Indigenous household structures and ABS definitions of the family: what happens when systems collide, and does it matter? [Conference Paper]

Abstract

In August 2001 I observed the conduct of the national Census at an outstation community in the Northern Territory. Because community A, as I call it, is small and its residents would be readily identifiable (at least locally) if it were named, the area in which my case study took place is deliberately left vague. The purposes of this research were twofold: to evaluate the ABS’s Indigenous Enumeration Strategy as it was applied in this particular context, and to assess the quality of the data that were collected. I was working as part of a team of three CAEPR researchers, each of us based in a different community. Will Sanders was an observer in the Alice Springs town camps, and David Martin observed the enumeration at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. The detailed analysis of our findings is reported in CAEPR Research Monograph No. 22 (Martin et al. 2002). I will refer to my colleagues’ findings from time to time, but this paper is based largely on the results of my own fieldwork (see Morphy 2002 for a fuller account). As far as we know, this is the first time that the IES has been directly observed in this way, and at the outset I’d like to thank the ABS for their open-ness to the idea of the research, and for allowing us official observer status. It was a fascinating exercise to observe at close quarters this particular encounter between the machinery of the state and Indigenous lifeways. The Indigenous Enumeration Strategy has not changed substantially since 1981, when it was introduced in the NT, SA and WA. Subsequent developments have essentially extended it to areas in the other States where there are discrete Indigenous communities. The key features that distinguish the IES from the general census procedures are the use of interviewer collectors, many or most of whom are themselves local Indigenous people, and the administration of forms with a modified format and content. The basic procedural structure of the IES is as follows. In each region where there are large numbers of Indigenous people, the responsibility for coordinating the census effort lies with an ABS Census Field Officer. He or she appoints, for each collection district, one or more community coordinators, and they in turn, with the assistance of the CFO, select and train a team of interviewer-collectors, henceforth ‘enumerators’, whose task it is to actually carry out the interviews. There are three main forms involved in the data collection process. I’ll be looking at two of them: the Special Indigenous Household Form (SIHF) and the Special Indigenous Personal Form (SIPF). A SIHF is completed for each household group, or in practice, dwelling. Theoretically, this is done as part of the interview process, but at community A the enumerators filled out these forms using their own local knowledge before visiting any of the dwellings.