Concept
Aboriginal Australians
Overview
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands.
Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, and over time formed as many as 500 linguistic and territorial groups. Aboriginal people once lived across large areas of the continental shelf that were later inundated by postglacial sea-level rise at the start of the Holocene inter-glacial period, reshaping coastal landscapes and separating Tasmania from the mainland. Aboriginal people maintained extensive networks within the continent and certain groups maintained relationships with Torres Strait Islanders and the Makassar people of modern-day Indonesia.
Over the millennia, Aboriginal people developed complex trade networks, inter-cultural relationships, law and religions, which make up some of the oldest continuous cultures in the world. At the time of European colonisation of Australia, the Aboriginal people spoke more than 250 different languages, possessed varying degrees of technology, and lived in various types of settlements. Languages (or dialects) and language-associated groups of people are connected with stretches of territory known as "Country", with which they have a profound spiritual connection.
Contemporary Aboriginal beliefs are shaped by traditional beliefs, the disruption of colonisation, religions brought to the continent by later migrants, and contemporary issues. Just over half hold secular or other spiritual beliefs or no religious affiliation; about 40% are Christian; and about 1% adhere to a traditional Aboriginal religion. Traditional cultural beliefs are passed down and shared through dancing, stories, songlines, and art that collectively weave an ontology of modern daily life and ancient creation known as the Dreaming.
Studies of Aboriginal groups' genetic makeup are ongoing, but evidence suggests that they have genetic inheritance from ancient Asian peoples. Aboriginal Australians and Papuans shared the same paleocontinent Sahul, although they became genetically distinct about 37,000 years ago. Aboriginal Australians have a broadly shared, complex genetic history, but only in the last 200 years have they been defined by others as, and started to self-identify as, a single group. Aboriginal identity has changed over time and place, with family lineage, self-identification, and community acceptance all of varying importance.
The 2021 census shows that there were 944,171 Aboriginal people, comprising 3.7% of Australia's population. Over 80% of Aboriginal people today speak English at home, and about 77,000 speak an Indigenous language at home. Aboriginal people, along with Torres Strait Islander people, suffer a number of severe health and economic deprivations in comparison with the wider Australian community.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This extension of the field of comparison has nothing about it which is not legitimate. Undoubtedly these people are more advanced than those of Australia. Their civilization has become much more advanced: men there live in houses or under tents, and there are even fortified villages. The size of the society is much greater, and centralization, which is completely lacking in Australia, is beginning to appear there…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Close in meaning to Aboriginal Australians; the term itself is not named.
In its present form, it presupposes a development of probably thousands of years. Assuredly, therefore, the Australian should not be included in a chapter on primitive man. He will rather claim our attention in the next chapter, as a well-defined type of the totemic age. Indeed, he is beginning, in part, to lose even the characteristics of this age, mainly, no doubt as a result of racial fusion, whose influence is…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Aboriginal Australians; the term itself is not named.
According then to every analogy with what we have seen takes place in every country, with nearly every organic being under domestication, we might expect that some of the inhabitants of the island would "sport," or have their organization rendered in some degree plastic. As the number of the inhabitants are supposed to be few and as all these cannot be so well adapted to their new and varying conditions as they were…
Charles Darwin, The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844
Close in meaning to Aboriginal Australians; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Aboriginal Australians
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Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Environmental philosophy.