Aboriginal Australians

Article Outline

Introduction; Aboriginal Settlement of Australia; Traditional Culture; European Settlement and Its Effects; The Rise of Aboriginal Rights

Social Organization

Before the arrival of Europeans, Aboriginal societies were organized in a variety of ways, differing, for example, in the way they classified relatives, and in rules governing the choice of marriage partners. However, all Aboriginal societies also had certain characteristics in common. They were essentially egalitarian—that is, no one had significantly higher status than anyone else. There was, of course, some variation in people’s status and influence according to their age, gender, knowledge, skills, and personality. In addition, all Aboriginal people maintained exchange relationships with other groups to whom they had ties by blood or marriage. These relationships involved visits, the exchange of gifts, and participation in each other’s ceremonial life.

In popular writing, the word tribe is often used in reference to Aboriginal groups. This usage is misleading, however, as there were no tribes in the sense in which the term is used elsewhere in the world. Unlike tribes elsewhere, those in Australia had no overarching political or social organization, nor was the tribe a landowning group until after European contact. In Australia the term tribe usually refers to a group of Aboriginal people who speak a common language.

Aboriginal people spent most of their time living in small bands consisting of three to six families. Band size varied depending on climate and available resources. Recent studies suggest that bands averaged 40 to 50 people in the tropical woodlands of the north, 10 to 20 people in the central desert regions, and 40 to 80 people in the temperate woodlands of the south.

The basic social unit beyond the family was the clan, a group whose members were descended from a common ancestor. Clan membership was usually inherited from the father. Each clan had primary ownership of an area of land, called an estate by anthropologists, that served as the clan members’ home base, although not all clan members lived on their own estate. For example, young men liked to travel widely, and when they first married they usually had to live with their wife’s band and hunt for her parents. An important natural feature, such as a watering hole or a grove of trees, often marked the focal point of the clan’s estate. This feature was usually the spot where the ancestral Dreaming spirit that founded the clan was believed to have emerged to create the land and the clan’s human ancestors. Residents of neighboring clans formed social bonds through marriage and participation in ceremonies. When people faced hardships, such as a lack of food resources, these bonds guaranteed them access to other clan estates and support by others.

European Settlement and Its Effects

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Early European Exploration and Colonization

Dutch, Spanish, French, and British ships first sailed into Australian waters in the 16th and 17th centuries. These expeditions were sent to chart the unknown Australian coast and assess the potential for trade. The British continued to survey Australian territories into the 18th century. From 1768 to 1771 British explorer Captain James Cook surveyed many regions of Australia, and claimed for Britain the entire eastern portion of the continent. The legal doctrine on which Britain claimed this area was terra nullius (land belonging to no one), which denied that Aboriginal people had any rights to or ownership of the land. In the eyes of the British, this doctrine was justified because Aboriginal people did not build permanent houses, practice agriculture, or have a clearly defined hierarchical leadership structure with which the British could negotiate. The first British settlement, which served as a penal colony and consisted primarily of convicts and soldiers, was founded in 1788 at Sydney in the newly claimed territory.

Estimates of the number of Aboriginal people on the Australian mainland in 1788 vary. In 1930 British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown suggested that the population was about 300,000 when Europeans arrived, but more recent estimates place the figure closer to 500,000.

British settlers arrived on the island of Tasmania, then called Van Diemen’s Land, in 1803. At that time, Tasmania had a population of around 5,000 Aboriginal people. By 1820 the settlers had eliminated almost all of the Aboriginal inhabitants of that island.

Conflicts and Resistance on the Frontier

Unlike earlier visitors, the British settlers immediately disrupted Aboriginal life, taking over good sources of water, productive land, and fisheries. The countryside was taken up by towns, farms, and mining operations. Aboriginal people responded in a variety of ways to the presence of Europeans. Some welcomed the newcomers, in some cases because they thought whites were the spirits of the dead. Others reacted with hostility. Guns gave the British a significant advantage in skirmishes, and many Aboriginal people living near settlements were killed.

More devastating than the conflicts with settlers was the impact of European diseases, to which Aboriginal people had no immunity. Smallpox, venereal disease, syphilis, tuberculosis, measles, and influenza, all introduced into Australia by the settlers, drastically reduced Aboriginal numbers. The British also introduced new animals to Australia, including wild rabbits, cats, and foxes, as well as domesticated sheep and cattle. By preying on native animals or depleting food resources, these animals altered the environment and caused the disappearance of some smaller marsupial species that had been important sources of food for Aboriginal people.

The British colonists intended to remain in Australia, so they began to alter the landscape by clearing trees and building fences. Over several decades, the British established colonies across the continent. The governments of these colonies granted settlers pastoral leases that formally recognized their right to occupy, farm, and graze livestock on the land.

As the frontier of white settlement expanded, Aboriginal people increasingly offered violent resistance to the taking of their land, and many died in fighting with British settlers. In some areas, white farmers took matters into their own hands and formed vigilante groups, often responding to the killing of sheep and cattle by murdering Aboriginal women and children. Colonial settlers also organized groups of Aboriginal people into cadres of Native Police. Led by white officers, Aboriginal soldiers would be taken to areas where they had no relatives and instructed to exact revenge on behalf of the settlers for thefts and killings.

Those Aboriginal people who survived the British onslaught generally remained near their homeland. Others began to live within or on the fringes of colonial settlements.

See also Colonial-Aboriginal Wars.

Relations with Settlers in the 19th Century

In the remote, sparsely populated outback, pastoralists, or ranchers, needed Aboriginal labor to work their sheep and cattle stations (farms). They encouraged the surviving local Aboriginal populations to settle on their stations to work as stockmen and domestic workers, providing them with rations and access to sugar and tobacco in exchange. Many Aboriginal people accepted this way of life because they were keen to stay in the vicinity of their own land. In addition, the ranchers mostly tolerated Aboriginal cultural and social practices as long as they did not disrupt the working of the station. Indeed, in many places, sheep and cattle herding were only possible because of the cheap labor that Aboriginal people provided.

Mission stations, some of which were established in the mid-1800s, attracted dispossessed Aboriginal people by providing housing, food, tobacco, and supplies. Missionaries were less tolerant of Aboriginal ways than ranchers because their primary goal was to convert Aboriginal people to Christianity. However, missions varied considerably in their approach depending on their religious denomination. Many missions sought to teach Aboriginal people how to live like non-Aboriginal people by setting up English-only schools that emphasized Bible study and disparaged traditional Aboriginal culture. These missions often banned Aboriginal languages and ceremonies and required that residents wear European clothing. Other missions permitted traditional practices and provided religious instruction in Aboriginal languages.

New economic opportunities for white settlers motivated more conflicts with Aboriginal people. A gold rush began in Australia in the 1850s. Prospectors damaged Aboriginal sacred sites and pushed people from desirable camping places, provoking defiance against miners that often led to massacres of Aboriginal people. On the southern coastline of Australia, whites working as seal hunters stole Aboriginal women and killed men and children. In the north, pearl divers abducted young Aboriginal boys and forced them into dangerous labor, making them dive for long periods in deep and treacherous waters. White men also coerced many Aboriginal women into providing sexual services, although some Aboriginal women also used their sexuality as a way to obtain European goods.

“Protection” Acts and Child-Removal Policy

It was only after the 1880s, once most Aboriginal opposition had been crushed in eastern Australia, that Australian colonies began passing oppressive legislation to control Aboriginal people in the name of protection. Between 1886 and 1911 the colonies (and, after 1901, the states) introduced laws that restricted the movement of Aboriginal people to government reserves and controlled most aspects of their lives, including where they could work and whom they could marry (see Aboriginal Protection Acts). These reserves were, for the most part, small, circumscribed areas where residents could not lead independent self-sufficient lives. Reserve residents lived in makeshift housing and worked on cattle and sheep stations, or, if there was no work, lived on government rations. White officials oversaw the reserves, sometimes living in a nearby town rather than directly on the reserve. In the remote central and northern parts of the continent, reserves were more institutionalized, with schools, health clinics, and a general work regime overseen by missionaries.

In the early 20th century the colonial governments began instituting policies of removing many Aboriginal children, especially those of mixed race and lighter skin color, from their families without parental consent. These children were placed in state institutions or adopted by white families, where they were raised as Christians and educated as white Australians were. Only “full-blooded” Aboriginal children were permitted to remain on the reserves. Child-removal policies grew out of the desire of white Australians to merge Aboriginal people into European culture, thereby extinguishing indigenous traditions and preventing the growth of the Aboriginal population. The practice was officially discontinued in the late 1960s.

Children who had been removed would later become known as the Stolen Generations. Their exact number remained unknown due to poor record keeping. In 1997 the national Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission concluded an inquiry into past child-removal policies. According to the commission’s report, Bringing Them Home, at least 100,000 indigenous children had been forcibly removed from their families and communities from 1910 to 1970.