Geography:
Continent of 7,500.000 km².

People:
The present Aboriginal population in Australia is around 460,000, which is about 2,27 % of the total Australian population. They live in all parts of Australia, but there is a large concentration in Queensland.

The Indigenous population has a much younger age structure than that of the total Australian population, which is the result of high fertility and high mortality among the Indigenous population. Although comparatively more rural than the general population, the Aboriginal population is increasingly becoming more urbanised, with some two-thirds living in cities.

Languages

Among the Aboriginals, some 500 languages belonging to 31 language groups were spoken, of which Pama-Nyungang was the most commonly used. Officially their language is English.

Ethnic diversity

In Australia there are about 300 communities with separate identities. The two major indigenous groups are the Aboriginal people and the Torres Strait Islanders.

Culture and religion

The predominant religion of aboriginals is Christianity, but the dominant aboriginal view on life and religion is defined as “Dreamtime”. Dreamtime is a period in time, long ago, when the ancestors of today’s Australian Aboriginals – beings with super human powers – formed the continent and controlled the land and human destiny. Dreamtime combines past, present and future; daily life and religious rituals are described by it.

The Australian government has begun a process it calls “Reconciliation”. Some notable former Prime Ministers, such as Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser have made many symbolic gestures and speeches in support of respect for Aboriginal culture. Many Aboriginal leaders such as Isabell Coe reject such moves, demanding actual sovereignty instead.

History

The Aboriginals first settled the Australian continent 40,000 years ago. Aboriginals also use the names Korris, Murris, Noongars and other tribal and clan names.

The aboriginal way of life came to an end with the beginning of European settlement in 1788, when the British landed on the east coast of Australia. The diseases brought in by the white settlers (smallpox, colds and measles) killed almost half the aboriginal population between Botany Bay and Broken Bay. The settlers were mostly male, and the rape of aboriginal women by them was a frequent occurrence. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most of the coastal and eastern Australian tribes were annihilated in violent confrontations with white settlers.

The remaining Aboriginals often worked on the cattle stations in near slavery conditions. The aboriginal population decreased from an estimated one million in 1788 to about 30,000 in the 1930’s.

It was not until the 1940’s that various organizations, including Aboriginal ones, started addressing the issue of poverty and status of the Aboriginal people. The process was accelerated by the employment of 1,000 aboriginals in northern Australia during World War II, despite the lack of official status.
In 1951, the government adopted and implemented an official assimilation policy to eliminate any sense of a separate Aboriginal identity. All the Aboriginal peoples territory was occupied and their rights of self-determination and human rights were violated.

In 1959 a federation of Aboriginals and white sympathisers was formed under the name of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.
The assimilation policy came under heavy criticism in the 1960s for disregarding the aboriginal people’s desire to preserve their culture and identity. Moreover, government policy seemed to vary from state to state, and lacked a national uniform approach.
Land rights were first raised as an issue in 1966, when Aboriginal stockmen of the Gurindji tribe went on a strike against the multinational company Vestey.

Their demands included an end to exploitation, self-determination and land rights.
The original constitution gave the federal government power to make laws relating to any race of people except Aborigines. In 1967, a referendum supported by more than ninety percent of voters gave the federal government the power to legislate on matters concerning Aboriginals, which also meant the right to enact laws to protect Aboriginal people and to count them in popular censuses. (Aboriginals had never been counted in popular censuses before.) Subsequently they were recognized with the right to vote and to receive state benefits.

In 1972, the Aboriginal Land Right Commission was established to investigate how land could be returned to the Aboriginals. This was the first time that the Australian government acknowledged that land was taken away from the Aboriginals and that it was right to give it back. This research was limited to the Northern Territory, which directly fell under the Federal Australian Government.

Also in 1972 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was created. This commission gave financial support to Aboriginals in need.
In 1972, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a semi-permanent assemblage claiming to represent the political rights of Australian Aborigines, was established on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra, the Australian capital. The continuous protest has remained in place for over thirty years to demand sovereignty for the Aboriginal peoples.

The Aboriginal Land Rights Bill of 1976 handed over land in the Northern Territory to be held in trust by three Aboriginal Land Councils. This provided a basis for the long-term security and economic development of the Aboriginal community there. About 30% of the land in Northern Territory passed into Aboriginal hands. The Act only accounted for land within the reservations. Queensland, where most of the Aboriginals live, does not have a land rights policy.

The situation of Aboriginals has been consistently bad. The Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Act of 1971 prevented Aboriginals from living or visiting reserves of their choice and forced them into work at lower than minimum wages. Although later repealed, the legacies of this act remain.

In 1988, on the bicentennial of the colonisation of Australia, an unprecedented demonstration of 30,000 Aboriginals against the invasion of their land and the ill treatment of their people was held. Although awareness of the situation of the Aboriginals has improved over the last twenty years, the issue of land rights and ill treatment of the Aboriginal people remains a major problem.

In 1992 the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody investigated the deaths of 99 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody. The Commission found out that the most significant factor contributing to the over-representation of the Aboriginal people in custody is their disadvantaged and unequal position in Australian society; socially, economically and culturally. Furthermore, the Commission stated: “it is highly desirable that the attitude of Governments to the recommendations and the implementation of those adopted be carried out in a public way as part of the process of education and reconciliation of the whole society.”

Recent years have seen an increase in the numbers of activities undertaken by Aboriginals in the field of publication, Aboriginal broadcasting and television. The Aboriginal and Islander Legal Service (NAILS) and Aboriginal Health Service are expanding their activities.

Attempts have been undertaken to found a national Aboriginal organisation by the government and by existing Aboriginal organisations, but this has, so far, had limited success, partly because of differing political priorities and partly for financial and organisational reasons.
An impressive movement has been the formation of the Land Councils, organized in the Federation of Land Councils, and ranging from the large and collective wealthy Councils of the Northern Territory to the un-financed and unrecognised organisations in some states.
In 1992, the Australian High Court handed down its decision in the Mabo Case, declaring the previous legal concept of “Terra Nullius” to be invalid, which meant that the land indeed had previous ownership. The High Court ruled that the Miriam People of the Murray Islands, part of the Torres Strait Islands group, had retained ownership under common law. The Court restricted its judgement to the Murrays, and ruled that the concept of “native title” could only exist where the government had not extinguished such rights.

The decision was, however, regarded by the Aboriginal community as setting a whole new precedent for their people to have reasonable prospect of succeeding in land claims. They reasoned that the decision legally recognised the presence of all Indigenous Australians in Australia prior to British Settlement. Legislation was subsequently enacted and later amended to recognise Native Title claims over land in Australia. Up to now no records of success are known.

In 1995, six elderly victims of law that allowed children to be forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal parents for “assimilation” in Australia’s white community began a High Court action for damages. From the 1920’s to the 1960’s, thousands of mostly half-caste children were taken by white authorities from their parents under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Ordinance and placed in the often brutal care of church-run institutions. They became known as the “Stolen Generation”. Few ever saw their parents again.

In 1996 The United Church of Australia apologised to the Aboriginals suffering in the name of the church. The government, on the other hand, refused to officially apologise to the Aboriginals.

In 1999 a referendum was held to change the Australian Constitution to include a preamble that, amongst other topics, recognised the occupation of Australia by Indigenous Australians prior to British Settlement. A huge majority defeated this referendum, though the recognition of indigenous Australians in the preamble was not a major issue in the preamble referendum discussion, and the preamble question attracted secondary attention compared to the question of becoming a republic.

In 2004, the Federal Government of Australia decided to abolish ATSIC as of 30 June 2005. It cited corruption and in particular, made allegations concerning the misuse of public funds, as the principal reason. In the period between the decision and the final abolishment functions of the ATSIC were gradually transferred to other agencies, indigenous specific programs being reintegrated with mainstream services as are provided for all other Australians.

Because of the federal system of 6 states with different interests and one territory, it is difficult for the Aboriginals to organise themselves in order to represent their collective views and to defend their common rights. Many families are engaged in land claim procedures, which are often difficult and expose them to new forms of exploitation. Conflicts with the government over the lowering of financial support available to Aboriginal organisations have taken much of the energy and resources of the Aboriginal movement.
Aboriginal organisations participate very actively in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations and many other international fora.

Organizations:
The Australian Aboriginals are a founding member of UNPO. They are represented by the National Committee to Defend Black Rights (NCDBR), which represents a coalition of national and key regional Aboriginal Organizations.

Statistics:
Population: 460.000 people.
Language: 500 languages grouped into 31 language groups