Indigenous Australian Communities
There are several hundred Indigenous peoples of Australia; many are groupings that existed before the British colonisation of Australia in 1788. Before Anglo-Europeans, the number was over 400.
Indigenous or groups will generally talk of their "people" (sometimes their "mob") and their "country". These countries are ethnographic areas, usually the size of an average European country, with around 200 on the Australian continent at the time of European arrival.
Within each country, people lived in clan groups: extended families defined by various forms of Australian Aboriginal kinship. Inter-clan contact was common, as was inter-country contact, but there were strict protocols around this contact.
The largest Sovereign Original language group people today are the Anangu Pitjantjatjara who live in the area around Uluru (Ayers Rock) and south into the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia. The second largest Aboriginal community are the Arrernte people who live in and around Mparntwe (Alice Springs). The third largest are the Anangu Luritja, who live in the lands between the two largest just mentioned. The Aboriginal languages and dialects with the largest number of speakers today are the Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri and Arrernte.
Read more about Indigenous Australian Communities: Australian Capital Territories, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia
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“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.”
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“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
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