Australian Aborigines

Australian Aborigines ( /æbəˈrɪdʒɨni/), also called Aboriginal Australians, from the Latin ab originem (from the origin), are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continent — that is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania. Since 1995 the Australian Aboriginal Flag (right), designed in 1971 by the Aboriginal artist Harold Thomas, has been one of the official "Flags of Australia" under section 5 of the Flags Act 1953.^[2]

Legal and administrative definitions

The category "Australian Aborigines" — sometimes "Australian Aboriginals" or "Aboriginal Australians" or, more usually within Australia, simply "Aborigines" — is not itself indigenous, but is a classification invented by and for the purposes of the British colonisers after the beginning of colonisation in 1788. Until the 1980s, the legal and administrative criterion for inclusion in this category was solely biological, following biologically based conceptions of "race".

In the era of colonial and post-colonial government, access to basic human rights depended upon your race. If you were a "full blooded Aboriginal native ... [or] any person apparently having an admixture of Aboriginal blood", a half-caste being the "offspring of an Aboriginal mother and other than Aboriginal father" (but not of an Aboriginal father and other than Aboriginal mother), a "quadroon", or had a "strain" of Aboriginal blood you were forced to live on Reserves or Missions, work for rations, given minimal education, and needed governmental approval to marry, visit relatives or use electrical appliances.^[3]

This was assumed in the two references to Aborigines that used to exist in the Constitution of Australia. Section 51(xxvi) gave the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate with respect to "the people of any race", but excluding "the aboriginal race" within any state, which would remain subject solely to the legislation of the particular state. Section 127 provided that "aboriginal natives shall not be counted" in any census of population. Both of these references were removed by referendum in 1967. The overall result was that "Aborigines" are no longer mentioned by name in the Australian Constitution. However, there have been a number of calls for an alteration to be made to the constitution to specifically mention Indigenous Australians.^[4][5]

The result of the change to Section 51(xxvi), however, was that the Commonwealth parliament acquired power to legislate with respect to Aborigines as a "race". In the Tasmanian Dam Case of 1983, the High Court of Australia was asked to determine whether Commonwealth legislation whose application could relate to Aborigines — parts of the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983 (Cth) as well as related legislation — was supported by Section 51(xxvi) in its new form. The case concerned an application of that legislation that would preserve cultural heritage of Tasmanian Aborigines. It was held that Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, together or separately, and any part of either, could be regarded as a "race" for this purpose. As to the criteria for identifying a person as a member of such a "race", the definition by Justice Deane has become accepted as current law.^[3] Deane J said:

It is unnecessary, for the purposes of the present case, to consider the meaning to be given to the phrase "people of any race" in s. 51(xxvi). Plainly, the words have a wide and non-technical meaning [...]. The phrase is, in my view, apposite to refer to all Australian Aboriginals collectively. Any doubt, which might otherwise exist in that regard, is removed by reference to the wording of par. (xxvi) in its original form. The phrase is also apposite to refer to any identifiable racial sub-group among Australian Aboriginals. By "Australian Aboriginal" I mean, in accordance with what I understand to be the conventional meaning of that term, a person of Aboriginal descent, albeit mixed, who identifies himself as such and who is recognized by the Aboriginal community as an Aboriginal.^[6]

While Deane's three-part definition reaches beyond the biological criterion, it has been criticised as continuing to accept the biological criterion as primary.^[3] It has been found difficult to apply, both in each of its parts and as to the relations among the parts; biological "descent" has been a fall-back criterion.^[7]

Definitions from Australian Aborigines

Eve Fesl, a Gabi Gabi woman, wrote in the Aboriginal Law Bulletin describing how she and other Australian Aborigines preferred to be identified:

The word 'aborigine' refers to an indigenous person of any country. If it is to be used to refer to us as a specific group of people, it should be spelt with a capital 'A', i.e. 'Aborigine'.^[8]

While the term 'indigenous' is being more commonly used by Australian Government and non-Government organizations to describe Aboriginal Australians, Lowitja O'Donoghue AC, CBE, commenting on the prospect of possible amendments to Australia's constitution, was reported as saying:

I really can't tell you of a time when 'indigenous' became current, but I personally have an objection to it, and so do many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. [...] This has just really crept up on us ... like thieves in the night. [...] We are very happy with our involvement with indigenous people around the world, on the international forum [...] because they're our brothers and sisters. But we do object to it being used here in Australia.^[9]

O'Donoghue went on to say that the term indigenous robbed the traditional owners of Australia of an identity because some non-Aboriginal people now wanted to refer to themselves as indigenous because they were born there.^[9]

Definitions from academia

Dean of Indigenous Research and Education at Charles Darwin University, Professor MaryAnn Bin-Sallik, has publicly lectured on the ways Australian Aborigines have been categorised and labelled over time. Her lecture offered a new perspective on the terms urban, traditional and of Indigenous descent as used to define and categorise Aboriginal Australians. She said:

Not only are these categories inappropriate, they serve to divide us. [...] Government’s insistence on categorising us with modern words like ‘urban’, ‘traditional’ and ‘of Aboriginal descent’ are really only replacing old terms ‘half-caste’ and ‘full-blood’ – based on our colouring.^[10]

She called for a replacement of this terminology by that of "Aborigine" or "Torres Strait Islander" - "irrespective of hue".^[10]

Origins

The origin of Aboriginal peoples in Australia has been the subject of intense speculation since the nineteenth century. Until recently, no theory of migration has gained wide acceptance, and genetic studies have shown the Aborigines to be isolated from other racial groups. Some scholars have proposed theories of kinship with groups in South Asia, whereas others have proposed a more direct migration from Africa only passing through South Asia.^[11] A 2009 genetic study in India found similarities among Indian archaic populations and Aborigines of Australia, indicating a Southern migration route, with expanding populations from Southeast Asia migrating to Indonesia and Australia.

In a genetic study in 2011, researchers found evidence from the DNA of Aboriginal hair strands that the Aboriginal population split off from the European and Asian population between 62,000 and 75,000 years ago, roughly 24,000 years before the European and Asian populations became differentiated. The earliest human explorers kept migrating into South Asia and then into Australia, making the Aborigines the oldest continuous population outside Africa, the people who have longest occupied their traditional territory. The results imply that modern Aborigines are the direct descendants of the explorers who arrived 50,000 years ago.^[12] This finding supports earlier archaeological findings of human remains near Lake Mungo that were dated to 45,000 years ago. Another 2011 genetic study showed varying levels of Denisovan admixture in Aboriginal populations, apparently from human and archaic populations that interbred in central Africa before the migration.^[13]

Groups of Aborigines

Dispersing on the continent of Australia, over time the ancient peoples expanded and developed over 200 distinct languages and differing cultures. ^[14] Four hundred and more distinct Australian Aboriginal peoples have been identified across the continent, each distinguished by unique names for groups of people's ancestral languages, dialects, or distinctive speech mannerisms.^[15] Of all the groups, there are three main cultural areas that these peoples lived in. The Northern, Central, and Southern, with the Northern and Southern cultural areas being most dense population wise with resources from the ocean and woodlands, and the Central being least dense because of the lack of resources. ^[16]

Other names used by Australian Aboriginal people

There are a number of other names from Australian Aboriginal languages commonly used to identify groups based on geography, including:

• Bama in north-east Queensland
• Koori (or Koorie or Goori or Goorie) in New South Wales and Victoria
• Murri in southern Queensland
• Noongar in southern Western Australia
• Nunga in southern South Australia
• Anangu in northern South Australia, and neighbouring parts of Western Australia and Northern Territory
• Palawah (or Pallawah) in Tasmania.

See also

• First Nation
• Tasmanian Aborigines
• History of Indigenous Australians
• Indigenous Australian music
• National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

References