Indigenous Australians

**Indigenous Australians** are the people who are indigenous to Australia. They include the **Aboriginal Australians** as well as Torres Strait Islanders and are often known together as **Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people**.

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.

Many Indigenous Australians suffered starting in 1788, when the first Europeans arrived. Many caught diseases from the Europeans (British and Irish people) and/or lost their hunting lands.

## History

The first people of Australia were nomads who came to what is now Australia from Southeast Asia at least 60,000 years ago. 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 all the local people in the mainland "aboriginals", meaning people who have lived there since the earliest times.

There are now about 650,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in Australia.

## 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 Aboriginal art is mostly based on old stories about Dreamtime.

## Boomerangs

Boomerangs are one of a group of weapons known as "throwsticks". The typical boomerang is designed to be self-returning, but it must be properly thrown.

Since boomerangs have been discovered in cultures with no connection with Australia such as in ancient Egypt, they probably developed separately.

Modern computer-designed boomerangs may have three or four wings, instead of the traditional two.

## Land claims

When the British came to live in Australia, they decided that the land was empty and that nobody "owned" the land in the way that Europeans used the word. That was called "_terra nullius_", Latin words for "empty land".

In 1976, the Australian government gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the right to use the land where their tribes were originally located. On 3 Jun, 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.

Under the new laws, an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person can claim land as Indigenous Australian land if they can prove that:

- 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|
| --- | --- | --- |
|****|798,365|3.3%|
|****|795||

## 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