Marking differences : Indigenous cultural tastes and practices

This paper examines the similarities and differences between the cultural tastes and practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non-Indigenous Australians as evidenced by the relationships between the main sample and an Indigenous sample recruited by a 2015 national survey. It does so in order to identify the respects in which Indigenous tastes are distinctive in relation to (i) cultural practices with an Indigenous reference, (ii) cultural practices with an Australian, but non-Indigenous reference and (iii) cultural practices with international associations. These questions are explored initially at an aggregate level and then more closely by probing those instances where significant differences in Indigenous/non-Indigenous cultural tastes and practices are registered across the six cultural fields encompassed by the survey: sport, television, heritage, music, literature and the visual arts. In the light of current debates regarding the politics of ‘Indigenous enumeration’ and the tendency to present Indigenous difference in the form of a deficit, we look instead at the positive significance of the specific Indigenous tastes that our findings identify. We also examine the effects of gender and level of education in differentiating Indigenous cultural tastes and practices and explore how these are related to emerging class differences among Indigenous Australians