Indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. They include the Aboriginal Australians as well as Torres Strait Islanders, and are often known together as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.[1]
The first Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers who migrated from southeast Asia. Scientists do not know exactly when (or how) they arrived, but it was at least 60,000 years ago.[2][3][4][5]
Many Indigenous Australians suffered when, starting in 1788, the first Europeans arrived. Many caught diseases from the Europeans (British and Irish people) and/or lost their hunting lands.[6]
History of Aboriginal Australia
The first people of Australia were nomads who came to Australia from southeast Asia at least 60,000 years ago.[2] As hunter-gatherers, they used weapons like boomerangs, sticks, and spears to kill animals for food.
When the British came to Australia in 1788, they called these native people "aboriginals", meaning people who had lived there since the earliest times.
There are now about 650,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia.[7][8]
Beliefs
Aboriginal Australians believe in a process of creation called Dreamtime, when their animal, plant, and human ancestors created the world and everything in it.
There are many songs and stories about Dreamtime, which generations of Aboriginal people have passed down to their children.
Art
Aboriginal Australians have their own type of art. Paintings of the people, spirits, and animals of Dreamtime cover sacred cliffs and rocks in tribal territories. Some of the pictures are made in red and yellow ochre and white clay; others have been carved into the rocks. Many are thousands of years old.
Modern-day Aboriginal art is mostly based on old stories about Dreamtime.[9]
Boomerangs
Boomerangs are one of a group of weapons known as "throwsticks". The typical boomerang is designed to be self-returning, but it has to be properly thrown.
Boomerangs have been discovered in cultures with no connection with Australia (such as ancient Egypt),[10] so they probably developed separately.
Modern computer-designed boomerangs may have three or four wings instead of the traditional two.[11]
Land claims
When British people came to live in Australia, they decided that the land was empty: that nobody "owned" the land, in the way Europeans used that word. This was called "terra nullius", Latin words for "empty land".[12]
In 1976, the Australian government gave Aboriginal people the right to use the land where their tribes were originally located. On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia said that the idea of terra nullius was wrong, and the government brought in new laws, to set up Native Title.[12]
Under the new laws, an Aboriginal person can claim land as Aboriginal land if they can prove that:[12]
- They have always used that land
- The land has not been sold
- The land was never changed by government acts
Population by region
| Region | Population | Percentage of region |
|---|---|---|
 Australia |
798,365 | 3.3% |
 New Zealand |
795[13] |
Other websites
- Ceremony The Djungguwan of Northeast Arnhem Land
- Aborigines win 'native title' over Perth
- Australia's largest circulating Indigenous Affairs Newspaper Archived 2021-04-20 at the Wayback Machine
- Latest Indigenous news from ABC News Online
- Indigenous Australians - State Library of NSW Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
- Aboriginal Studies Virtual Library
- Department of Indigenous Affairs (Australian Government) Archived 2008-06-19 at the Wayback Machine
- European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights
- Indigenous Australia - Australian Museum educational site Archived 2004-06-16 at the Wayback Machine
- KooriWeb
- Norman B. Tindale's Catalogue of Aboriginal Tribes Archived 2011-02-16 at the Wayback Machine
- Reconciliation Australia
- Australian, Bosnian and Norwagian Cross-Bred Children Archived 2008-12-06 at the Wayback Machine
References
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