History of Indigenous Australians

[35][36] A 2018 study using archaeobotany dated evidence of human habitation at Karnatukul (Serpent's Glen) in the Carnarvon Range in the Little Sandy Desert in WA at around 50,000 years, which was 20,000 earlier than previously believed.

[37][38][39] The integration of human genomic evidence from various parts of the world also supports a date of about 50,000 years ago for the arrival of Aboriginal people in the continent.

[45] A 2013 study based on large-scale genotyping, indicated that Aboriginal Australians, the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and the Mamanwa of the Philippines were closely related, having diverged from a common origin approximately 36,000 years ago.

After around 10,000 years of stable climatic conditions, by which time the Aboriginal people had settled the entire continent, temperatures began cooling leading to an ice age.

[49] Following the Ice Age, Aboriginal people around the coast, from Arnhem Land, the Kimberley and the southwest of Western Australia, all tell stories of former territories that were drowned beneath the sea with the rising coastlines.

As a result, they only possessed one quarter of the tools and equipment of the adjacent mainland and were without hafted axes, grinding technology, stone tipped weapons, spear throwers and the boomerang.

In present-day Victoria, there were two separate communities who farmed eels in complex and extensive irrigated pond systems; one on the Murray River in the state's north, the other in the south-west near Hamilton in the territory of the Djab Wurrung, which traded with other groups from as far away as the Melbourne area (see Gunditjmara).

The earliest Aboriginal rock art consists of hand-prints, hand-stencils, and engravings of circles, tracks, lines and cupules, and has been dated to 35,000 years ago.

Aboriginal people adopted dugout canoes and metal harpoon heads from the Indonesians which allowed them to better hunt dugong and turtle off the coast and nearby islands.

The traditional economy was cooperative, with males generally hunting large game while females gathered local staples such as small animals, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts.

[66] Flood argues that such practices are better classified as resource management than agriculture and that Aboriginal societies did not develop the systematic cultivation of crops or permanent villages such as existed in the Torres Strait Islands.

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.

[87] The Governor was instructed to "by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them" and to punish those aiming to "wantonly destroy them".

[98] 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.

[97] 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.

[107] 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.

[116] Sustained Aboriginal attacks on settlers, the burning of crops and the mass killing of livestock were more obviously acts of resistance to the loss of traditional land and food resources.

[127][128] 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.

[134] In April 1789, a major outbreak of smallpox killed large numbers of Indigenous Australians between Hawkesbury River, Broken Bay, and Port Hacking.

[137] In 2014, writing in Journal of Australian Studies, Christopher Warren concluded that British marines were most likely to have spread smallpox, possibly without informing Governor Phillip, but conceded in his conclusion that "today's evidence only provides for a balancing of probabilities and this is all that can be attempted.

[140] 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.

[149] 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.

[153] In the earlier settled southern parts of Australia, an estimated 20,000 Indigenous individuals (10 percent of the total at the beginning of colonisation), remained by the 1920s, with half being of mixed ancestry.

[169] Following the rising threat from the Empire of Japan, the Australian Army came to the north in the early 1940s, bringing new people and ideas while employing Indigenous workers in defence projects.

[190] 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.

[192] 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).

[206] Notable Indigenous individuals during the post-war era included activist Douglas Nicholls, artist Albert Namatjira, opera singer Harold Blair, and actor Robert Tudawali.

[245][246] 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 and recognising the pre-colonial land interests of First Nations people within Australia's common law.

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".

[23] In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments created targets for "closing the gap" in inequality in a number of key areas of education, employment, literacy and child mortality.

The ancient continents of Sundaland and Sahul
The shoreline of Tasmania and Victoria about 14,000 years ago, as sea levels were rising, showing some of the human archaeological sites
These implements were used only by men. At left, a spear-thrower (called woomera in the Eora language), and two examples of boomerangs. Boomerangs could be used for hunting (most were non-returning), or purely for music and ceremony.
Aboriginal grinding stones—a pestle and mortar—vital in making flours for bush bread . Aboriginal women were experts at making bread from a variety of seasonal grains and nuts.
Aboriginal women's implements, including a coolamon lined with paperbark and a digging stick. This woven basket style is from Northern Australia. Baskets were used for collecting fruits, corms, seeds and even water – some baskets were woven so tightly as to be watertight.
Lomandra , a plant used by Aboriginal Australians for weaving
A 19th-century engraving of an Aboriginal Australian encampment, showing the indigenous lifestyle in the cooler parts of Australia at the time of European settlement
The Natives of Botany Bay by R. Cleveley (1789)
This portrait of a young Indigenous boy was commissioned by a member of a Christian mission station to show the achievements of the mission at "civilising" the Indigenous population. [ 106 ]
Governor Davey's proclamation of protection for the Indigenous in Van Diemen's Land , 1816
New South Wales Mounted Police killing Aboriginal warriors during the Waterloo Creek massacre , 1838
Aboriginal Bora ceremony (early 20th century)
Aboriginals in chains at Wyndham prison, 1902. [ 148 ]
Indigenous Australian stockman at Victoria River Downs Station
Cummeragunja Aboriginal Mission Station in 1893
Prime Minister Harold Holt with Aboriginal rights campaigners ahead of the 1967 Referendum .
Liberal Senator Neville Bonner , the first federal parliamentarian to identify as Aboriginal, joined the Senate in 1971
Country Liberal Adam Giles became the first indigenous Australian to head a state or territory government when he became Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in 2016.