Going with the flow : Indigenous non-religion, not Atheism

In the last 40 years the West has seen an increasing trend towards non-religious identification (ABS 2013; Zuckerman 2007). This is most certainly the case in Australia, where the number of people in this category rose greatly in the years 1971 to 2011 (Figure 4.1). As pointed out by Onnudottir et al. (2013), this same period has seen an even larger increase in non-religious identification amongst Indigenous Australians. From 2006 to 2011, there was a 40.75 per cent increase in Indigenous Australian reporting of the 'no religion' category, while in the total Australian population those reporting 'no religion' increased by only 29.41 per cent. This indicates that growth in Indigenous non-religion was leading the wider societal trend. It is therefore now important that the social sciences take into account the de-conversion of Indigenous peoples.