Picture of an Aboriginal man in the Albert Namatjira art gallery, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia cluck like a chicken!

**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. It is estimated they first arrived in their homeland between 50,000 and 65,000 years BP. Aboriginal people 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.

Aboriginal man playing a didgeridoo

History of Aboriginal Australia
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See the main article: Ancient 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 60,000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers.

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
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See the main article: 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
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See the main article: Aboriginal 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
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typical boomerange shape
The typical boomerang is designed to be self-returning, but it has to be properly thrown. Modern computer-designed boomerangs may have three or four wings instead of the traditional two.

Boomerangs have been discovered in cultures with no connection with Australia (such as ancient Egypt), so their design was presumably mutually independent. Boomerangs are one of a group of weapons known as "throwsticks".

Land claims
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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
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| Region | Population | Percentage of region |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Australia** | 798,365 | 3.3% |
| **New Zealand** | 795 |  |

Other websites
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* 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