Treaty attitudes among parents and caregivers of indigenous families

This exploratory study examines factors influencing support for treaty-making among parents and caregivers of Indigenous youths in Australia. Despite calls for Indigenous–state treaties for more than half a century, empirical evidence on attitudes towards contemporary treaty-making remains remarkably limited. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (n = 682), over 80% of respondents rated treaty as ‘very important’ increasing to 95% when including moderately important. Binary logistic regression indicates that significant predictors of strong treaty support include treaty knowledge, Indigeneity, and understanding of one's family, history, and culture, while many standard socioeconomic variables were non-significant. Despite high levels of expressed importance, overall treaty understanding was comparatively low. This disjuncture suggests that views on treaty may reflect a range of relational and experiential influences. At the same time, the association between knowledge and support indicates that improving access to balanced, historically grounded information may support informed engagement with treaty processes.