working toward closing the gap of inequality experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with the Closing the Gap Framework, introduced in 2008. The Framework identified seven target areas for improving the health and wellbeing outcomes of Indigenous Australians. These target areas covered early childhood, schooling, health, economic participation, healthy homes, safe communities, and governance and leadership. In 2020, school enrollment rates were steadily increasing and more Indigenous Australians were attaining a bachelor degree. As a result, the schooling target was considered to be ‘on track’ along with early childhood education participation.

More work to be done

Although two of the seven targets were ‘on track’ in 2020, the other five Closing the Gap targets were not. This indicated that Australia still has a long way to go in order to significantly reduce the gap of disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians. This is evident in the proportion of Aboriginal Australians who remain unemployed or not in the labor force and Indigenous youth incarceration rates, which have been increasing.

The number of Aboriginal people and their proportion of the total Aboriginal population for 5 year age groups to 65+, 2015. Aboriginal as used in this workbook refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (all entries that were classified as not shown, not published or not applicable were assigned a null value; no data was provided for Maralinga Tjarutja LGA, in South Australia). The data is by LGA 2015 profile (based on the LGA 2011 geographic boundaries). For more information on Indigenous population estimates refer to: http://phidu.torrens.edu.au/. Source: Compiled by PHIDU based on data developed by Prometheus Information Pty Ltd, under a contract with the Australian Government Department of Health.

Abstract Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) is a continental spatial dataset of forest and non-forest land over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management or co-management, or other special rights. This layer displays the area of forest that is in the Indigenous estate, by separate Indigenous estate attributes. It was developed from multiple data sources, including national, state and territory datasets related to land in which there is an Indigenous interest. The Indigenous land dataset is then combined with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset. The dataset was compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) for the National Forest Inventory (NFI), a collaborative partnership between the Australian and state and territory governments. The role of the NFI is to collate, integrate and communicate information on Australia's forests. The NFI applies a national classification to state and territory data to allow seamless integration of these datasets. Multiple independent sources of external data are used to fill data gaps and improve the quality of final datasets. The following attributes are applied in this dataset: Indigenous owned: Freehold land or forest that is owned by Indigenous communities, or land and forest for which ownership is vested through other mechanisms. Indigenous managed: Land or forest that is managed by Indigenous communities. Indigenous co-managed: Land or forest that has formal, legally binding agreements in place to include input from Indigenous people in the process of developing and implementing a management plan. Other special rights: Land or forest subject to native title determinations, registered Indigenous Land Use Agreements and legislated special cultural use provisions. In this dataset, the attributes of Indigenous ownership, Indigenous management or co-management, and other special rights are applied separately.

Currency Date modified: 30 June 2023 Publication Date: 28 October 2024 Modification frequency: Every 5 years Data Extent Coordinate reference: GDA94 / Australian Albers Spatial Extent North: -8.0 South: -46.0 East: 168.0 West: 100.0 Source Information Data, Metadata, Maps and Interactive views are available from Australia's Indigenous Land and Forest Estate (2024), Descriptive Metadata PDF. The data was obtained from Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). Lineage Statement The process for describing and reporting separately on each of the individual attributes of Indigenous ownership, Indigenous management or co management, or other special rights for Indigenous peoples and communities is described in Jacobsen et al. (2020). The method and data in this data package represents the information on the Indigenous land estate by the above separate attributes in accordance with Jacobsen et al. (2020) and primarily uses data with information current between 2021 and 2023. Additional data previously sourced for the Indigenous estate dataset that informed Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2018 was also used in this compilation. The Indigenous land dataset is combined (intersected) with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset (ABARES 2023). The resulting output dataset provides information on the Indigenous estate over forest and non-forest land. Information used to develop the Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) dataset was sourced from: * Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry * Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water * Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation * National Native Title Tribunal * NSW Land Registry Services * NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water * NT Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics * Queensland Department of Resources * Land Services SA * Tasmania Department of Natural Resources and Environment * Victoria Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action * WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions * WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage * WA Land Information Authority, trading as Landgate Note: The Digital Atlas of Australia downloaded a copy of the source data in November 2024. To ensure that it was suitable to be hosted through ArcGIS Image Server & Image Dedicated, this copy had RGB fields added to the attribute table to generate a colour map. Data Dictionary

Field Field type Description

VALUE Numeric Unique identifier for each unique combination of attribute field values.

COUNT Numeric The number of cells that occur for a particular VALUE. For this dataset the cell size is 100 by 100 metres. The COUNT value is equivalent to the area in hectares.

FOR_CAT String (Text) NFI forest category name. See ABARES Forests of Australia (2023)1 for further information.

FOR_TYPE String (Text) NFI forest type name. See ABARES Forests of Australia (2023)1 for further information.

IND_FDES String (Text) Indigenous estate land category combined (intersected) with the forest cover extent from the ABARES Forests of Australia (2023)1 dataset. Table 2 describes each Indigenous estate attribute. Shows the extent which is forest land only – blank/null values are non-forest land.

STATE String (Text) State or territory in which the cell occurs.

OVERLAP Numeric Binary code that describes whether the cell includes overlapping attributes within the total Indigenous estate, specifically where two or more of the fields for the four Indigenous attributes (IND_OWN, IND_MNG, IND_COMNG, IND_OSR). Code 0 = no overlap of Indigenous estate attributes; 1 = overlap of two or more Indigenous estate attributes.

IND_DESC String (Text) Text description of the Indigenous estate attributes that apply to the cell.

Contact Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), info.ABARES@aff.gov.au.

In Australia, just over 200 thousand Indigenous Australians held a Pensioner Concession Card, as of December 2023. Around 7.3 thousand Indigenous Australians received a living allowance through ABSTUDY*.

This dataset documents food retail stores that service remote Indigenous communities in Australia. A seed list created by the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) was extended and validated, including reviews by experts and stakeholders, during 2022. Store location, contact information, management, and ownership/legal registration were identified along with the size of the community the store serves. A final dataset of 233 remote or very remote stores was created.

Abstract Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) is a continental spatial dataset of forest and non-forest land over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management or co-management, or other special rights. This layer displays the area of land and forest that is in the Other special rights attribute. It was developed from multiple data sources, including national, state and territory datasets related to land in which there is an Indigenous interest. The Indigenous land dataset is then combined with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset. The dataset was compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) for the National Forest Inventory (NFI), a collaborative partnership between the Australian and state and territory governments. The role of the NFI is to collate, integrate and communicate information on Australia's forests. The NFI applies a national classification to state and territory data to allow seamless integration of these datasets. Multiple independent sources of external data are used to fill data gaps and improve the quality of final datasets. The following attributes are applied in this dataset: Indigenous owned: Freehold land or forest that is owned by Indigenous communities, or land and forest for which ownership is vested through other mechanisms. Indigenous managed: Land or forest that is managed by Indigenous communities. Indigenous co-managed: Land or forest that has formal, legally binding agreements in place to include input from Indigenous people in the process of developing and implementing a management plan. Other special rights: Land or forest subject to native title determinations, registered Indigenous Land Use Agreements and legislated special cultural use provisions. In this dataset, the attributes of Indigenous ownership, Indigenous management or co-management, and other special rights are applied separately. Currency Date modified: 30 June 2023 Publication Date: 28 October 2024 Modification frequency: Every 5 years Data Extent Coordinate reference: GDA94 / Australian Albers Spatial extent North: -8.0 South: -46.0 East: 168.0 West: 100.0 Source Information Data, Metadata, Maps and Interactive views are available from Australia's Indigenous Land and Forest Estate (2024), Descriptive Metadata PDF. The data was obtained from Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). Lineage Statement The process for describing and reporting separately on each of the individual attributes of Indigenous ownership, Indigenous management or co management, or other special rights for Indigenous peoples and communities is described in Jacobsen et al. (2020). The method and data in this data package represents the information on the Indigenous land estate by the above separate attributes in accordance with Jacobsen et al. (2020) and primarily uses data with information current between 2021 and 2023. Additional data previously sourced for the Indigenous estate dataset that informed Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2018 was also used in this compilation. The Indigenous land dataset is combined (intersected) with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset (ABARES 2023). The resulting output dataset provides information on the Indigenous estate over forest and non-forest land. Information used to develop the Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) dataset was sourced from: * Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry * Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water * Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation * National Native Title Tribunal * NSW Land Registry Services * NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water * NT Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics * Queensland Department of Resources * Land Services SA * Tasmania Department of Natural Resources and Environment * Victoria Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action * WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions * WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage * WA Land Information Authority, trading as Landgate Note: The Digital Atlas of Australia downloaded a copy of the source data in November 2024. To ensure that it was suitable to be hosted through ArcGIS Image Server & Image Dedicated, this copy had RGB fields added to the attribute table to generate a colour map. Data Dictionary

Field Field type Description

VALUE Numeric Unique identifier for each unique combination of attribute field values.

COUNT Numeric The number of cells that occur for a particular VALUE. For this dataset the cell size is 100 by 100 metres. The COUNT value is equivalent to the area in hectares.

FOR_CAT String (Text) NFI forest category name. See ABARES Forests of Australia (2023)1 for further information.

FOR_TYPE String (Text) NFI forest type name. See ABARES Forests of Australia (2023)1 for further information.

SYM_OSR String (Text) Combination of the IND_OSR and FOR_CAT fields to fulfil a symbology layer that shows the land and forest that is subject to other special rights for Indigenous peoples and communities.

STATE String (Text) State or territory in which the cell occurs.

OVERLAP Numeric Binary code that describes whether the cell includes overlapping attributes within the total Indigenous estate, specifically where two or more of the fields for the four Indigenous attributes (IND_OWN, IND_MNG, IND_COMNG, IND_OSR). Code 0 = no overlap of Indigenous estate attributes; 1 = overlap of two or more Indigenous estate attributes.

IND_DESC String (Text) Text description of the Indigenous estate attributes that apply to the cell.

Contact Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), info.ABARES@aff.gov.au.

In 2020 the child mortality rate of indigenous peoples in Australia under the age of five was 147.5 deaths per 100,000. By comparison, the non-Indigenous child mortality rate was less than half that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the country. In 2008 the Australian government made a commitment to achieving equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through the Closing the Gap framework. One of the commitments made by this framework was to halve the Indigenous child mortality rate in the country over a decade from 2008. Although some progress was made, this target was not achieved.

In 2021, the proportion of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people living in major cities in Australia amounted to 41.1 percent of the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population. By comparison, 73.7 percent of the non-Indigenous population lived in major cities. Although the majority of the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population lived in major cities and inner regional areas, almost one in ten lived in very remote communities.

Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia Dataset

The Koori Health Research Database (KHRD) contains the genealogies and life events of approximately 8,000 Kooris who lived in Victoria and New South Wales in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Indigenous people worldwide continue to struggle to repatriate the remains of their ancestors held by national and international organisations. After European settlement of Australia in 1788, Aboriginal Australian remains were deposited in museums worldwide. Many of these remains have no known provenance, making their return to Indigenous custodians difficult. Hence, we sequenced ten nuclear genomes and 27 mitogenomes from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians (up to 1,540 yr BP) and compared them to 100 high-coverage contemporary Aboriginal Australian genomes from 12 geographic locations. We report substantial ancient genetic structure showing strong affinities between ancient and contemporary individuals from the same geographic locations. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of identifying the origins of unprovenanced ancestral remains using nuclear DNA, thereby enabling their return to their rightful communities.

ObjectiveHigh rates of dementia are evident in First Nations populations, and modifiable risk factors may be contributing to this increased risk. This study aimed to use a longitudinal dataset to gain insights into the long-term risk and protective factors for dementia and cognitive impairment not dementia (CIND) in a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal population in Far North Queensland, Australia.Study Design and SettingProbabilistic data linkage was used to combine baseline health check data obtained in 1998/2000 and 2006/2007 for 64 residents in remote communities with their results on a single dementia assessment 10–20 years later (2015–2018). The relationship between earlier measures and later CIND/dementia status was examined using generalized linear modeling with risk ratios (RRs). Due to the small sample size, bootstrapping was used to inform variable selection during multivariable modeling.ResultsOne third of participants (n = 21, 32.8%) were diagnosed with dementia (n = 6) or CIND (n = 15) at follow-up. Secondary school or further education (RR = 0.38, 95% CI 0.19–0.76, p = 0.006) and adequate levels of self-reported physical activity (RR = 0.26, 95% CI 0.13–0.52, p < 0.001) were repeatedly selected in bootstrapping and showed some evidence of protection against later CIND/dementia in final multivariate models, although these had moderate collinearity. Vascular risk measures showed inconclusive or unexpected associations with later CIND/dementia risk.ConclusionsThe preliminary findings from this small study highlighted two potential protective factors for dementia that may be present in this population. A tentative risk profile for later CIND/dementia risk is suggested, although the small sample size limits the applicability of these findings.