Aboriginal Australians in the context of Uluru

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a total area of 7,688,287 km (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania. Australia is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates including deserts in the interior and tropical rainforests along the coast.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from Southeast Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period. By the time of British settlement, Aboriginal Australians spoke more than 250 distinct languages and had one of the oldest living cultures in the world. Australia's written history commenced with Dutch exploration of most of the coastline in the 17th century. British colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales. By the mid-19th century, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and five additional self-governing British colonies were established, each gaining responsible government by 1890. The colonies federated in 1901, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. This continued a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Acts of 1986.

Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rights were first recognised as a part of Australian common law with the decision of Mabo v Queensland (No 2) in 1992. The Native Title Act 1993 subsequently set out the processes for determining native title.

The Court's determination of native title recognises that a continued beneficial legal interest in land held by an Indigenous claim group over identified land survived the Crown's acquisition of radical title and sovereignty. Native title can co-exist with non-Aboriginal proprietary rights and in some cases different Aboriginal groups can exercise their native title rights over the same land.

The Kaurna people (English: /ˈɡɑːrnə/, Kaurna: [ɡ̊auɳa]; also Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna and other variations) are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurna culture and language were almost completely destroyed within a few decades of the British colonisation of South Australia in 1836. However, extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both language and culture. The phrase Kaurna meyunna means "Kaurna people".

Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka (previously spelt Mullawirraburka), and numbered as Park 14, is a recreation park located in the East Park Lands of the South Australian capital of Adelaide. There is an artificial lake with rowboats for hire, a café, children's playground and rose garden, and the Adelaide Bowling Club is on the Dequetteville Terrace side. The O-Bahn passes underneath it, to emerge at the western side opposite Grenfell Street.

Before and in the early days of the colonisation of South Australia, the eastern park lands were used as camping grounds for the local Kaurna people and later people from other nearby Aboriginal peoples, such as the Ngarrindjeri.

Sydney is the capital city of the state of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about 80 km (50 mi) from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Blue Mountains in the west, and about 80 km (50 mi) from Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the Hawkesbury River in the north and north-west, to the Royal National Park and Macarthur in the south and south-west. Greater Sydney consists of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are colloquially known as "Sydneysiders". The estimated population in June 2024 was 5,557,233, which is about 66% of the state's population. The city's nicknames include the Emerald City and the Harbour City.

There is evidence that Aboriginal Australians inhabited the Greater Sydney region at least 30,000 years ago, and their engravings and cultural sites are common. The traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, James Cook charted the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay. In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. After World War II, Sydney experienced mass migration and by 2021 over 40 per cent of the population was born overseas. Foreign countries of birth with the greatest representation are mainland China, India, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Tasmania (/tæzˈmeɪniə/; palawa kani: Lutruwita) is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 kilometres (150 miles) to the south of the Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands. It is Australia's smallest and least populous state, with 573,479 residents as of June 2023. The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with around 40% of the population living in the Greater Hobart area. Tasmania is the most decentralised state in Australia, with the lowest proportion of its residents living within its capital city.

Tasmania's main island was first inhabited by Aboriginal peoples, who today generally identify as Palawa or Pakana. It is believed that Aboriginal Tasmanians became isolated from mainland Aboriginal groups around 11,700 years ago, when rising sea levels formed Bass Strait.

The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonisation of Australia in 1788, which marks the start of consistent written documentation of Australia. This period has been variously estimated, with most evidence suggesting that it goes back between 50,000 and 65,000 years. This era is referred to as prehistory rather than history because knowledge of this time period does not derive from written documentation. However, some argue that Indigenous oral tradition should be accorded an equal status.

Human habitation of the Australian continent began with the migration of the ancestors of today's Aboriginal Australians by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians. The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is perhaps the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia. The oldest human remains found are at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.

Infanticide (or infant homicide) is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of resources being spent on weak or disabled offspring. Unwanted infants were usually abandoned to die of exposure, but in some societies they were deliberately killed. Infanticide is generally illegal, but in some places the practice is tolerated, or the prohibition is not strictly enforced.

Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent. Infanticide continued to be common in most societies after the historical era began, including ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Phoenicians, ancient China, ancient Japan, Pre-Islamic Arabia, early modern Europe, Aboriginal Australia, Native Americans, and Native Alaskans.

The history of Australia is the history of the land and peoples which comprise the Commonwealth of Australia. The modern nation came into existence on 1 January 1901 as a federation of former British colonies. The human history of Australia, however, commences with the arrival of the first ancestors of Aboriginal Australians from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and continues to the present day multicultural democracy.

Aboriginal Australians settled throughout continental Australia and many nearby islands. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving in human history. The ancestors of today's ethnically and culturally distinct Torres Strait Islanders arrived from what is now Papua New Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled the islands on the northern tip of the Australian landmass.

The Cape York Peninsula is a peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest wilderness in northern Australia. The land is mostly flat and about half of the area is used for grazing cattle. The relatively undisturbed eucalyptus-wooded savannahs, tropical rainforests and other types of habitat are now recognised and preserved for their global environmental significance. Although much of the peninsula remains pristine, with a diverse repertoire of endemic flora and fauna, some of its wildlife may be threatened by industry and overgrazing as well as introduced species and weeds.

The northernmost point of the peninsula is Cape York.The land has been occupied by a number of Aboriginal Australian peoples for tens of thousands of years. In 1606, Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon on board the Duyfken was the first European to land in Australia, reaching the Cape York Peninsula.

Canberra (/ˈkænbrə/ KAN-brə; Ngunawal: Kanbarra) is the capital city of Australia and the capital and largest city of the Australian Capital Territory. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city, and the eighth-largest Australian city by population. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory at the northern tip of the Australian Alps, the country's highest mountain range. As of June 2024, Canberra's estimated population was 473,855.

The area chosen for the capital had been inhabited by Aboriginal Australians for up to 21,000 years, by groups including the Ngunnawal and Ngambri.

South Sea Islanders, also known as Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) and formerly referred to as Kanakas, are the Australian descendants of Pacific Islanders from more than 80 islands – including the Oceanian archipelagoes of the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Gilbert Islands, and New Ireland – who were kidnapped or recruited between the mid to late 19th century as labourers in the sugarcane fields of Queensland. Some were kidnapped or tricked (or "blackbirded") into long-term indentured servitude or slavery, despite the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 criminalising slavery in Australia and other parts of the British Empire. At its height, the recruiting accounted for over half the adult male population of some islands.

Today, the majority of South Sea Islanders are also Aboriginal Australians or Torres Strait Islanders. As of the 2021 census, there were 7,228 people who claimed South Sea Islander ancestry in Australia, 5,562 of whom lived in Queensland. However, this is lower than the actual number of people with South Sea Islander heritage, with the true number estimated to be as high as 20,000 in Queensland alone as of 2022. The largest South Sea Islanders community is in the city of Mackay, where approximately 5,000 South Sea Islanders reside (approximately 5.93% of Mackay's population).

Ivaritji (c. 1849 – 25 December 1929), also spelt Iparrityi and other variations, and also known as Amelia Taylor and Amelia Savage, was an elder of the Kaurna tribe of Aboriginal Australians from the Adelaide Plains in South Australia. She was "almost certainly the last person of full Kaurna ancestry", and the last known speaker of the Kaurna language before its revival in the 1990s.

A Welcome to Country is a ritual or formal ceremony performed as a land acknowledgement at many events held in Australia. It is an event intended to highlight the cultural significance of the surrounding area to the descendants of a particular Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander clan or language group who are recognised as the original human inhabitants of the area. Welcomes are performed by the recognised traditional owner of the land in question. Welcomes to Country are sometimes accompanied by traditional smoking ceremonies, music or dance. Where a recognised owner is not available to perform the welcome, or the recognised traditional owners are not known, an Acknowledgement of Country may be offered instead.

The term "country" has a particular meaning and significance to many Aboriginal peoples, encompassing an interdependent relationship between an individual or a people and their ancestral or traditional lands and seas. The connection to land involves culture, spirituality, language, law/lore, kin relationships and identity. The Welcome to Country has been a long tradition among Aboriginal Australian groups to welcome peoples from other areas. Today it serves also as a symbol which signifies the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' presence in Australia before colonisation and an end to their past exclusion from Australian history and society, aiding to reconciliation with Australia's First Nations.

Torresians (/ˈtɒrɪs/ TORR-iss) are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal peoples of the rest of Australia, they are often grouped with them as Indigenous Australians. Today, many more Torresian people live in mainland Australia than on the Islands.

Five distinct peoples exist within the broader designation of Torresian people, based partly on geographical and cultural divisions. Kalaw Lagaw Ya and Meriam Mir comprise the two main Indigenous language groups; Torresian Creole is also widely spoken as a language of trade and commerce. The core of Island culture is Papuan, and the people are traditionally a seafaring nation. The Torres Islanders exhibit a strong artistic culture, particularly in sculpture, printmaking, and mask-making.

Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (commonly known as the Mabo case or simply Mabo; /mɑːboʊ/ MAH-bo) is a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that recognised the existence of Native Title in Australia. It was brought by Eddie Mabo and others against the State of Queensland, and decided on 3 June 1992. The case is notable for being the first in Australia to recognise pre-colonial land interests of Indigenous Australians within the common law of Australia.

Mabo is of great legal, historical, and political importance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The decision rejected the notion that Australia was terra nullius (i.e. owned by no one) at the time of British settlement, and recognised that Indigenous rights to land existed by virtue of traditional customs and laws and these rights had not been wholly lost upon colonisation.

The governor of South Australia is the representative in South Australia of the monarch, currently King Charles III. The governor performs the same constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level as does the governor-general of Australia at the national level. In accordance with the conventions of the Westminster system of parliamentary government, the governor nearly always acts solely on the advice of the head of the elected government, the premier of South Australia. Nevertheless, the governor retains the reserve powers of the Crown, and has the right to dismiss the premier. As from June 2014, Queen Elizabeth II, upon the recommendation of the premier, accorded all current, future and living former governors the title 'The Honourable' for life. The first six governors oversaw the colony from proclamation in 1836, until self-government and an elected Parliament of South Australia was granted in the year prior to the inaugural 1857 election.

The first Australian-born governor of South Australia was Major-General Sir James Harrison (appointed 1968), and most subsequent governors have been Australian-born. The first South Australian-born governor was Sir Mark Oliphant (appointed 1971), and the first Aboriginal governor was Sir Douglas Nicholls (appointed 1976).