Based on
Key statistics
As at 30 June 2021 there were 984,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.
The Aboriginal population in Australia is estimated to 745,000 individuals or 3 per cent of the total population of 24,220,200.
There are about 500 different Aboriginal peoples in Australia, each with their own language and territory and usually made up of a large number of separate clans.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
Of all the countries included in the report, China has the highest number of Indigenous, with an estimated population of 125.3 million. It's worth noting that the Chinese government does not officially acknowledge the existence of Indigenous peoples.
Between 2014–15 and 2018–19, after adjusting for inflation, the median gross weekly personal income for Indigenous Australians aged 18 and over fell by 5.6%, from $518 to $489 (Figure 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.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.
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.
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.
Other religions continue to increase. Australia is becoming more religiously diverse. Almost 10 million Australians reported having no religion.
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.
The Northern Territory has the highest proportion of Indigenous residents among its population – an estimated 32% (79,000 people) in 2022 (Figure 2).
It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
The United States and United Kingdom are the biggest investors in Australia, followed by Belgium, Japan and Singapore. China is our tenth largest foreign investor, with 1.9 per cent of the total.
The mining magnate Gina Rinehart is Australia's biggest landholder, controlling more than 9.2m hectares, or 1.2% of the entire landmass of the country, according to data compiled by Guardian Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and Indigenous holding entities don't need to pay income tax or capital gains tax on native title payments or benefits.
At the end of the June quarter of 2016, around 45% of Indigenous Australians aged 15 and over (220,800 people) were receiving some form of Centrelink income support payment, compared with 26% of non-Indigenous Australians of this age (4.9 million people).
From 1 July 2023, Age Pension age will be 67 years, if you were born on or after 1 January 1957.
Of any single region in Australia, western Sydney has the highest concentration of Aboriginal people. According to the census, around 2 million people were living in greater western Sydney in 2006.
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
Since legislation for Indigenous people was a state matter, each state found its own definition for 'Aboriginal'. Examples: Western Australia: a person with more than a quarter of Aboriginal blood. Victoria: any person of Aboriginal descent.