Indigenous people in remote and rural Australia are frequently moving between places. Movement was and still is the key to the maintenance of both relationships to places and to kin in Aboriginal Australia. This is despite a period of 100 years or more when the government employed strategies to disrupt traditional Aboriginal social and geographic patterns. These movements are motivated by a distinct range of sociocultural, economic and political factors and aspirations. There exists what might be described as a culture of mobility amongst the Aboriginal population of Australia.

Recent attempts by demographers to analyse Indigenous mobility have been curtailed due to the reliance on Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census data which is of limited analytic usefulness for remote Indigenous Australia. There is a need for finer-grained quantitative data as well as qualitative information concerning Indigenous mobility in order to shape programs, services and policies. Therefore the aim of this project is to quantify and contextualize Indigenous mobility using case study findings in order to develop a better understanding of Indigenous perspectives, experiences of and aspirations for mobility.

Figure: Map of the study region.