Many Aboriginal Australians were also forced into various forms of slavery and unfree labour from colonisation. Some Indigenous Australians performed unpaid labour until the 1970s. Pacific Islanders were kidnapped or coerced to come to Australia and work, in a practice known as blackbirding.
While the forced labour of Aboriginal people by the Federal and state Governments formally began in the late 19th Century, the system didn't end until up to the 1970s. This means that there are number of people in our community today who lived through this experience.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Starting in 1794, mass killings were first carried out by British soldiers, then by police and settlers – often acting together – and later by native police, working under the command of white officers, in militia-style forces supported by colonial governments.
In 2021 alone, Anti-Slavery Australia helped over 400 people who had been trafficked to or from Australia, or had faced modern slavery while in Australia, including forced marriage, servitude and forced labour. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In Australia, only 1 in 5 victims of slavery are identified.
The British Parliament abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. As such, there was to be no slave trade in Australia.
Indigenous tribes often fought with each other rather than launch coordinated attacks against settlers. An alternative view comes from expert in indigenous history, Dr Ray Kerkhove, who has done new research on indigenous warfare in Queensland in the 19th century.
Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius'). The history of Aboriginal dispossession is central to understanding contemporary Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations.
Almost half the massacres of Aboriginal people were by police or other government forces, research finds. The first national project to record mass killings on the Australian frontier has found that around half of all massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by police and other government forces.
In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
There are varying estimates for how long Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived on this continent, however, upwards of 60,000 years is what current research reveals.
Aboriginal people were subjected to a range of injustices, including mass killings or being displaced from their traditional lands and relocated on missions and reserves in the name of protection. Cultural practices were denied, and subsequently many were lost.
1788. The first conflict between the First Fleet arrivals and Aboriginal people takes place near Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. Two convicts are killed. Arabanoo is the first Aboriginal person captured by Europeans.
It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
Proportion of all land that is Indigenous owned or controlled. Nationally as at June 2022, 16.1 per cent of Australia's land area was owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is unchanged from the same time in the previous two years (June 2020 and 2021) (figure SE15a. 1).
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 50 per cent of Australia's land mass. Connection to land is of central importance to First Nations Australians.
Despite rules against their enrolment, over 3000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women are known to have enlisted in World War II—a further 400 are known to have served in World War I.
Despite laws that prevented or discouraged their enlistment, First Australians have served with distinction and bravery in most major conflicts and peacekeeping operations involving Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were among those who served in World War II.
By the mid 1800s, the violence, disease and dispossession resulting from colonisation had dramatically reduced the Indigenous population. For those who remained, survival often came at the expense of culture, family, land, language and independence, demanded in exchange for 'protection'.