Our people | australia.gov.au Australia.gov.au Helping you find government information and services Search form Australian people Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the world today. Almost one in four Australian residents were born outside of Australia and many more are first or second generation Australians, the children and grandchildren of recently arrived migrants and refugees. This wide variety of backgrounds, together with the culture of Indigenous Australians who have lived on the Australian continent for more than 50,000 years, have helped create a uniquely Australian identity and spirit. Indigenous peoples and cultures Before the arrival of British colonisers in 1788, Australia was inhabited by the Indigenous peoples - Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, sometimes referred to as the First Australians. Aboriginal people inhabited the whole of Australia and Torres Strait Islanders lived on the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea, in what is now called the Torres Strait. There were over 500 different clan groups or 'nations' around the continent, many with distinctive cultures, beliefs and languages. Today, Indigenous people make up 2.4 per cent of the total Australian population (about 460,000 out of 22 million people).

The first colony New South Wales was settled as a penal colony – a place where Britain could send convicted criminals because her prisons were overcrowded. Many convicts had grown up in poverty and committed only minor offences, such as the theft of a loaf of bread. Conditions in the new colony were little better than at home – it took many years for British settlers to understand the different environment of the new colony, and disease and malnutrition were widespread during the first decades of settlement. Convicts formed the majority of the colony's population for the first few decades of settlement. Convicts continued being sent to New South Wales until 1823, although as time went by, convicts were increasingly seen as a source of labour to build the colony, rather than just being sent away from Britain as punishment for their crimes. Free settlers The first wave of migrants to Australia included men of capital who were attracted by the colony's agricultural prospects and the availability of convict labour.

Their enthusiasm, together with the Gold Rushes era of the mid-nineteenth century, pushed out the boundaries of the new settlement and by the end of the 1850s there were six separate Australian colonies: New South Wales Australian aborigines Encyclopedia > Social Sciences and the Law > Anthropology and Archaeology > Peoples (except New World) Australian aborigines Australian aborigines, native people of Australia who probably first came from somewhere in Asia more than 40,000 years ago. Genetic evidence also suggests that c.4,000 years there was an additional migration of people who were related to the inhabitants of modern India. In 2001 the population of aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders was 366,429, 1.9% of the Australian population as a whole. The aboriginal population at the time of European colonization in the late 18th cent. has been estimated to have numbered between 300,000 and 800,000.

At that time, there were 500–600 distinct groups of aborigines speaking about 200 different languages or dialects (at least 50 of which are now extinct). Although culturally diverse, these groups were not political and economic entities and lacked class hierarchies and chiefs. They lived by hunting and gathering, and there was extensive intergroup trade throughout the continent. The aborigines have an intricate classification system that defines kinship relations and regulates marriages. The Kariera, for example, are divided into hordes, or local groups of about 30 people, which are divided into four classes, or sections. Membership in a section determines ritual and territorial claims. In half of the hordes the men are divided among the Karimera and Burung sections; in the other half they are divided among the Palyeri and Banaka sections. These sections are exogamous, and rules of marriage , descent, and residence determine how these sections interact: Karimera men must marry Palyeri women, and their children are Burung, and so on. Sons live in the same hordes as their fathers, so the composition of hordes alternates every generation.

The complex system, by requiring each man to marry a woman from only one of the three possible sections, fosters a broad network of social relations and creates familial solidarity within the horde as a whole. Aborigines maintain elaborate systems of totemism (the belief that there is a genealogical relationship between people and species of plants or animals). They see the relationship between totemic plants and animals as a symbolic map of the relations between different people. Contact with British settlers, beginning in 1788, initially led to economic marginalization, a loss of political autonomy, and death by disease. So-called pacification by force culminated in the late 1880s, leading to a massive depopulation and extinction for some groups. By the 1940s almost all aborigines were missionized and assimilated into rural and urban Australian society as low-paid laborers with limited rights; many aborigine children were taken from their natural parents and given to foster parents to promote assimilation.

In 1976 and 1993 the Australian government enacted land-rights legislation that has returned to the aborigines a degree of autonomy, and court decisions in 1992, 1996, and 2006 have recognized aboriginal property and native title rights. The recent increase in aboriginal population reflects improved living conditions and a broad and inclusive definition of aboriginal identity on the part of the government. Their average standard of living and life expectancy, however, are not comparable with that of most Australians. In 1999 the Australian government issued an official expression of regret for past mistreatment of aborigines but, concerned that it would encourage claims for compensation, did not issue the formal national apology sought by aboriginal leaders until 2008, when the government was led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd . The election of Adam Giles as chief minister of Northern Territory in 2013 marked the first time that an aborigine headed a state-level government in Australia. See P. S. Bellwood, Man's Conquest of the Pacific (1978); W. Shapiro, Social Organization in Aboriginal Australia (1979); G.

Blainey, Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Aboriginal Australia (1982); S. Bennett, Aborigines and Political Power (1989). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com Australia’s Aboriginals First Australians Aboriginals had the continent to themselves for 50,000 years. Today they make up less than 3 percent of the population, and their traditional lifestyle is disappearing. Almost. In the homelands the ancient ways live on. By Michael Finkel Photograph by Amy Toensing A finger across the throat and a glance seaward. That’s the signal. The two men grip their spears, hand-carved from stringybark trees, and walk barefoot over the red soil to the water’s edge. Then into the aluminum dinghy, engine revved, and across a warm shallow bay of the Arafura Sea, at the wild edge of Australia’s Northern Territory. Terrence Gaypalwani stands at the bow, feet spread for balance, staring intently at the water and indicating with the tip of his spear which direction to travel.

He’s 29 years old, mid-career as a hunter. Peter Yiliyarr, over 40, a senior citizen, works the motor. The shoreline’s a lattice of mangrove roots; the sun’s a heat lamp. No sign of another human. Gaypalwani stares, points. Thirty minutes. The men haven’t spoken, though even when they’re not hunting, the Yolngu sometimes communicate solely in sign language. Then Gaypalwani raises his spear, cocks his shoulder, and I look over the side of the dinghy and see a great shadow in the water. Yiliyarr guns the motor, and the spear is heaved, a violent throw. The shadow rises, the spear falls, and the two intersect at the water’s surface. The turtle, struck, dives deep. It’s as big around as a card table and probably older than either of the men. The metal tip of the spear, buried in the turtle’s shell, dislodges from the shaft, as designed. The shaft floats off—they’ll retrieve it later—but a rope has been tied to the notched base of the spearhead, and the line whizzes out, fed from a coil by Yiliyarr.

Both men have thin, elongated scars across their palms and chests. The line runs completely free, though attached to the other end is a white, basketball-size buoy. It flies from the boat and disappears beneath the water. The men stand, scanning. The ball pops up, and the boat zips toward it. This time it’s Yiliyarr with his spear, and when the turtle appears, he lets fly, and again the spear is true. The tip dislodges, and a second rope plays out. Gaypalwani reaches into the water to grab the first rope, and both men tug, veins rising, hauling the ropes in hand over hand, and soon the turtle is pulled to the side of the boat. The men reach over, and each grabs a thick, flapping flipper, braces his feet against the side of the boat, and leans back. The turtle rises from the water, and the men fall backward as it slides into the tiny boat, the weight of the creature tossing the dinghy about. Before I was able to visit Matamata, a lost-in-the-bush village of 25 or so people, I needed permission from Gaypalwani’s mother.

Phyllis Batumbil is the matriarch of Matamata, a woman of unrestrained opinions whose laugh could loosen your hat and whose scowl could, and often did, set a dog to whimpering. There are two telephones in Matamata. Batumbil owns one. The rest of the village shares the other. I rang, and Batumbil answered. She speaks several dialects of Yolngu Matha, the language of the Yolngu, as well as excellent English. Like many Yolngu, she uses an English first name and an Aboriginal second name and prefers to be addressed by her Aboriginal name. Batumbil is an artist—painting is among her many avocations—and we had been put in touch by the manager of an art gallery that represents her. She creates highly symbolic depictions of stingrays and lizards and other sacred totems on strips of bark and on hollow logs, using a brush made from her own hair. I asked Batumbil if I could stay in Matamata for a couple of weeks and said I’d pay for room and board. Permission granted. Was there anything, I wondered, that I could bring?

“Dinner for 25,” she said. I chartered a Cessna from one of the nearest towns, and the pilot flew low over the bush, the trees thin and straight and widely spaced, like a bad hair transplant, until we reached a large rectangular clearing with a handful of boxcar-shaped houses on one side, and the pilot set the plane down. Batumbil was sitting beneath an old mango tree, knitting a handbag out of natural fibers, surrounded by her five dogs. She was wearing a black tank top, a vibrant purple sarong, plastic-framed reading glasses, and red nail polish. Her hair, a ruckus of springy black curls, was corralled atop her head with a yellow ribbon. I unloaded two duffels of personal effects and a dozen bags of groceries. Dinner for 25, I mentioned, is quite a load. Batumbil nodded. Take a look at all that food, she said. Could you imagine catching that much in one day using only a spear? And then again the next day and the day after that? I said it would be just about impossible.

Aboriginal people, she said, have been doing it every day for at least 50,000 years. For 49,800 of those years they had the continent to themselves. There were once about 250 distinct Aboriginal languages, hundreds more dialects, and many more clans and subgroups. But there is deep spiritual and cultural overlap among them, and indigenous Australians I spoke with said it was not insulting to combine everyone together under the general title of Aboriginal. They call themselves Aboriginals. They lived for a couple of thousand generations in small, nomadic bands, as befits a hunter-gatherer existence, moving in their own rhythms about the vast expanse of Australia. Then on April 29, 1770, British explorer James Cook landed his ship, the Endeavour, on the southeastern shore. The next two centuries were a horror show of cultural obliteration—massacres, disease, alcoholism, forced integration, surrender. More than a half million Aboriginals currently live in Australia, less than 3 percent of the population. Few have learned to perform an Aboriginal dance or hunt with a spear.

Many anthropologists credit Aboriginals with possessing the world’s longest enduring religion as well as the longest continuing art forms—the cross-hatched and dot-patterned painting styles once inscribed in caves and rock shelters. They are one of the most durable societies the planet has ever known. But the traditional Aboriginal way of life is now, by any real measure, almost extinct. Almost. There remain a few places. Foremost is a region known as Arnhem Land, where Matamata is located, along with a couple dozen other communities, all connected by rough dirt roads passable only in dry weather. Arnhem Land is not fully insulated from the modern world. It has solar electricity, satellite phones, aluminum boats, and flat-screen televisions hooked to DVD players. But it is impenetrable enough, rife with thorns and snakes and bugs and crocs. If the new generation chooses the supermarket over the spear, then the end will have truly arrived. I wondered what the likelihood of survival was. So I called Batumbil. She surveyed my bags of supermarket food and asked if they were really for sharing. I assured her they were. Moments later—I don’t know what signal she made—people congregated around the groceries.

I’d brought steaks and vegetables and cans of ravioli and boxes of fruit juice. Matamata is basically one extended family, home to Batumbil’s children, grandchildren, nieces, brothers. In a flash, everything was pocketed, even the snacks I’d purchased for myself. A few empty green shopping bags rotated in the breeze. The look on my face must’ve given it away: Batumbil asked if I was hungry. I admitted I was. “Go with the boys and get a turtle,” she instructed. Here’s how you eat a sea turtle. First dig a very large fire pit. Collect firewood. Ignite. Place a few fist-size rocks in the fire, then drag the turtle over, plug the spear holes in its shell with bits of twig—this prevents the blood from spilling out while it’s cooking—and decapitate with an ax. Save the head; turtle cheek is delicious. Pull out the long white fire hose of intestines. These will be cleaned and boiled and eaten as well.

Using two sticks as tongs, remove the rocks you’ve heated in the fire and drop them in the turtle’s neck hole—this helps cook the meat from the inside—then stuff the hole with freshly cut foliage. With a partner, heave the turtle onto the fire, upside down, and cover with coals. A turtle comes prepacked in its own cooking container, like Jiffy Pop popcorn. Heat just ten minutes, then remove. With the turtle still on its back, use your knife to carve open the flat bottom shell. Slice out large chunks of ivory-colored meat and ribbons of bright green fat. Collect the blood in a container. Distribute to everyone in the village; dogs get the flippers. Feast. Sunset in Matamata is the time of the sand flies. Percussive slaps, palms on skin, sound from every front porch. There are five houses in Matamata, all in a rough line perpendicular to the shore, fronting the dirt runway. The modular homes, provided by the government, have corrugated-steel exteriors to thwart termites and are divided into three simple rooms.

Cooking is done outside over an open fire, though each house does have a sink with running water as well as a refrigerator. For the Yolngu, all the world’s a canvas—boulders, trees, bedroom walls, the exteriors of houses. They’re typically adorned with cross-hatchings or petroglyph-style human and animal figures. In Matamata even the refrigerators are painted; one is festooned with a spray of red and yellow palm prints and kiss marks. Between the homes are small groves of mango and banana and cashew trees. Getting a snack requires little more than reaching into the branches. Even in a village this small—strolling the length of Matamata, leisurely, takes about three minutes—there are various neighborhoods: a couple of houses of bachelors, a couple of families with kids, and at the end farthest from the sea, Batumbil’s compound. She shares a room with her mother’s sister, who’s in her 90s, while the other rooms are occupied by one of her sons and one of her grandsons, who himself has a young son—five generations, at times, in a single house.

On Batumbil’s bed is a fuzzy blanket with a portrait of Elvis Presley. She loves Elvis. Everyone in Matamata generally gets along, but it’s still family. Each time Batumbil mentioned one person in the village, she automatically appended the word “lazy” to the name. Two of Batumbil’s grandsons once had such a fierce disagreement they ended up slicing each other with their knives. The smothering heat of daytime is passed languidly, doing domestic chores—whittling spears, washing clothes—or if the tide is right, going spearfishing. Turtle’s a year-round staple, but the men also catch stingray and kingfish and a walrus-size marine mammal called a dugong. It’s not until sand fly hour that Batumbil’s creativity begins to spike; she often paints or knits deep into the night and sleeps late. “My head’s not right in the morning,” she explains. Batumbil was born in 1956 in a community run by Methodist missionaries on Elcho Island, just off the northern coast of Arnhem Land. Her father had eight wives.

Soon after birth, she was promised to a man, in traditional Yolngu fashion, and at age 15 was married. Her husband was more than 20 years older. He died in 2000. In 1976 the Aboriginal Land Rights Act for the Northern Territory returned Arnhem Land, more than 35,000 square miles, to its traditional owners. Similar legislation repatriated tracts of territory elsewhere in Australia, though few as untrammeled as Arnhem Land. Some Aboriginal communities by this time were devastated by alcoholism and other ills. They still are. A hallmark of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is immediate consumption; as soon as food is procured, it’s promptly shared and devoured. This makes complete sense in the bush, where leftover food swiftly spoils. Most of the world had 10,000 years to gradually adapt to the cadence of a sedentary, agricultural society, one in which patience, planning, and preserving are key to survival. Aboriginals were expected, impossibly, to convert virtually overnight. Untempered consumption plus unlimited supply of a product like alcohol equals disaster.

Same with processed sugars; obesity and diabetes are prevalent among Aboriginals. Also tobacco. Gasoline sniffing got so bad that a special brand of low-aromatic, nonaddictive fuel called Opal is all that’s sold in some Aboriginal areas. In the town of a few hundred residents where Batumbil and her husband lived on Elcho Island—he was a painter, she worked as a seamstress—it could be difficult to escape the lure of alcohol and its attendant violence. This was no place to start a family. Batumbil and her husband became convinced that the only happy life was one lived in quiet isolation, dependent on the bounty of the land. So they moved into the bush. “We decided to come home,” she says. Her decision, according to local health workers I met, was wise. Possibly lifesaving. Compared with Aboriginals who reside in cities and towns, those in remote homelands eat healthier food, live longer, and are exposed to a fraction of the violence. The largest city in the Northern Territory is Darwin. In January 2012, in Darwin, one of Batumbil’s brothers was murdered in a knife fight. His body was delivered to Matamata.

A sister-in-law, a drinker, undergoes daily dialysis treatments in Darwin. “If she’d been living here, she would have been saved from that sickness,” says Batumbil. “Anyway, we’ll bury her here.” After moving into the bush with her husband, Batumbil had two sons—Gaypalwani’s the older one—and one daughter. Her daughter gave birth to three sons, then died of a heart ailment. The three boys, now in their teens and early 20s, all live in Matamata. Formal education in the village is intermittent. Batumbil is the teacher; she received education training at a college in Darwin. During my stay, though, no classes were conducted, and I never spotted a single book. But the bush schooling is impeccable. Gaypalwani and his wife have twin nine-year-old boys, curly haired and exuberant. They race around with kid-size spears and sometimes accompany their father in his boat, observing him hunt. Every day they practice the intricate Yolngu dance steps while their parents clap along. Marriage promises and multiple wives, Batumbil says, are no longer common. Finding a partner now, she explains, is more modern.

“You just run around everywhere like a brown ant until you get satisfied. Then you make a big hill.” No alcohol is permitted in Matamata. This is, foremost, Batumbil’s rule. It is also the law. The Northern Territory Emergency Response of 2007, better known as “the intervention,” was billed chiefly as a reaction to the alleged number of child-abuse cases in Aboriginal communities. The controversial and racially charged initiative added more police officers to Aboriginal areas and imposed strict regulations on alcohol, among other measures. Some Aboriginals I spoke with reluctantly admitted that it has alleviated aspects of the crisis, though many Australians vehemently oppose it, saying the new rules infringe too greatly on personal freedoms. In a mostly unpoliced area like Matamata, it’d be easy to circumvent the law, but Batumbil has zero tolerance for alcohol, and I never saw a drop. Batumbil, however, along with many of the adults, smokes like a chimney. She uses a long wooden pipe made from a hollowed-out tree branch—Batumbil’s cousin Djutu is the village pipemaker—stuffed with store-bought Log Cabin tobacco.

Two items from the outside world dictate the quality of life in Matamata: tobacco and gasoline. When there’s no gas, boat engines can’t run, and turtles aren’t caught, and everyone gets hungry. When there’s no tobacco, it’s worse. I witnessed one intense shortage during which Batumbil smashed her favorite pipe, scraped out the resin caked inside, and smoked it in a new pipe. Money to purchase tobacco and gas and other staples—tea, flour, sugar, and a favorite in Matamata, tins of Tom Piper Homestyle Irish Stew—comes from several sources. The Yolngu are occasionally employed to perform manual jobs in various communities; during my visit a group of men helped raise a water tank onto a tower. For this work they receive a government wage of up to $280 a week. Many who aren’t working are given money as well, government payments that low-income Australians are entitled to, Aboriginal or not. Other Aboriginal communities receive large royalty payments from mining companies. Bauxite, a chief source of aluminum, is bountiful in Arnhem Land.

Batumbil has steadfastly refused to allow a shovelful of her land to be touched by a mining company, despite lucrative entreaties. “You’d have to shoot me and walk over my dead body before mining here,” she says. Batumbil’s bark paintings, intricately crosshatched, the pigments homemade from white clay, sell for $1,500. Her string bags, ornamented with bird feathers, cost $500. Her dream is to acquire satellite Internet—that’ll soon be possible—and start a website and sell her work online, thereby avoiding art gallery commissions. A couple of the men also earn money buying and selling a tan powdered substance called kava, made from the root of a plant, that’s mixed with water to produce a nonalcoholic but sedative drink used to unwind in the evenings. There’s a car in Matamata, a rusty white Land Cruiser that everyone yearns to ride around in, possibly because it contains the village’s only air conditioner. The temperature can climb close to 100°F nearly every month of the year. Several times a day a load of people will drive the tenth of a mile to the shoreline to check whether the tide’s right for turtle hunting.

The last of the gas is usually saved for a shopping trip. The nearest decently stocked store, in the mining company town of Nhulunbuy, is a four-hour drive, high speed on the narrow, sandy roads, tree branches clawing the Cruiser’s sides. Matamata has two general seasons—the wet, usually from December to March, and the dry, the rest of the year. The roads turn to soup during the wet, but you can always take a boat around the coastline, half a day to town. A plane also lands at least once a week to bring in a health worker, and when it flies off to other Aboriginal communities, a couple of people will often take the empty seats, for a modest fee, and spend time visiting friends and relatives. The Yolngu like to be in motion; the population of Matamata is never the same from day to day. When one of Batumbil’s grandsons hopped in the plane, he took his puppy and his television—“so I can sit down and relax with it”—but didn’t even consider bringing footwear. Batumbil does not like sand flies—nobody does—and she has no qualms about killing them.

But she does believe she’s related to them. She calls them her grannies. “I tried to have a nap,” she once told me, “but my grannies were all there.” She was being funny—she said it with a smile—though her meaning was serious. Sand flies might torment her, but they are part of her land and therefore imbued with a meaning and a spirit and an essential purpose. The purpose that day, she suggested, was to prevent her from napping, to help her understand that life is not easy. According to Aboriginal lore, all the Earth’s surface was once a featureless expanse of mud or clay. Then ancestral beings emerged from beneath the surface or from the sky, assumed the form of an animal or plant or human, and journeyed across the land, performing great deeds of creation, shaping the mud into rivers, hills, islands, caves. This took place in an age known as the Dreamtime. And the path each of these beings took, the countryside they molded before burrowing back into the ground, is called a Songline. The ancestral beings also gave birth to all living things, including humans. They bestowed language, knowledge, ritual, and faith.

Every Aboriginal has a Dreaming—the ancestor that gave rise to him or her, be it snake or turtle or yam. One of Batumbil’s family’s Dreamings is the dingo, the wild dog of Australia, which is why she loves to be surrounded by dogs. It’s essential, Batumbil says, to know the Songline of your Dreaming, to be able to follow the route of your particular ancestral being, to speak its language, to learn its music. This all-encompassing spirituality is not expressed overtly. People in Matamata don’t go around constantly praying or singing. In daily life, in fact, there seems to be no obvious ritual at all, though there are superstitions. Walking alone, it’s believed, makes you vulnerable to sorcery. Even when someone in Matamata goes to the bathroom—there are outhouses—it is standard to take a partner along. At the Matamata cemetery, the grave sites piled with plastic flowers, the only religious symbol is a Christian cross with the words “I Am the Way” written on it in English, evidence of the Methodist missionaries who arrived in Arnhem Land in the early 1900s.

There are two main occasions when the full force of Aboriginal beliefs is on display: at a boy’s initiation ceremony, which takes place around age ten, and at a funeral. I’m invited to join several people from Matamata at a funeral for a respected Yolngu elder, held on an expanse of beach sand near the town of Yirrkala. The men smear their faces and bodies with white clay and move onto the sand in a large group, carrying ceremonial spears. They stand before a specially constructed cloth-walled tent in which the body lies. Older men provide the music—a rhythmic crack of clapsticks, a trilling chant, the thrumming drone of the didgeridoo. Then the dancers, like the ancestral beings of the Dreamtime, seem to shift shape before my eyes, contorting their bodies, elongating their necks, stomping their feet and thrusting spears, all moving together, a many-legged creature, sand flying, sweat streaming. Each dance, mimicking an animal or a natural event, is short and intense. There’s the white seagull dance, the octopus dance, the north wind dance, the cockatoo dance. Some are performed only by women.

The dances last all day, and another, and another—the funeral carries on for ten days—as people stream in from communities across the bush to pay respect, to dance some more, to set the soul on its journey with the grandest possible send-off. I ask a couple of people for a description of the afterlife, and their answers are similar. “We don’t know what happens when you die,” they reply. The Yolngu, says Batumbil, are people of fire. Not long ago they started fires by spinning a stick between their palms. Now they use disposable cigarette lighters. As they walk about their territory, they set frequent bushfires. Children, even toddlers, are permitted to start their own. This practice keeps the land clear of downed trees and tall grasses, allowing easier movement through the bush and renewing plant life. But look at everyone’s eyes when a fire is lit: This is something deeper than good forest stewardship. Touch a flame to the tip of a palm leaf. It’s the dry season; the leaf explodes. In moments the whole tree’s ablaze, a cauldron of fire, and the flames leap to the next tree and drop to the ground.

The air turns orange, the heat’s like a bear hug, and the fire dashes whichever way the wind blows it, the bush crackling and smoking—if you’re in the way, run! There’s no stopping it now; the fire will do what it will. Walk back to Matamata, and in the morning scope the horizon. A brown smudge hangs low in the sky where the fire’s still burning. It takes 30 to 40 years for a Yolngu to absorb the full breadth of Aboriginal knowledge—to become, as Batumbil describes it, a “living encyclopedia.” Batumbil fears there may soon be no more Yolngu encyclopedias; many Aboriginal groups throughout Australia have already buried their final one. Hunting with boomerangs, used by some tribes for 10,000 years—though never by the Yolngu—hardly exists. “I worry about the next generation,” says Batumbil. A young man named Marvin Ganyin convinces me that her concern is unnecessary. Ganyin is 23; he and his wife live in the room next to Batumbil. His mother was Batumbil’s daughter, the one who passed away.

His father is also dead. He has a two-year-old son. For a while I’m not sure about Ganyin. The first thing he shows me is a cell phone video of a street brawl he was involved in while visiting Elcho Island. His two loves, he tells me, are fighting and playing Australian rules football. He displays the scars on his knuckles from all his fights. He says he can’t understand the purpose of books. “Reading? What can you do with it when you’re hungry—eat the book?” But then, on a day when the supply of gas is low and some of the older men drive into town to purchase more, he taps me on the shoulder, hands me a spear, and indicates that I should follow him. We walk into the bush, tabletop flat, anthills the size of tombstones scattered everywhere. He stops beneath a tree and shakes it, and a bunch of wild apples fall out, bright red skin rumpled like bell peppers. “Eat these,” he says, “and you can walk a long way.” Every creature in the Australian bush, it seems, wants to poison you. There are king brown snakes, cane toads, redback spiders, and taipan snakes.

You can’t even swim in the sea—box jellyfish, polka-dot stingrays, blue-ringed octopuses, dozens of species of shark. Then there are the saltwater crocodiles, known as salties, which can grow to 20 feet long. During the two weeks I’m in the bush, two people are eaten by salties, a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy. I express my grief about this to Batumbil, but she remains unperturbed. These things happen. Ganyin and I reach a hill. A sacred hill, he says. This is where the trees for didgeridoos grow. He taps on the trunk of a stringybark. Hollow. The Yolngu claim that didgeridoos were invented in Arnhem Land; they call them yidaki. Ganyin is an expert player, the best I hear in Matamata. We emerge from the bush at a pristine crescent of beach. Not a footprint. We continue to a natural jetty of black rocks, pimpled with oysters. Ganyin smashes some open, and we slurp them on the half shell. Then Ganyin hurls his spear.

A huge crab is skewered. We scramble over to the mangrove forest, where Ganyin breaks off a root and digs his finger inside the soft maroon wood. He pulls out a thick white worm about a foot long. He holds it up and squeezes it, and a muddy brown paste is ejected from the bottom. He hands the worm to me. “Eat it,” he says, eyes alight. I do. Not bad, like a salty calamari. “Let’s go before the dingoes smell us,” he says. So we turn back. On the way he shows me a flower whose bloom indicates the start of stingray-hunting season. His heroes, he mentions, are Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali. He insists he could never live in a town. “Too boring. Bad food.” He says there is nothing better in the world than hunting for your own meals. “Even when I have white hair,” he says, “I will still be a hunter.” He is already teaching his son to hunt. Ganyin insists he will learn all the Yolngu ways, he will become an encyclopedia. They will dance for ten days at his funeral.

We arrive at Matamata and cook the crab over a fire and brew tea. Sunset pinks the sky; we slap at the sand flies. Ganyin picks splinters and bits of seashell out of the bottom of his feet with the tip of a scissor. The Land Cruiser arrives loaded with jerry cans of gas—tomorrow we will return to the water and catch more turtle. Ganyin brings out his didgeridoo. It’s decorated only with a few stripes of colored duct tape. He takes a plastic chair, turns it on its side, and sits cross-legged in front of it. He places the end of the didgeridoo against the seat of the chair, shuts his eyes, and billows his cheeks. Music leaps from the instrument, and the plastic chair creates a warbling reverberation, the pitch rising and falling. I walk through Matamata, and the stars wink on, and the sound of Ganyin’s playing fills the night. Michael Finkel acquired a real taste for sea turtle during his reporting. Amy Toensing spent more than three years documenting Aboriginal communities.

| Aboriginals of Australia | Aborigines | First Australians Aboriginals (Aborigines) - The First Australians The First People to Come to Australia Who are the Aboriginals? The aboriginal people are the native inhabitants of Australia . They are a dark-skinned people belonging to the Australoid group more closely related to Africans than to Asians and Europeans. They are believed to be descendants of the first group of humans to migrate out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. Being the first humans to arrive in Australia about 50,000 years ago; the Aboriginals discovered Australia. They were the first human inhabitants of Australia. Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gathers. They roamed from place to place hunting animals and gathering fruits, nuts, yams and insects which they ate. They never engaged in farming or built cities and towns. It has been suggested that the reason for this may be due to the fact that Australia did not have plants suitable for farming such as grain (wheat, oats, rice). They also did not have animals suitable for domestication (such as cattle, horses, goats).

It is estimated that there were approximately 320,000 Aboriginals in about 250 tribal groups at the time the first European settlers arrived in Australia in 1778. Each group had its own territory, traditions, beliefs and language. The Aboriginals have one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The D r e a m t i m e is the centerpiece of aboriginal culture. It is the way they understand the world, how it was created, the relationship of all things and the rules that govern their lives. In some ways it is similar to Greek and Hindu mythology and the Bible stories; but unlike these stories, dreaming is a continuing story. That is to say, the dreaming still continues today. What are Native Australians called? The word Aborigine was the original name given to the native Australians by Europeans. Over time this word was thought to be demeaning. Today they are usually referred to as Aboriginal Australians and Indigenous Australians. The Meaning of the word Aborigine and Aboriginal The word "Aborigine" is usually used to refer to the original native people of an area before the arrival of invading or colonising people from elsewhere.

It is derived from the Latin word aborīginēs which was used by the Romans to refer to the people who lived in Italy before they took over the area. It is derived from the Latin stem words ab+origine meaning 'from the beginning'. This word was borrowed into the English language and by the 1800s the words Aborigines and Aboriginals were firmly established as descriptions for the original native people of Australia. Meaning of Indigenous Most dictionaries define indigenous as "originating or occurring naturally in a particular place". In more recent times the phrase Indigenous Australians has been used to refer to these early Australian people. This may be due to the fact that some people believe the word 'indigenous' is less racist than aborigine and aboriginal. What is the Correct Word to Describe Native Australians There is no correct answer to this question. Today the most politically correct usage is "Indigenous Australian", followed by "Native Australian", then "Aboriginals", and finally "Aborigines" Related Article: Meaning of the words Aborigine, Aboriginal & Indigenous Australian What Do Aboriginals Call Themselves? The Aboriginal people themselves do not seem to have a preferred name by which they call themselves.

They most commonly refer to each other as Aboriginals, Aborigines or just simply black-fellas (from the words black + fellow). Historically they called themselves by the name of their tribe or language group. This may have been a result of the fact that they were hunter-gathers and usually moved from place to place. For example, they may have said "I am a Wiradjuri man". Some groups, however, called themselves by place names. For example, people living in what is now New South Wales and Victoria may refer to themselves as "Koori".While those in Queensland may call themselves "Murri" in Western Australia it may be "Noongar". Why the Ancestors of the Aboriginals Left Africa Home Sapiens (humans that look like us today) were firmly established in Africa about 200,000 years ago. By about 60,000 years ago the last Ice Age was beginning to reached its coldest period. This cooling of the earth which had started millions of years earlier had catastrophic effects on the climate. Areas such as Europe and North America were covered in ice. More importantly areas of Africa where humans had lived for so many years started to dry out.

The lush forests and savannah they had lived in were slowly replaced with desert and scrub-land with very little food and shelter. Humans like many other animals were facing starvation and near extinction. As a result some humans started to move out of Africa in search of better opportunities. The first wave of humans, sometimes referred to as Proto-Australoid people, are believed to have left Africa about 60,000 years ago. These were the ancestors of the Aboriginals. (A second wave left Africa about 10,000 years later. These were the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians). How the Aboriginals Came to Australia The first human migration out of Africa generally followed the coastlines of Africa, India and Asia on their journey eastward. It was easy to walk along a beach and usually there was an adequate supply of shellfish such as clams and mussels for them to eat. By 50,000 years ago they had reached as far as Borneo, Papua New Guinea and Timor. Australia was still separated from all these lands by 90 kilometres of open sea. So how did the Aboriginals get across the sea to Australia? These first humans did not arrive in Australia by boat.

At the time the first Aboriginals came to Australia 50,000 years ago, humans were still in the Stone Age . They did not have the technology to build seagoing vessels of any kind. Since Australia was always separated from other countries by an ocean; humans could not have travelled to Australia on any sort of sea-going vessel such as rafts, canoes or boats. The final crossing to Australia was probably made by accident. It is most likely that the initial arrivals got to Australia unintentionally. These people were probably carried across the ocean on drifting debris as a result of a major flood or even a tsunami in a land somewhere further to the north. Some say, that given the genetic homogeneity of the aboriginal population, this could have even been just one pregnant female. Early Encounters between Aboriginals & Foreign People There is some evidence that the Aboriginals on the western and northern coastlines of Australia had some contact with fishermen and traders from Indonesia and other islands close by for thousands of years. But this contact was sporadic and inconsequential to the Aboriginal way of life. The Dingo , the native dog of Australia, first arrived about 5,000 years ago.

It may have been brought to Australia by some of these early seafarers. It is the first non-native animal introduced in Australia by humans. First Encounter between Aboriginals and White Settlers (Europeans) The aborigine people had never seen white European people until Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay in 1770. They were shocked to see these white people in their strange clothes. When the Aboriginals first saw the ships of the "First Fleet" enter Botany Bay in 1778 with so many white skinned people they thought they were the spirits of their dead ancestors (after all they were so white). In actual fact these were the first European settlers led by Captain Arthur Phillip. At first the Aboriginals were friendly towards the visitors but were very confused at the way foreigners behaved: - Why did the foreigners walk on aborigine sacred sites and dig up aborigine graves? - Why did they boss each other around and beat and hang people? - Why did they chop down trees and take food without asking? - Why were they mean and selfish towards each other and not sharing?

Related Article: First Fleet - The Arrival of the First Europeans in Australia First Misunderstanding between Aboriginals and White Settlers While exploring around the new settlement Captain Arthur Phillip befriended an old aboriginal man. When he returned to camp he met the old man again and gave him some beads and a hatchet. Later that night Captain Phillip discovered the old man taking one of his shovels and slapped the man on his shoulder and pushed him away while pointing to the spade. The old man was very upset and could not understand why his friend was acting this way. Aboriginals share what they have with their relatives and friends and have very little concept of personal property. Captain Phillip was very careful not to offend the Aboriginals but Aborigine and the settlers cultures were so different! They didn't understand each other. This was one of the first examples of the clash of cultures between the natives and the white foreigners. Massacre of the Aboriginals by White Settlers When the Aboriginals finally realised that the white men were not the spirits of their dead ancestors and that the settlers were taking more and more of their land and destroying the trees and wild life they began to fight back.

Led by a man named Pemulwuy , the Aboriginals killed a number of the settlers and even wounded Captain Phillip in an attack. The settlers reacted by slaughtering and poisoning the Aboriginals and systematically destroying the land and wild animals they lived on. The Aboriginals were pushed out of their ancestral lands and forced to retreat into more inhospitable areas of the country where the settlers didn't want to go. Aboriginal Deaths Caused by Disease White settlers brought diseases the Aboriginals had never had before (diseases which were quite common in Europe at the time). While the Europeans had developed resistance to these illnesses over thousands of years, they were totally new to the Aboriginal population. The Aboriginals had no resistance or immunity to these new diseases. They caught measles, smallpox and even the common cold and died in huge numbers. Within two years smallpox had killed almost half the aborigine population around Sydney . The "white man's diseases" were the major reason for the huge decline in the Aboriginal population since the arrival of European settlers. This terrible fate that befell the Aboriginals is sometimes referred to as "The White Man's Curse".

The Last Aboriginal In Tasmania The last full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal, a female named Truganni, died on a desolate island off the coast of Tasmanian on 8th May 1876. She had pleaded the colonial authorities for a respectful funeral and for he ashes to be scattered in the sea. Despite her wishes here body was buried then exhumed two years later and her skeleton placed on public display in the Tasmanian Museum until 1947. It was only in 1976 that her wishes were finally carried out. Truganni's ancestors first arrived in Tasmania around 40,000 years ago. They did so via a land bridge that existed between the mainland of Australia and Tasmania until about 8,000 years ago. They then lived in total isolation until the first European white settlers arrived in Tasmania in 1803 just eight years before she was born. At the time of the first white arrival there were approximately 10,000 Aboriginals. Soon after the arrival of whites, the local aboriginal population plummeted drastically.

The reasons given are the introduction of western diseases to which Aboriginals had no resistance, and to a lesser extent murder and extermination by the whites. By the time Truganni was just 17 years old, she had witnessed terrible violence rape, abductions and murder inflicted on her people by white settlers, sailors, sealers, soldiers and wood cutters. She herself lost her mother, sister, uncle and fiancée. In less than seventy years, at the time of Truganni's death, there were no more full-blooded Aboriginals in Tasmania. Today there are still people of aboriginal decent living in Tasmania. These are the descendants of interbreeding between whites and Aboriginals. Depravation - The Exploitation of Aboriginals The British colonists declared that before their arrival all of the continent was terra nullius (not inhabited by humans). They used this as justification for taking whatever they wanted. As more and more white settlers moved in and occupied the fertile lands the Aboriginals were pushed further and further away from their traditional lands and into the harsh arid interior. Their families were broken up, their children taken away from them and sent to be "civilised", their sacred sites destroyed and their wild animals hunted.

Many died of starvation. The killing and exploitation of Aboriginals by whites continued well into the twentieth century. The aboriginal population declined from the original 300,000 when the first white settlers arrived to only about 60,000 people (less than the number of people that can be seated at a large football stadium!). Aboriginals were second-class citizens in their own land. They only got the right to vote in 1967. This is a shameful part of Australian history. Reconciliation - Attempt to Make Amends Much progress has been made over recent years to try to right the wrongs of the past. Where possible the government has been returning land to their traditional owners and encouraging Aboriginals to rebuild their culture and lives. On the 13th February 2008 the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the Indigenous Australians for their past mistreatments. They are the single most disadvantaged group of people in Australia. There is still a long way to go!

Aboriginal Land Rights - Mabo Ruling When the white settlers arrived in Australia they conveniently adopted a policy of " terra nullis " (uninhabited by humans) - That is to say that the land didn't belong to anybody. Therefore they claimed that they were free to occupy all of Australia as they pleased and totally ignore any rights of the Aboriginals who had lived there before. The High Court of Australia (Supreme Court) handed down its famous Mabo Ruling in 1992 stating that the policy of terra nullius was invalid. The court ruled that the Aboriginals were the first human occupants of Australia. This meant for the first time that Aboriginals could lay claim to their ancestral land which white settlers had stolen. Eddie Mabo is the aboriginal man who took his fight to the High Court and won. The High Court decision is named after him. Interesting Aboriginal Facts How Old is the Aboriginal Culture? The culture of the Australian Aboriginals is unique in that it is one of the oldest continuous uninterrupted cultures in to world. It is at least as old as their initial migration to Australia about 50,000 years ago. Most cultures of the world have been significantly influenced by the cultures of other people.

The Aboriginals, because of their isolation from foreigners, remained unimpacted by the cultures of other people until the arrival of European settlers in 1778. How Long have the Aboriginals lived in Australia? The general consensus is that the Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years. Some have suggested that it may be as early as 65,000 years ago. What is the Aboriginal Population of Australia today? The Australian Bureau of Statistics census estimate of the Aboriginal population of Australia as of 30 June 2011 was 669,900. This constitutes about 3% of the total Australian population. The Aboriginal population is increasing at the rate of 2.2 per year (compared the overall average of 1.4%). It is estimated that the Aboriginal population in 2014 was about 713,600 people. Where do the Aboriginals live in Australia? Prior the arrival of European settlers in 1770s, most of the Aboriginal population of Australia lived along the coastal regions of Australia. But with colonisation they were progressively displaced by the white settlers to more remote parts of Australia.

Most of them today live in towns and settlements. New South Wales has the largest population with 210,000 people. Next is Queensland with 200,000. Then followed by Western Australia (90,000), Northern Territory (70,000), Victoria (50,000), South Australia (38,000), Tasmania (25,000) and the Australian Capital Territory (6,300). Aboriginals make up 30% of the population of the Northern Territory, the highest proportion of the population by state. Our Other Fantastic Pages Aboriginal Australia: History, Culture, and Conflict Aboriginal Australia History and culture of Australia's indigenous peoples by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco Djakapurra Munyarryun plays the didgeridoo in the "Sea of Hands" display in Sydney in 1998. The display was in support of native title and reconciliation of Australian aboriginals. (Source:AP) The name "aborigine" derives from the Latin, meaning "original inhabitants." There are approx. 400,000 aborigines living in Australia.

Books About Aborigines and Australia The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Thomas Keneally Aboriginalaustralia.com Who Are Aborigines? Aborigines are Australia's indigenous people. Recent government statistics counted approximately 400,000 aboriginal people, or about 2% of Australia's total population. Australian Aborigines migrated from somewhere in Asia at least 30,000 years ago. Though they comprise 500–600 distinct groups, aboriginal people possess some unifying links. Among these are strong spiritual beliefs that tie them to the land; a tribal culture of storytelling and art; and, like other indigenous populations, a difficult colonial history. "The Dreamtime" Aboriginal spirituality entails a close relationship between humans and the land. Aborigines call the beginning of the world the "Dreaming," or "Dreamtime." In the "Dreamtime," aboriginal "Ancestors" rose from below the earth to form various parts of nature including animal species , bodies of water, and the sky. Unlike other religions, however, aboriginal belief does not place the human species apart from or on a higher level than nature.

Aborigines believe some of the Ancestors metamorphosed into nature (as in rock formations or rivers), where they remain spiritually alive. Storytelling, Art, and the Didgeridoo The oral tradition of storytelling informs aboriginals' vibrant cultural life. Songs illustrate the Dreamtime and other tales of the land, while dances and diagrams drawn in the sand accompany oral tales. In the Northern Territory , aboriginal art includes sculpture, bark and rock paintings, and baskets and beadwork. Rock carvings and paintings can be found in such places as Arnhem Land, Ubirr, and Nourlangie. Many aborigines earn a living through selling native artworks. Aboriginal music is often recognizable for its most famous instrument, the didgeridoo. A wind instrument typically made from bamboo, it extends about five feet and produces a low, vibrating hum. Aborigines use didgeridoos in formal ceremonies at such events as sunsets, circumcisions, and funerals. Land Rights Movement As a result of forced assimilation , by the late 1880s most aborigines had joined white rural and urban communities. Aboriginal people became economically marginalized and were exposed to new diseases.

The consequence was massive depopulation and extinction for some aboriginal tribes. Land and property rights fueled an important civil rights movement in the 1970s. Aborigines spoke out for equal rights, and specifically for land rights for property that had been forcibly taken by British settlers. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act, passed in 1976, became instrumental in territories with tribal associations. The 1990s witnessed further rights milestones, including government legislation that returned a great degree of autonomy, and increased wages and welfare benefits to aboriginal people. Did you know? Royal Botanic Garden - Indigenous Heritage Indigenous Heritage Indigenous Heritage People Plants & Place The rich Indigenous history of our three botanic states plays an important role in your Gardens. The traditional owners of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain, the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan and the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah are the Cadigal, Dharawal and Darug respectively. The Gardens and local Aboriginal communities work together to create themed gardens and displays, educational programs, guided tours and publications to acknowledge the significance of these lands to Aboriginal people, past and present.

Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters is an award-winning garden display that interprets the Aboriginal cultural heritage of the Royal Botanic Garden. Surrounded by native vegetation with origins of around 200 years, this 52 metre sculptural ‘storyline’ tells the Indigenous history of Sydney, gathering stories from a range of sources, including over 40 interviews with local Indigenous people. This provocative garden gives insight into the first encounters between early European settlers and the traditional Indigenous inhabitants, the Cadigal, and interprets their differing environmental perspectives. Wuganmagulya is a ground artwork found along the Farm Cove path linking the Opera House and Mrs Macquaries Point. Etched into the pathway kerb are names of women and men, places, animals, tools and rituals from the clans and language groups of the Sydney area. You’ll also be able to find terrazzo and stained concrete figures representing Sydney rock carvings. Aboriginal Heritage Tours Learn about the richly diverse history and culture of the Indigenous in Sydney by taking an Aboriginal Heritage Tour with an Aboriginal Guide. The unique tour occurs every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 10am except on public holidays. Book now!

The Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan Stolen Generations Memorial Yandel’ora is the name the Dharawal people gave to Mount Annan, meaning ‘place of peace between peoples’. Acknowledging the Stolen Generations has been a focal issue for Aboriginal Reconciliation in Australia, and a memorial recognising this event is found in the Australian Botanic Garden. The Stolen Generations Memorial was planned in 1999 between n the NSW Stolen Generations Committee, the Botanic Gardens Trust and Link Up NSW. Experience the memorial as a journey of healing and reflection, as you walk through the tranquil Cumberland Plain Woodland,leading to a peaceful meeting place with water and a sandstone sculptural centrepiece. Fruit Loop Garden See and taste seasonal native fruits when visiting the circular garden located within the Australian Botanic Garden. You can also learn about bush foods and find out about plants that are important to Dharawal people. The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah Darug Connections The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden is part of Darug Aboriginal Country and respects the rights of Indigenous people, particularly in relation to land, culture and heritage.

‘Tomah’ is the Darug word for tree fern, which dominate the surrounding rainforests. You can spot interpretive signage and art created by Darug artists celebrating the past, present and future Darug associations with Mount Tomah and other Aboriginal places in the region Aboriginal Education Programs At each of the Botanic Gardens, lessons with Indigenous themes have been developed for primary (K-6), secondary (7-12) and tertiary students. These are closely linked to curriculum requirements and New South Wales Board of Studies syllabus outcomes. Lessons such as 'Aboriginal People and Plants', 'Bush Foods of Sydney', 'Aboriginal Studies' and 'Everyone Needs a Home' identify plants that Aboriginal people have used for food, tools and weapons and provide an Indigenous perspective on living with, and from, the native bushland. Other lessons investigate the true events of First Fleet arrival in Sydney Harbour in 1788 and also offer bush tucker sessions to students studying in TAFE colleges, in partnership with the Restaurant & Catering Association of NSW. Publications A wide range of specialised publications that link Aboriginal people to plants and places are to be found at all three Botanic Garden Shops.

In addition, the Trust has two of its own relevant titles: Bush Foods of New South Wales by Kathy Stewart and Bob Percival (1997), provides insightful information on the most commonly used bush food plants of New South Wales. This book is now out of print. See the Bush foods of NSW web pages (or download pdf file) and the Aboriginal bush foods web pages . Darug Connections by Suzanne Kenney (2000), tells the Darug Aboriginal story with works of art created by Darug artists Robyn Caughlan, Mrs Edna Watson and Ian Bundeluk Watson. Cultural Awareness and Community Outreach Acknowledgement / Welcome to Country are appropriate cultural protocols that recognise Aboriginal connection to Country. Trust staff observe these throughout day-to-day operations, particularly at major events held on its botanic estates. The Trust also takes its expertise ‘beyond the garden walls’ and helps schools and community groups seeking advice in establishing native gardens, often incorporating bush tucker and/or reconciliation themes. Trust staff also support the work of local Indigenous communities by offering assistance in plant identification and selection, landscape design and garden preparation.

Disadvantaged Indigenous communities are given the opportunity to develop gardening skills and a deeper appreciation of the natural environment as part of Community Greening, an initiative of the Trust and NSW Department of Housing. ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN SYDNEY Mrs Macquaries Road Sydney NSW 2000 Australia Opening hours Subscribe to E-News

Question: What are the native people of Australia called?
Answer: Aborigines