Australia's Indigenous population is excluded from a range of opportunities, experiences and amenities that facilitate wellbeing, self-determination and social inclusion. This social exclusion constrains the career development and occupational attainment of Indigenous youth, which represent key routes to societal inclusion. Critical consciousness—the awareness of sociopolitical inequality and motivation to participate in social action to change social structures and practices that foster social exclusion—is examined here as a precursor to social inclusion for Indigenous Australian youth. Critical consciousness appears to facilitate the career development and occupational attainment of socially excluded youth and augment career interventions for socially excluded people in North America. Given similarities in the social structures and practices that foster social exclusion in North America and Australia, critical consciousness may augment Australian educational policy and practice, as well as career counselling and interventions, complementing macro-level policies aiming to redress the social structures that cause social exclusion in Australia.
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