This seminar will present some preliminary findings from the Fitzroy Valley Population Project, undertaken for the Fitzroy Futures Forum under the auspices of Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre based in Fitzroy Crossing. The Project’s design reflects a more general research concern with the modelling of local social categories from an anthropological perspective in order to make these categories visible and measurable, and thus available as a basis for constructing socio-demographic variables. In the process it problematises standard socio-demographic categories such as ‘resident’, ‘visitor’ and ‘household’ that are predicated on the assumed ‘normality’ and ubiquity of settler Australian patterns of settlement, residence and mobility.

Previous research on the Yolngu-speaking population of north-east Arnhem Land, and a review of the relevant literature on Aboriginal populations produced by both anthropologists and geographers has yielded a general model for capturing the socio-demography of Aboriginal populations. This model relies on the idea of networks anchored in two interconnected but relatively autonomous systems of value, concerning attachment to place and structured relations of kinship. The seminar will explore the usefulness of this model for the Fitzroy Valley. If time permits, a comparison will be drawn with the north east Arnhem Land case, to illustrate how the model applies in two populations with very different experiences of colonisation.