This paper is part of a longer project about the history of Indigenous population statistics in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In the contemporary use of official statistics by Indigenous and non-Indigenous policy intellectuals, a particular understanding of social justice has emerged. Public discussion highlights the population binary 'Indigenous/non-Indigenous' and finds unjust the 'gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous values of certain socio-economic variables. I will answer two questions: 
(1) How did we get the binary that we now use? I will identify moments in the recent past in which there has been debate about where the boundary (defining the Indigenous/non-Indigenous binary) should be placed. 
(2) What is the relationship between evoking the 'Indigenous people' (a politico-juridical entity) and quantifying the 'Indigenous population' (a socio-demographic entity)? Indigenous advocacy in Australia and New Zealand does both, but there is a tension between these two ideas. I will argue that our research and advocacy should draw on the data about 'Indigenous population' to give more consideration of the differences among the 'Indigenous people', in order to develop a more complex theory of social justice.

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