Why Aboriginal Australians are still fighting for recognition

Australia’s first people—known as Aboriginal Australians—have lived on the continent for over 65,000 years. Diverse and culturally distinctive, they are represented by more than 250 distinct language groups spread throughout Australia. About 3 percent of Australia’s population has Aboriginal heritage.

But the origins, and fate, of Australia’s native peoples are still the subject of heated debates—ranging from social disparities to legal representation, and even whether their genocide can really be considered a genocide. Here’s what you should know about these Indigenous people.

Who are Aboriginal Australians?

Aboriginal Australians are split into two groups: Aboriginal peoples, who are related to those who already inhabited mainland Australia when Britain began colonizing the island in 1788, and Torres Strait Islanders, who descend from residents of the Torres Strait Islands, a group of islands that was annexed by Queensland, Australia in 1879.

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Legally, “Aboriginal Australian” is recognized as “a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he [or she] lives.”

Aboriginal origins

In 2017, a genetic study found that today’s First Nations people are all related to a common group of ancestors, members of a distinct population that emerged on the mainland about 50,000 years ago.

How did they get there? 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 them the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.

British settlement

When British settlers began colonizing Australia in 1788, between 750,000 and 1.25 million Aboriginal Australians are estimated to have lived there. Soon, epidemics ravaged the island’s Indigenous people, and British settlers seized their lands.

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Though some First Nations people did resist—up to 20,000 people died in violent conflict on the colony’s frontiers—most were subjugated by massacres and the impoverishment of their communities as British settlers seized their lands. Researchers have documented at least 270 massacres of Aboriginal Australians during Australia’s first 140 years, and though the term “genocide” remains controversial, people related to the continent’s first inhabitants are widely considered to have been wiped out through violence. 

The Stolen Generations

Between 1910 and 1970, government policies of assimilation led to between 10 and 33 percent of Aboriginal Australian children being forcibly removed from their homes. These “Stolen Generations” were put in adoptive families and institutions and forbidden from speaking their native languages. Their names were often changed.

Most First Nations people did not have full citizenship or voting rights until 1965. Only in 1967 did Australians vote that federal laws also would apply to Aboriginal Australians. This meant that Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders would be counted as part of Australia’s population and that Australia could make laws they were obliged to obey.

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In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a national apology for the country’s actions toward the Stolen Generations; since then, Australia has worked to reduce the social disparities that Aboriginal Australians face.

The struggle continues

Today, Aboriginal Australians still struggle to retain their ancient culture and fight for recognition—and restitution—from the Australian government.

In 2023, Australians overwhelmingly rejected a national referendum that would have both recognized Aboriginal people in its constitution and established an advisory group to weigh in on relevant issues in Parliament. Though a majority of Indigenous voters said yes to the proposal, more than 60 percent of Australians voted no on the measure.

The referendum’s failure was seen as a blow by many Aboriginal Australians, who proclaimed a week of silence and reflection on its wake.

But progress is still underway on other fronts. Though Australia has never made a treaty with its First Nations residents—making it the only country in the British Commonwealth not to have ratified such a treaty— some Australian states are taking matters into their own hands.

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The state of Victoria has already established a framework for treaty negotiations, and is expected to broker a first-of-its-kind agreement that will recognize Aboriginal Australians’ sovereignty, compensate victims of historical injustices, and incorporate the findings of a truth-telling committee investigating the historic and modern disparities faced by First Nations people. The effort, Aboriginal historian and author Jackie Huggins told the Guardian, is an attempt to “mend the very fabric of our society.”

 Still, it will take more than a treaty to heal the deep wounds of Australia’s colonial legacy. In the meantime, Aboriginal Australians say that whether the nation recognizes it or not, they possess sovereignty that, in the words of the national convention that called for the referendum, “has never been ceded or extinguished.”