Indigenous Australians

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.

In the past, Indigenous Australians used weapons like boomerangs sticks and spears to kill animals for food. It is unknown where they came from and how they appeared in Australia but it is estimated they have been living in their homeland around 60,000 years ago or more. Aboriginal people also have their own type of art.

Many Indigenous Australians suffered when Europeans from Britain and Ireland arrived in Australia. Disease and the loss of their hunting lands are two of the reasons.

History of Aboriginal Australia 

The first people of Australia were nomadic people who came to Australia from southeast Asia. Scientists do not know exactly when they arrived but it is at least 50,000 years ago. 

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.

Dreamtime 

Aboriginal Australians believe that they have  animal, plant, and human ancestors who created the world and everything in it. This process of creation is called Dreamtime.  There are many songs and stories about Dreamtime, which generations of Aboriginal people have passed down to their children.

Art  

The modern-day art of the Aboriginal Australians is mostly based on old stories about Dreamtime. 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.

Boomerangs 
As well as the curved returning boomerang, Aboriginal Australians have traditionally used a straight, non-returning boomerang as a weapon for fighting and for hunting animals such as kangaroos.

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".

In 1976, the Australian government agreed that Aboriginal people have rights to the land where their tribes were originally located and gained the right to use the land. 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. If Aboriginal people can prove they have always used particular land, it has not been sold, or changed by government acts, then the land could be claimed as Aboriginal land.

Population by region

Other websites 
Ceremony The Djungguwan of Northeast Arnhem Land
Aborigines win 'native title' over Perth
Australia's largest circulating Indigenous Affairs Newspaper
Latest Indigenous news from ABC News Online
Indigenous Australians - State Library of NSW 
Aboriginal Studies Virtual Library
Department of Indigenous Affairs (Australian Government) 
European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights
Indigenous Australia - Australian Museum educational site 
KooriWeb
Norman B. Tindale's Catalogue of Aboriginal Tribes 
Reconciliation Australia
Australian, Bosnian and Norwagian Cross-Bred Children

References