ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to be a guide to health professionals and others whose work takes them to remote Aboriginal Australia. A society's social capital is measured by its people's health and education, as these provide the foundation for future personal and economic fulfillment. The Aboriginal child is almost absent from the historical account, whereas in this book she is placed squarely within the frame of the social and political events that affected all children within both Britain and Australia. In circumstances such as war and famine, children bear the brunt of mortality. The use of an explicit comparison between the way Aboriginal, British and non-Aboriginal Australian children were treated highlights the extent of the systematic exclusion of Aboriginal families from the social welfare movement which resulted in the health transition from the 1870s.
