Aboriginal Australians are the indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and Tasmania, encompassing several hundred distinct traditional nations and language groups with a documented continuous cultural presence on the continent that archaeological evidence places at upward of 65,000 years, among the longest continuous cultural histories anywhere in the world. British colonization from 1788 onward involved extensively documented dispossession, frontier violence and, from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century, forced removal of children (the 'Stolen Generations'), acknowledged in Australia's 2008 national apology. Contemporary Aboriginal Australian political life includes an active and unresolved national debate over constitutional recognition and representation, most recently the unsuccessful 2023 referendum on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, which this atlas records as a live, documented and contested political process rather than a settled outcome. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountIndigenous peoples (composite ethnographic category) 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountOceania (Australia, excluding the distinct Torres Strait Islander peoples of the northeast) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountMore than 250 distinct Aboriginal Australian languages historically documented, the large majority now severely endangered or extinct; English is now the first language of most Aboriginal Australians 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically hunting, gathering and, per increasing archaeological evidence, various forms of active land management and, in some regions, aquaculture (notably Gunditjmara eel-trapping systems) prior to European colonization. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateapproximately 800,000 to 900,000 (contemporary, self-identified) 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountAboriginal Australian identity comprises hundreds of distinct historical nations and language groups; the contemporary aggregate figure is a modern census category rather than a single traditional social group, and precise historical pre-colonial population estimates remain genuinely disputed among researchers. Group Type
Group Type (category)Sourced to the subject's own account Subsistence Mode
Subsistence Mode (category)Sourced to the subject's own account Population Band
Population Band (category)Sourced to the subject's own account Aboriginal Australians
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Totemism is documented as a central and defining feature of many Aboriginal Australian religious and kinship systems, the classic ethnographic case from which much of the comparative theory of totemism was drawn.
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Source Wikipedia: Aboriginal AustraliansIntroductiontier 3Quote, Introduction
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Aboriginal Australians
WikipediaIntroduction
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands.
- Infobox population field: 944171 in 2021
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