Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the descendants of the mainland's Aboriginal peoples and the Torres Strait Islanders who occupied Australia prior to the arrival of British settlers in 1788. Their ancestors arrived in Australia over 50,000 years ago. Though their continental population was never large, introduced disease and frontier conflict saw a decline in the indigenous population during the colonial period, though numbers have recovered and continued to increase in more recent times. Historically, many indigenous Australians were dispossessed without treaty nor compensation, and certain laws discriminated against them. In modern Australia, racial discrimination is illegal and Indigenous people have access to certain welfare and land entitlements not accessible to non-indigenous Australians. Particularly in remote regions, standards of health and education among indigenous people are often lower than amongst the general population.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word indigenous:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)