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With evidence of occupation over 60,000 years, the Aboriginal and Islander peoples of Australia may be the world’s oldest people in the world’s oldest land. But their place in Australia’s history is only now being properly acknowledged and recorded.

By 1788 around 500 Aboriginal tribes or nations occupied the Australian landmass, with efficient and sustainable systems for living off the land. They achieved a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, moving seasonally between camps as food supplies dictated. Fire was used methodically to burn old growth and encourage new. Being mobile, possessions were minimal. They had complex religious beliefs, sophisticated social relationships and trading links across the continent.

In 1788 the first European settlement - Britain’s latest penal colony - was established at what is now Sydney. The effects were catastrophic. With the convicts, soldiers and settlers came diseases to which Aboriginal people had no resistance - typhoid, flu, smallpox and venereal disease.

The next hundred years saw Aboriginal people forced out of their country, dispossessed of habitable land, shot, poisoned and massacred as successive waves of British settlers sought land for building, agriculture, grazing and mining. Rape and abduction of Aboriginal women and girls were common.

Some tribes at first welcomed or tolerated the newcomers, but as it became clear that the British intended to stay, conflict escalated. Aboriginal groups mounted effective guerrilla campaigns but were eventually overwhelmed by the new repeater rifle, horsepower and the armed might of colonial governments.

Removed from their land, deprived of their traditional bush food and devastated by disease, malnutrition, poverty, alcoholism, violence and despair, most Aboriginal people existed on town fringes and pastoral properties or were herded onto reserves and missions. When through hard work they made these reserves into productive agricultural holdings, that land too was seized.

Little changed with Britain’s transfer of power to a Federal Australia in 1900/1901 under the new Federal Constitution. Until the 1960s Aboriginal people did not have effective citizenship and could not vote. They were rigidly controlled by State laws. Many were confined to reserves which they could not leave without a permit. The State was guardian of all Aboriginal children and many were taken by force from their families to be raised (and abused) in institutions. Aboriginal people fought in 2 World Wars and were essential to the development of pastoral Australia, but were discriminated against in education, health, jobs, pay and in buses, cinemas and swimming pools.

But 200 years of attempts to obliterate Aboriginal identity and culture failed. Aboriginal people resisted through non co-operation, sabotage, protests, strikes, mutual help and increased political activism. Finally in the middle of this century Aboriginal and Islander people got the vote, citizenship, equal wages and inclusion in the national census.

Following a 1967 referendum, the Federal (Canberra) Government gained powers to legislate on Aboriginal matters. Legislation opposing racial discrimination was passed in 1975. In 1990 ATSIC was set up - elected Aboriginal and Islander Regional Councils and a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, with civil service staff and limited budgets for regional and national development programmes. Aboriginal-initiated health, housing and legal aid services were set up to supplement inadequate Government provision.

But at the beginning of the 21st century, the struggle against disadvantage and inequality continues - for recognition, land, self determination, jobs, adequate health, education, water and power services, and an end to the incarceration and deaths of too many Aboriginal people.

history and heritage news index

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external links

• AIATSIS
  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resourse links
• Aboriginals and Islanders Defending Australia during WW2
• Aboriginal and Islander history: An introduction
• Aboriginal Memorial
  Created between 1987-88 by 43 artists from the Ramingining community, Arnhem Land and dedicated to Aboriginal people who lost their lives defending their country during European settlement. Comprised of 200 painted log coffins it is on permanent display in Canberra.
• Aboriginals who served in WW1 from Milton Ulladulla NSW Australia
• Aboriginal Resistance
  A timeline of incidents of Aboriginal resistance to European invasion.
• Aboriginal Geneology (family history)
• Aboriginal and Islander history: An introduction
• Aboriginal Languages of Australia
  There are more than 200 Australian Indigenous languages, most of which have been destroyed; all the others are endangered. This site has annotated links to 140 resources for nearly 40 of these languages. About 30% of these resources are produced by Indigenous people.
• 1946 Aboriginal Stockmen's Strike In Western Australia and The 1966 Gurindji Land Rights Strike.
  Action for Aboriginal Rights
• Ancient Burning Tied to Australia Desert
• Australian History on the Internet
  National Library of Australia
• Australia's Oldest Human Remains
  A near complete skeleton found near Lake Mungo, a dry lakes in western NewSouth Wales, is dated to about 60,000 years ago.
• Australian Government records guide
• An oral history from the Wave Hill strike
  Green Left Weekly
• Background to 1967 Referendum
  Australian Parliamentary Library
• Chronological History of Australia: An Aboriginal Perspective
• Day of Mourning 1965 Freedom Rides
  ABC Timeline
• David Unaipon
  (1872 - 1967) Writer, public speaker and inventor. Polymer Banknotes. Australians on our Notes
• Dumbartung
  Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation  campaign to combat the misinformation contained in Marlo Morgan's "Mutant Message Downunder
• Different Perspectives on Black Armband History
  Australian Parliamentary Library - Research Paper.
• Dreamtime or Dreaming (Australian Museum)
• Down Under History Takes Giant Leap Back
  Did Homo sapiens sail to Australia 176,000 years ago? New discoveries are raising questions about the antiquity of the first occupation of Australia.
• Early Images of the Australian Aborigines
• First Fleet Online
• Freedom Rides Racism
  Dreaming Online Social Justice
• Frontier Education Online 1788-1830
  "They must Always Consider Us As Enemies" : The Early Years of European Settlement, 1788-1830
• Frontier: Stories From White Australia's Forgotten War
• Heroes of the Indigenous Struggle
  Gary Foley's Koori History
• History of Australia
  Australia's Cultural Network
• History of Australian Places Index
  With links to history of the places
• Indigenous Australians
  Archives of Australia
• Indigenous Australians at War
  He came and joined the colours, when the War God's anvil rang, He took up modern weapons to replace his boomerang, He waited for no call-up, he didn't need a push, He came in from the stations, and the townships of the bush.
• Indigenous Australians At War
  Indigenous Australians At War has been put together by Garth O'Connell. This site is dedicated to all Indigenous Australians who have served Australia in war and peacetime. . .A collection of information and stories about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Ex Servicemen and Servicewomen.
• History of Australia - The First Fleet 1788
  This site gives information about the background to transportation of convicts, the voyage to Australia, the first year and ships of the First Fleet. Author's identity and authority not given.
• Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Spiritualty in the 20th Century
  First Nations Encounter (ABC)
• Koori history website
• A Koorie History of Melbourne
  History of the Koories from the area of south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, their clashes with the first Europeans and the ramifications of those clashes today.
• Koori History Newspaper Article Archive
  The following are a small selection from the Koori History Website Newspaper Archivedating from the 1950s to the present day. This collection of clippings reflect little known aspects of the Aboriginal struggle for justice over the past 60 years. As such, these are significant events that have been largely ignored by mainstream academic historians. This has resulted in a false and/or superficial mainstream understanding of the recent history of the Koori struggle.
  
• Legends of the Gagudju
• Lore of the land
  Award winning multimedia site exploring land issues, experiences, indigenous culture and understanding.
• Maquariienet Interactive atlas The Macquarie Interactive Atlas of Indigenous Australia is now available as a free online resource on the MacquarieNet website
• Mission Voices
  Website telling the stories of six Aboriginal mission stations and reserves in Victoria. Looks at the history, experiences and events of missions through the oral stories of Elders who came from missions, or whose family came from them.
• Museum Victoria Hidden Histories 
  Documenting oral histories of Indiginous communities to increase the wider community's understanding of these cultures.
• Native Title report 2006 HREOC
• Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay
  by Watkin Tench
• Prehistoric Australian Artefacts
  Welcome to a growing resource designed to introduce you to the archaeology of stone artefacts in Australia. This is an introduction to stone artefacts found in archaeological sites in Australia.
• Radio Australia - Torres Strait Island War-time role
• Stories of the Dreaming
  Australian Cultural Network/Australian Museum
• Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike of 1946
• Promiscuous Sacred Sites
  Reflections on Secrecy and Scepticism in the Hindmarsh Island Affair. Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs, Australian Humanities Review
• South Australians at War : Aboriginals and War
• Tasmanian Aboriginal Historicial Services
  We are an independent Tasmanian Aboriginal Organisation within the Lia Pootah Community.
• Timeline of Significant Moments in the Indigenous Struggle in south east Australia
• The Australian Home Front during World War 2 - Indigenous Australians
• The Bennelong Society
  Promoting debate and analysis of the history of the interaction between the European settlers and the Aborigines from a conservative point of view.
• The 1966 Gurindji Land Rights Strike.
• The Archaeology of The Dharawal People of NSW
  These pages and links are my accumulation of Aboriginal Rock Images. I have been collecting these images for many years and wish to preserve them by posting them into cyber space.
• Time Milestones
• The Dreaming and Spirituality
  Aboriginal Australia
• The Hidden Histories
  Life history of individual men and women  
• The Flight of Ducks
  Australian Aboriginal History
• The reasons for Colonisation /The Founders of a Nation Botany Bay - The reasons for Colonisation
  Cathy Dunn
• The Statistics of Frontier Conflict
• Traditional fire Management
• Understanding Country
  Sacred Sites and Dreaming Tracks
• Working with Indigenous Australians in 51 FNQR
• Written In Stone?
  A new survey of Australian prehistory records the dramas of the distant past--and the debates of the present. Elizabeth Feizkhah, Time Asia.

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