History of Indigenous Australians
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The history of Indigenous Australians began at least 65,000 years ago when
The origin of the first humans to populate the southern continent and the pieces of land which became islands as ice receded and sea levels rose remains a matter of conjecture and debate. Some
Estimates of the number of people living in Australia at the time that colonisation began in 1788, who belonged to a range of
Post-colonisation, the coastal Indigenous populations were soon absorbed, exterminated,[9] depleted or violently forced from their lands; the traditional aspects of Aboriginal life which remained persisted most strongly in areas such as the Great Sandy Desert where European settlement has been sparse. Although the Aboriginal Tasmanians were almost driven to extinction (and once thought to be so), other Aboriginal Australian peoples maintained successful communities throughout Australia.
Migration to Australia
It is believed that
A 2021 study which mapped likely migration routes suggests that the populating of the Sahul took 5,000–6,000 years to reach Tasmania (then part of the continent),
Humans reached
Short-statured Aboriginal tribes inhabited the
Changes around 4,000 years ago
The
A 2013 study by researchers at the
However, a 2016 study in Current Biology by Anders Bergström et al. excluded the Y chromosome as providing evidence for recent gene flow from India into Australia. The study authors sequenced 13 Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes using recent advances in gene sequencing technology, investigating their divergence times from Y chromosomes in other continents, including comparing the haplogroup C chromosomes. The authors concluded that, although this does not disprove the presence of any Holocene gene flow or non-genetic influences from South Asia at that time, and the appearance of the dingo does provide strong evidence for external contacts, the evidence overall is consistent with a complete lack of gene flow, and points to indigenous origins for the technological and linguistic changes. Gene flow across the island-dotted 150-kilometre (93 mi)-wide Torres Strait, is both geographically plausible and demonstrated by the data, although at this point it could not be determined from this study when within the last 10,000 years it may have occurred – newer analytical techniques have the potential to address such questions.[33]
Early history
Geography
When the north-west of Australia, which is closest to Asia, was first occupied, the region consisted of
The Kimberley, including the adjacent exposed continental Sahul Shelf, was covered by vast grasslands dominated by flowering plants of the family Poaceae, with woodlands and semi-arid scrub covering the shelf joining New Guinea to Australia.[38] Southeast of the Kimberley, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to northern Tasmania the land, including the western and southern margins of the now exposed continental shelves, was covered largely by extreme deserts and sand dunes. It is believed that during this period no more than 15% of Australia supported trees of any kind. While some tree cover remained in the southeast of Australia, the vegetation of the wetter coastal areas in this region was semi-arid savanna, while some tropical rainforests survived in isolated coastal areas of Queensland.
Tasmania was covered primarily by cold steppe and alpine grasslands, with snow pines at lower altitudes. There is evidence that there may have been a significant reduction in Australian Aboriginal populations during this time, and there would seem to have been scattered "refugia" in which the modern vegetation types and Aboriginal populations were able to survive. Corridors between these refugia seem to be routes by which people kept in contact.[39][40][41] With the end of the ice age, strong rains returned, until around 5,500 years ago, when the wet season cycle in the north ended, bringing with it a megadrought that lasted 1,500 years. The return of reliable rains around 4,000 years BP gave Australia its current climate.[38]
Following the Ice Age, Aboriginal people around the coast, from
The Aboriginal Australians lived through great climatic changes and adapted successfully to their changing physical environment. There is much ongoing debate about the degree to which they modified the environment. One controversy revolves around the role of indigenous people in the extinction of the marsupial megafauna (also see Australian megafauna). Some argue that natural climate change killed the megafauna. Others claim that, because the megafauna were large and slow, they were easy prey for human hunters. A third possibility is that human modification of the environment, particularly through the use of fire, indirectly led to their extinction.[citation needed]
Oral history demonstrates "the continuity of culture of Indigenous Australians" for at least 10,000 years. This is shown by correlation of oral history stories with verifiable incidents including known changes in sea levels and their associated large changes in location of ocean
Ecology
The introduction of the dingo, possibly as early as 3500 BCE, showed that contact with South East Asian peoples continued, as the closest genetic connection to the dingo seems to be the wild dogs of Thailand. This contact was not just one-way, as the presence of kangaroo ticks on these dogs demonstrates. Dingoes began and evolved in Asia. The earliest known dingo-like fossils are from Ban Chiang in north-east Thailand (dated at 5500 years BP) and from north Vietnam (5000 years BP). According to skull morphology, these fossils occupy a place between Asian wolves (prime candidates were the pale footed (or Indian) wolf Canis lupus pallipes and the Arabian wolf Canis lupus arabs) and modern dingoes in Australia and Thailand.[45]
Most scientists presently believe that it was the arrival of the Australian Aboriginal people on the continent and their introduction of fire-stick farming that was responsible for these extinctions.[46] Fossil research published in 2017 indicates that Aboriginal people and megafauna coexisted for "at least 17,000 years". Aboriginal Australians used fire for a variety of purposes: to encourage the growth of edible plants and fodder for prey; to reduce the risk of catastrophic bushfires; to make travel easier; to eliminate pests; for ceremonial purposes; for warfare and just to "clean up country." There is disagreement, however, about the extent to which this burning led to large-scale changes in vegetation patterns.[47]
Food
Aboriginal Australians were limited to the range of foods occurring naturally in their area, but they knew exactly when, where and how to find everything edible. Anthropologists and nutrition experts who have studied the tribal diet in Arnhem Land found it to be well-balanced, with most of the nutrients modern dietitians recommend. But food was not obtained without effort. In some areas both men and women had to spend from half to two-thirds of each day hunting or foraging for food. Each day, the women of the group went into successive parts of one countryside with wooden digging sticks and plaited dilly bags or wooden coolamons. Larger animals and birds, such as kangaroos and emus, were speared or disabled with a thrown club, boomerang, or stone. Many Indigenous hunting devices were used to get within striking distance of prey. The men were excellent trackers and stalkers, approaching their prey running where there was cover, or "freezing" and crawling when in the open. They were careful to stay downwind and sometimes covered themselves with mud to disguise their smell.
Fish were sometimes taken by hand by stirring up the muddy bottom of a pool until they rose to the surface, or by placing the crushed leaves of poisonous plants in the water to stupefy them. Fish spears, nets, wicker or stone traps were also used in different areas. Lines with hooks made from bone, shell, wood or spines were used along the north and east coasts. Dugong, turtle and large fish were harpooned, the harpooner launching himself bodily from the canoe to give added weight to the thrust. Both Torres Strait Island populations and mainland Aboriginal peoples were predominantly hunter & gatherers, who relied on wild foods.[48] However, banana cultivation is now thought to have been practiced amongst Torres Strait Islanders.[49] Aboriginal Australians along the coast and rivers were also expert fishermen. Some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people relied on the dingo as a companion animal, using it to assist with hunting and for warmth on cold nights.
In present-day
In mainland Australia no animal other than the dingo was domesticated, however domestic pigs and
, nuts, fruits and berries were also eaten.Culture
Permanent villages were the norm for most Torres Strait Island communities. In some areas mainland Aboriginal Australians also lived in semi-permanent villages, most usually in less arid areas where fishing
Harry Lourandos has been the leading proponent of the theory that a period of agricultural intensification occurred between 3000 and 1000 BCE. Intensification involved an increase in human manipulation of the environment (for example, the construction of eel traps in Victoria), population growth, an increase in trade between groups, a more elaborate social structure, and other cultural changes. A shift in stone tool technology, involving the development of smaller and more intricate points and scrapers, occurred around this time. This was probably also associated with the introduction to the mainland of the Australian dingo.
Many Indigenous communities also have a very complex kinship structure and in some places strict rules about marriage. In traditional societies, men are required to marry women of a specific moiety. The system is still alive in many Central Australian communities. To enable men and women to find suitable partners, many groups would come together for annual gatherings (commonly known as corroborees) at which goods were traded, news exchanged, and marriages arranged amid appropriate ceremonies. This practice both reinforced clan relationships and prevented inbreeding in a society based on small semi-nomadic groups.
Initiation rites included female genital mutilation,[51] ritual gang raping,[52] penile subincision[53] and the ritual of penis holding (when a man enters a strange camp).[54]
Common occurrences of infanticide (about 30% of newborns were killed as form of population and family size control)[55] and cannibalism[56] are widely documented.
1770–1850s: impact of British colonisation
The first contact between British explorers and Indigenous Australians came in 1770, when Lieutenant
The immediate reaction of the
The first apparent consequence of British settlement appeared in April 1789 when a disease, which was probably smallpox, struck the Aboriginal peoples about Port Jackson.[67] Before the epidemic, the First Fleet had equalled the population of the Eora; after it the settler population was equal to all Indigenous people on the Cumberland Plain; and by 1820, their population of 30,000 was as much of the entire Indigenous populace of New South Wales.[68] A generation after colonization, the Eora, Dharug and Kuringgai had been greatly reduced and were mainly living in the outskirts of European society, though some Indigenous people did continue to live in the coastal regions around Sydney further on, as well as around Georges River and Botany Bay.[69] Further inland, Indigenous peoples were warned of the British invasion after the Cumberland Plain had been taken by 1815, and this information preceded them by hundreds of kilometres.[70] However, by the second generation of contact, many groups in south-eastern Australia were gone.[71] The greatest cause of death was disease, followed by settler and inter-Indigenous killings.[71] This population loss was further exacerbated by an extremely low birth rate.[72] An estimated decline of 80 percent in the population meant that traditional kinship systems and ceremonial obligations became hard to maintain and family and social relations were torn.[73] The survivors came to live on the fringes of European society, living in tents and shacks around towns and riverbanks in poor health.[74]
Aboriginal Tasmanians first came to contact with Europeans when the Baudin expedition to Australia arrived at Adventure Bay in 1802.[75] The French explorers were more friendly to the Indigenous than the British further north.[75] Already earlier, in 1800, European whalers had been to the Bass Strait islands, where they had used kidnapped aboriginal women.[75] The local Indigenous also sold women to the sailors.[76] Later the descendants of these women would be the last survivors of Tasmanian Indigenous people.[71]
Assimilation
The assimilation policy was first started by Governor Macquarie, who established in 1814 the Native Institution in Blacktown "to effect the Civilization of the Aborigines of New South Wales, and to render their Habits more domesticated and industrious" by enrolling children in a residential school.[77] By 1817, 17 were enrolled, one of whom, a girl called Maria, won the first prize in a school exam ahead of European children in 1819.[77] The institution was however closed soon after following Macquarie's replacement for spending.[78] Macquerie also had attempted to settle 16 Kuringgai at George's Head with land, pre-fabricated huts and other supplies, but the families had soon sold the farms and left.[78]
Christian missions were also started at Lake Macquarie in 1827, at Wellington Valley in 1832, and in Port Phillip and Moreton Bay around 1840.[78] These involved learning Indigenous languages, with the Gospel of Luke translated into Awabakal in 1831 by a missionary and Biraban, as well as offering food and sanctuary on the frontier.[79] However, when supplies ran out, the Indigenous would often leave for pastoral stations in search of work.[79] Some missionaries would take children without consent to be taught in dormitories.[65]
The government had started blanket distribution in the 1830s, but ended this in 1844 as a cost-saving measure.[81] It also created Indigenous paramilitary units, called the Australian native police, with these being establish in Port Phillip in 1842, New South Wales in 1848, and in Queensland 1859.[82] Exceptional among these, the Port Phillip force had police powers over white people as well.[83] The forces killed hundreds of (or in the case of Queensland, up to a thousand) Indigenous people.[84]
In 1833, a committee of the British House of Commons, led by Fowell Buxton, demanded better treatment of the Indigenous, referring to them as 'original owners', leading the British government in 1838 to create the office of the Protector of Aborigines.[85] However, this effort ended by 1857.[85] Nevertheless, the humanitarian effort did produce the Waste Land Act of 1848, which gave indigenous people certain rights and reserves on the land.[86]
There was also some assimilation of Europeans into Indigenous cultures. Living with Indigenous people was
Conflict
On the mainland,
In 1790, an Aboriginal leader Pemulwuy in Sydney resisted the Europeans,[92] waging a guerrilla-style warfare on the settlers in a series of wars known as the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars, which spanned 26 years, from 1790 to 1816.[93] After his death in 1802, his son Tedbury continued the campaign until 1810.[68] The campaign led to the banning of Aboriginal groups of more than six and forbid them from carrying weapons closer to two kilometers from settlements.[68] Beyond the Cumberland Plain, violence erupted first at Bathurst against the Wiradjuri, with martial law declared in 1822 and the 40th Regiment responding.[94] This became known as the Bathurst War.
In Van Diemen's Land, conflict arrived in 1824 after major expansion of settler and sheep numbers, with Indigenous warriors responding by killing 24 Europeans by 1826.[94] In 1828, martial law was declared and bounty parties of settlers took vengeance.[95] On the Indigenous side, Musquito led the Oyster Bay tribe against the settlers.[82] Tarenorerer was another leader. The Black War, fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides, claimed the lives of 600 to 900 Aboriginal people and more than 200 European colonists, nearly annihilating the island's indigenous population.[96][97] The near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians, and the frequent incidence of mass killings, has sparked debate among historians over whether the Black War should be defined as an act of genocide.[98]
In Swan River Colony, conflict occurred near Perth, with the government offering the use of the armoury for the settlers.[90] A punitive party was led against the Pindjarup in 1834.[90]
Diseases
Deadly
In April 1789, a major outbreak of smallpox killed large numbers of Indigenous Australians between
Some have suggested that
Economy and environment
In 1822, the British government reduced duties on Australian wool, leading to an expansion of sheep numbers, followed by increased immigration.[107] The sheep flourished in the arid western plains.[108] The settlers created an ecological revolution, as their cattle ate away local grasses and trampled waterholes, with precious food staples like murnong diminished, and with new weeds spreading.[109] Meat sources like kangaroo and the Australian brushturkey were replaced by cattle.[109] In response, Indigenous peoples would appropriate settler resources, such as taking sheep and raising their own flocks.[109] New economic products also disrupted traditional lifestyles, as for example in the case of the steel axe, which replaced the traditional stone one, resulting in a loss of authority to the older men who traditionally had access to them.[76] The new axes would be given to younger people by settlers and missionaries in exchange for work, also diminishing old trading networks.[76]
Following the loss of lands, Indigenous people 'came in' to pastoral station, missions and towns, often forced by lack of food.[110] Tobacco, tea and sugar were also important in attracting Indigenous people to settlers.[111] After some handouts, work was demanded by the settlers in return for rations, leading to Indigenous employment in cutting timber, herding and shearing sheep, and in stock work.[112] They were also working as fishermen, water carriers, domestic servants, boatmen and whalers.[113] However, European work ethic was not part of their culture, as working beyond the amount necessary for future benefits was seen as not important.[114] Their pay was also unequal to that of settlers, being mostly rations or less than half the wage.[114] Women had previously been the main providers in Indigenous families, but their roles were diminished as men became the main recipients of wages and rations, while women could at most find European-style domestic work or prostitution, leading some to live with European men who had access to resources.[115]
1850s–1940s: northern expansion
By 1850, southern Australia had been settled by the new immigrants and their descendants, except for the Great Victoria Desert, Nullarbor Plain, Simpson Desert, and Channel Country.[117] European explorers had started to venture into these areas, as well as the Top End and Cape York Peninsula.[117] By 1862 they had crossed the continent and entered Kimberley and Pilbara, while consolidating colonial claims in the process.[117] Indigenous reaction to them ranged from assistance to hostility.[117] Any new lands were claimed, mapped and opened to pastoralists, with North Queensland settled in the 1860s, Central Australia and the Northern Territory in the 1870s, Kimberley in the 1880s, and the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges after 1900.[117][118] This again led to violent confrontation with the Indigenous peoples.[117] However, because of the dryness and remoteness of the new frontier, settlement and economic development were slower.[119] The European population therefore remained small and consequently more fearful, with few police protecting the Indigenous population.[119] It is estimated that in North Queensland 15 percent of the first wave of pastoralists were killed in Indigenous attacks, while 10 times more of the other side met the same fate.[120] In the Gulf Country, over 400 violent Indigenous deaths were recorded 1872 to 1903.[121]
In the earlier settled southern parts of Australia, an estimated 20,000 Indigenous individuals (10 percent of the total at the beginning of colonization), remained by the 1920s, with half being of mixed ancestry.[122] There about 7000 in New South Wales, 5000 in southern Queensland, 2500 in south-west Western Australia, 1000 in southern South Australia, 500 in Victoria, and under 200 in Tasmania (mostly on Cape Barren Island).[122] One fifth lived in reserves, while most of the rest were in camps around country towns, with small numbers owning farms or living in towns or capital cities.[122] In the country as a whole, there were about 60,000 Indigenous people in 1930.[123]
The Defence Act of 1903 only allowed those of "European origin or descent" to enlist in military service.[124] However, in 1914 around 800 Aboriginal people answered the call to arms to fight in World War I.[125] As the war continued, these restrictions were relaxed as more recruits were needed.[citation needed] Many enlisted by claiming they were Māori or Indian.[126] During World War II, after the threat of Japanese invasion of Australia, Indigenous enlistment was accepted.[127] Up to 3000 individuals of mixed descent served in the military, including Reg Saunders, the first indigenous officer.[128] The Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion, Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, and the Snake Bay Patrol were also established. Another 3000 civilians worked in labour corps.[128]
Employment, wagelessness and resistance
Nevertheless, Indigenous workers in the north were able to find jobs better than in south since there was no cheap convict labour available, though they were not paid in wages and were abused.[129] There was a widely held belief that white people could not work in Northern Australia.[130] Pearl hunting employed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, though many were coerced into it.[129] By the 1880s, the introduction of diving suits had reduced Indigenous workers to deckhands.[131] Otherwise Indigenous people congregated at settlements such as Broome (servicing luggers) or Darwin (where 20 percent of the Northern Territory's Indigenous workers were employed).[130] However, in Darwin the Indigenous workers were kept locked up at night.[132] Most of the Indigenous workers in North Queensland, the Northern Territory, and the Kimberley were employed by the cattle industry.[132] Wage payment varied by state. In Queensland, wages were paid from 1901 onwards, being set at a third of white wages in 1911, two-thirds in 1918, and equal in 1930.[133] However, some of the wages were deposited on trust accounts, from which they could be stolen.[133] In the Northern Territory, there was no requirement to pay a wage.[133] Overall, up to the Second World War about half of the Indigenous stockmen received wages, and if so, they were well below the white level.[134] There was also physical abuse of the workers, sometimes including by the police.[135]
On 4 February 1939,
Racism and the early civil rights movement
As scientific racism developed from Darwinism (with Charles Darwin himself having claimed after visiting New South Wales that the death of "the Aboriginal" was a consequence of natural selection), the popular view of Indigenous Australians started to see them as inferior.[141] Indigenous Australians were considered in the global scientific community as the world's most primitive humans, leading to trade of human remains and relics.[142] This was especially true of Indigenous Tasmanians, with 120 books and articles written by scholars around the world by the late 19th century.[143] Some Indigenous people were also toured and exhibited around the world as spectacles.[144] However, in the 1930s, physical anthropology was taken over by cultural anthropology, which focused cultural difference over inferiority.[145] Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, the father of modern social anthropology, published his Social Organization of Australian Tribes in 1931.[146]
By 1900 most white Australians held racist views of the Indigenous peoples, and the Constitution of Australia of that year did not count them alongside other Australians in the census.[147] Racist treatment was also encoded in special Acts governing Indigenous peoples separately from the rest of society.[148] Racism also manifested itself in everyday discrimination, which was termed the "colour bar or the caste barrier".[149] This affected life in most settled parts of Australia, though not that much in the capital cities.[149] For example, from the 1890s to 1949, the New South Wales government removed Indigenous children from state schools if non-Indigenous parents objected to their presence, placing them instead to reserve schools with worse education.[149] The same policy was in place in Western Australia, as well, where only one percent of Indigenous children attended state schools.[149] Indigenous residents of New South Wales were also not permitted to buy or drink alcohol.[149] These kinds of restrictions did not apply in Victoria, with a smaller Indigenous population and an assimilationist policy.[149] Furthermore, Indigenous people were often excluded from organisations, businesses, and sports or recreational facilities, such as pools.[149] Employment and housing was difficult to find for them.[149]
Women's groups, such as the Australian Federation of Women Voters and the National Council of Women of Australia, became advocates for Indigenous issues in the 1920s.[150] The first Indigenous political organisation was the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association, established in 1924, with 11 branches and more than 500 Indigenous members in a year.[151] It had been partly inspired by Marcus Garvey.[151] In 1926, the Native Union in Western Australia was founded.[152] White advocate groups emerged in the 1930s.[150] Other Indigenous organisations included the Euralian Association set up in 1934, the Australian Aborigines' League in 1934, and the Aborigines Progressive Association in 1937.[152] The latter marked Invasion Day on the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet's landing.[152]
Reserves and protection boards
The only known treaty between Indigenous and European Australians was
However, the reserve system also gave authorities power over Indigenous people, with the Aboriginal Protection Board exercising control over work and wages, adult movement, and child removal in Victoria from 1869 onwards.[158] With the Half-Caste Act of 1886, the Victorian government started removing those with partial European ancestry from the reserves, with the claimed aim to "merge the half-caste population into the general community", which was also followed in New South Wales with the Aborigines Protection Act 1909.[159] This had deleterious consequences for the viability of the communities, leading to their decline.[159] The Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of 1897 became a model for Indigenous legislation in Western Australia (1905), South Australia (1911), and the Northern Territory (1911), which gave the authorities power over anyone deemed "Aboriginal" in regards to placing them or their children in reserves, denying voting rights or the ability to buy alcohol, as well as prohibiting interracial sexual relations (requiring a ministerial permission for interracial marriage).[160]
The reserves were subsequently mostly reduced, closed and sold off by the 1920s.[161] Meanwhile, the Protection Boards became more powerful in 1915 in New South Wales after new legislation gave them the power to remove children of mixed ancestry without parental or court approval.[162] Later research shows that the authorities aimed to reunite white families without doing so for Indigenous ones.[162] Overall Indigenous communities in south-eastern Australia became increasingly under government control, with a dependence on weekly rations instead of agricultural work.[163] The 1897 Queensland Act and its subsequent amendments gave reserve superintendents the right to search people and their dwellings or belongings, to confiscate their property and read their mail, as well as to expel them to other reserves, among other powers.[148] The inhabitants had to work 32 hours a week without pay, and were subject to verbal abuse, while their traditions were prohibited.[148]
1940s–present: political activism and equality
World War II led to improvements and new opportunities in Indigenous lives through employment in the services and war time industries.[128] After the war, full employment continued, with 96 percent of New South Wales' Indigenous population being employed in 1948.[128] The Commonwealth Child Endowment, as well as the Invalid and Old Age Pensions, were expanded to Indigenous people outside of reserves during the war, though full inclusiveness only followed by 1966.[128] The 1940s also saw individuals given the ability to apply for freedom from Aboriginal Acts, though onerous conditions kept the numbers relatively low.[164] The Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1948 also gave citizenship to any Indigenous people born in Australia.[164] In 1949, the right to vote in federal elections was extended to Indigenous Australians who had served in the armed forces, or were enrolled to vote in state elections.
The postwar era also saw the increased removal of children under assimilationist policies, with between 10 and 33 percent of Aboriginal children being removed from their families between 1910 and 1970.[165] The number may have been more than 70,000 across 70 years.[165] By 1961, the Aboriginal population had risen to 106,000.[166] This went hand-in-hand with urbanization, with the population in capital cities increasing by the 1960s with 12,000 in Sydney, 5000 in Brisbane and 2000 in Melbourne.[166]
In 1962, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders started advocating for wage equality, successfully pressuring the Australian Council of Trade Unions to join the cause.[140] As a result, in 1965 the Australian Industrial Relations Commission declared that there should be no discrimination in Australian industrial relations law.[140] However, after this pastoralists began to mechanize their operations with fencing and helicopters, as well as stating to employ white Australians.[167] By 1971, Indigenous labour had reduced by 30 percent in some places.[167] Unemployment rose massively during the rest of the decade, with Indigenous people being pushed off pastoral properties and gathering in northern towns such as Katherine, Tennant Creek, Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing, Broome and Derby.[168]
Indigenous people generally had very poor economic opportunities, with 81 percent of workers being unskilled, 18 percent semi-skilled, and just 1 percent skilled in New South Wales in the mid-'60s.[169] Health differences to the general population were massive, with many times worse infant mortality rates and child health, especially in the Northern Territory.[170] Issues of malnutrition, poverty and poor sanitation led to health effects on children potentially affecting school success.[171] The lack of skills in New South Wales was accompanied with only 4 percent having finished secondary or apprentice training.[172] Heavy drinking was also widespread.[173]
Notable Indigenous individuals during the post-war era included activist Douglas Nicholls, artist Albert Namatjira, opera singer Harold Blair, and actor Robert Tudawali.[174] Many Indigenous people were also successful in sports, with 30 national and 5 commonwealth boxing champions by 1980.[175] Lionel Rose had become the world bantamweight champion in 1968.[175] In tennis, Evonne Goolagong Cawley won 11 Grand Slams in the 1970s.[175] Notable players in rugby and Australian rules football included Polly Farmer, Arthur Beetson, Mark Ella, Glen Ella, Gary Ella.[176]
In 1984, a group of Pintupi people who were living a traditional hunter-gatherer desert-dwelling life were tracked down in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia and brought into a settlement. They are believed to have been the last uncontacted tribe in Australia.[177]
Activism
In the 1950s, new political activism for Indigenous rights emerged with 'advancement leagues', which were biracial coalitions.
Following the Sharpeville massacre, racial issues became a bigger part of student politics, with an educational assistance program called ABSCHOL established by the National Union of Students.[178] In 1965, Charles Perkins organised the Freedom Ride with University of Sydney students, inspired by the American Freedom Riders.[181] The reaction by locals was often violent.[181]
Parliamentary representation and equality before the law
In 1961, at the Native Welfare Conference, a meeting of federal and state ministers responsible for Aboriginal welfare,
The Menzies Government's 1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act confirmed the right to vote in Commonwealth elections in Australia.[184] Previously, the law had allowed state governments to determine federal voting rights, and thus Aboriginal people in QLD and WA were still being deprived of the right to vote. The first federal election in which all Aboriginal Australians could vote was held in November 1963. The right to vote in state elections was granted in Western Australia in 1962 and Queensland was the last state to do so in 1965.
Aboriginal people had served in Australian parliaments since colonial times without publicly identifying as such, but from the 1970s, a new generation of Aboriginal representation in Parliament began to assert its presence.
The Holt Government's landmark
Land rights
The modern land rights movement started with the
The
In 1971, Justice
In the wake of Milirrpum, the
The Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 established the basis upon which Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory could claim rights to land based on traditional occupation. The statute, the first of the Aboriginal land rights acts, was significant in that it allowed a claim of title if claimants could provide evidence of their traditional association with land. Four Land Councils were established in the Northern Territory under this law.[199][200] Following this, some states introduced their own land rights legislation; however, there were significant limitations on the returned lands, or that available for claim.[189]
Self-determination
The
The
Following the election of the Hawke government in 1983, two reports were commissioned into a replacement of the NAC. The O'Donoghue report argued that the NAC did not effectively represent its constituents or advocate specific policies.[204] The Coombs report made the case for an organisation with representation of regions and existing indigenous organisations.[204] To respond to these recommendations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was founded in 1989.
The Outstation movement emerged in the 1970s and continued through the 1980s which saw the creation of very small, remote settlements of Aboriginal people who relocated themselves from the towns and settlements where they had been settled by the government's policy of assimilation. It was "a move towards reclaiming autonomy and self-sufficiency".[205] Outstations were created by Aboriginal people who sought autonomy and could be seen as a sign of remote Aboriginal Australians' attempt at self-determination.[206][207]
Later debates about their history and contemporary status
In 1992, the Australian High Court handed down its decision in the
In 1998, as the result of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report on the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families, a National Sorry Day was instituted, to acknowledge the wrong that had been done to Indigenous families. Many politicians, from both sides of the house, participated, with the notable exception of the Prime Minister, John Howard, stating that he "did not subscribe to the black armband view of history".[210] In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology for the Stolen Generations.
In 1999 a
In 2004, the Australian Government abolished The
In October 2023, the Australian population
See also
- Aboriginal Australian identity
- Aboriginal History (journal)
- Aboriginal history of Western Australia
- Aboriginal reserve
- Aboriginal land rights in Australia
- Aboriginal South Australians
- Aboriginal Tasmanians
- Aboriginal Victorians
- Australian archaeology
- Australian genocide debate
- Bringing them homereport (1997)
- Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?(2014 book)
- Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate(2021 book)
- Genocide of indigenous peoples#Colonization of Australia
- History of Indigenous Australian self-determination
- History wars
- List of Aboriginal missions in New South Wales
- List of Indigenous Australian firsts
- List of massacres of Indigenous Australians
- Native title in Australia
- Stolen Generations
- Tasmania#Removal of Aborigines
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This article incorporates text by Anders Bergström et al. available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Further reading
- Australian Institute of Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander Studies. The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, society and culture Ed. David Horton. (2 Vol. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994).
- Craven, Rhonda. Teaching Aboriginal Studies: A practical resource for primary and secondary teaching (Allen & Unwin, 2011).
- Flood, Josephine. The original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal people (Allen & Unwin, 2006).
- Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (2011).
- Gerritsen, Rupert. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture (2008).
- Hannah, Mark; Macfarlane, Ingereth, eds. (December 2007). Transgressions: Critical Australian Indigenous histories. Aboriginal History Monographs 16. ANU Press. ISBN 9781921313431.
- Isaacs, Jennifer. Australian dreaming: 40,000 years of Aboriginal history (New Holland Publishing Australia Pty Ltd, 2006).
- Lourandos, H. Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory (1997)
- Reynolds, Henry. The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia (UNSW Press, 2006).
- Stone, Sharman N., ed. Aborigines in white Australia: a documentary history of the attitudes affecting official policy and the Australian Aborigine, 1697–1973 (Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1974).
- Williams, E. Complex Hunter-Gatherers: A Late Holocene Example from Temperate Australia (1988).
External links
- Jamison, T. The Australian Aboriginal People: Dating the Colonization of Australia
- Articles, Research, and Historical Documentation of Explorer & Pioneer Encounters with Native Communities of South East Queensland