User:Gnangarra/sandbox/Indigenous Australian description terminology

Indigenous Australians is area where its become necessary to clarify what are acceptable terms, what alternative options exist.

General descriptions

These terms are acceptable when speaking about Indigenous people in generally, or when more specific terms arent provided by the source.

• Indigenous Australian
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
• Aboriginal
• Torres Strait Islander

examples

Professor Kim Scott is a Miles Franklin award winning Aboriginal author from Albany, Western Australia.

Recent discoveries in the Kimberley Western Australia confirm that Aboriginal people have been using turtles as a food source for over 60,000 years

Specific descriptions

When it is available in reliable sources we should preference the country or ancestry of the individual or community as a descriptive.

If we take the first example above and expand on; In this first example sources also refer to Kim Scott as being Nyungar, or Wirlomin Nyoongar, they also have his educational background showing he has PhD in Creative Writing from UWA

Professor Kim Scott is a Miles Franklin award winning Aboriginal author from Albany, Western Australia.

In this case we would preference Kim Scott as being a Nyungar person.

Professor Kim Scott is a Miles Franklin award winning Nyungar author from Albany, Western Australia.

Alternatively we could also be more specific as Wirlomin is a group with the Nyungar country,

Professor Kim Scott is a Miles Franklin award winning Wirlomin Nyungar author from Albany, Western Australia.

Of course we could just say,

Professor Kim Scott is a Miles Franklin award winning author from Albany, Western Australia.

Historical descriptions

Australian history, records from colonisation, and government departments have used many descriptives for Indigenous people. When writing about acts and laws by the various governments like the Native Welfare Act, then the use of the term Native Welfare is acceptable. The same applies to quoting a very specific passage,

Section 3 Part 4.14 - Natives are prohibited from entering the designated area after 4pm

If you are just summarising the whole section then you would use the more general descriptions

Under the Native Welfare act Aboriginals were prohibited from entering or being within the town limits between 4pm and 8am without authorisation

If you were talking about a specific location you could consider referring solely to local community.

Despite the Native Welfare act local police forced all Yamatji people to leave the Yalgoo town limits by 3pm and be within the Aboriginal camp boundaries by 4pm