The feature article in our latest edition of Australian Aboriginal Studies, ‘Blaks and stats in Aboriginal Victoria: census resistance and participation’ by Julie Andrew, examines the issue of census volatility from within the Indigenous community and gets people to openly provide their perspectives on census engagement and census utility as an expression of Indigenous data sovereignty.

This paper presents data based on interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Melbourne and Victoria that provide an Aboriginal voice to show the degrees of both constraint and choice in the formulation of Indigenous data. The results show that the census as a social instrument needs to be viewed as a dynamic interplay between the state and Indigenous people, and that Indigenous community awareness of their role in this process needs to be further explored.

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