Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians comprise two groups: Aboriginal Australians, who occupy mainland Australia and Tasmania, and Torres Strait Islanders, who occupy the Torres Strait near New Guinea. The small population of Tasmanian Aborigines suffered a rapid collapse following the establishment of Britain's Van Diemens Land Colony in the early 19th century, and their remaining descendants are all of mixed Aboriginal-Settler ethnic heritage. In the past, indigenous Australians were subject to racist government policy and community attitudes. Despite massive shifts in community attitudes, legal reforms and billions of dollars in financial support, many indigenous people continue to suffer from the consequences of the British colonial period and early decades of the 20th century.
At the time of first European contact, it has been estimated the absolute minimum pre-1788 population was 315,000, while recent archaeological finds suggest (unlikelily) that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained. The 2011 Australian Census measured the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population at 517,200 or 2.5% of the total Australian population. In 2009, around 20% of the Australian land-mass (including Tasmania and offshore islands) was owned by Aboriginal people.
Read more about this topic: Racism 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)