History UsefulNotes / AustralianAborigines

The native inhabitants of UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, known as Aboriginal Australians. The peoples who lived on that continent for thousands of years before British invasion. They are the oldest surviving culture in the world, and [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15020799 recent DNA evidence]] has it they were the first group to separate from modern humans, around 70,000 years ago. Even though they look African, the Aboriginal Australians are the people least genetically related to Africans, because they did not intermarry with or become displaced by humans who came from the later migrations from Africa, as everyone else (e.g. Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) did. As a result, they have an older claim to the land they currently inhabit than any other population known. Interestingly, a later group seems to have [[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/study-shows-gene-flow-from-india-to-australia-4000-years-ago-20130115-2cqpp.html arrived from India around 4,000 years ago]].

Contrary to popular conception, Australian Aboriginals are not the ''only'' people to inhabit the continent before British colonisation. They are one of ''two main groups'' known collectively as ''Indigenous Australians'', or ''UsefulNotes/FirstAustralians''. The Australian Aboriginals are a well-known fixture of [[LandDownUnder the world's perspective of Australia]].

!!A brief history

Australian Aboriginals are also often an awkward subject for Aussies, due to a long history of white-dominated government actively discriminating against them. Students studying Australian history have been known to describe it as "200+ years of Aboriginals getting fucked over", when confronted with the fact Aboriginals have been disregarded, feared, abused, exploited, and generally treated with hostility by European colonists. The popular European conception of Aboriginals tells enough of a story: Starting as [[NobleSavage noble savages]] during the early years of colonisation, then shifting to [[TheSavageIndian uneducatable barbarians]] as the colonists started wanting more land and outright supplanting them. By the time of the late 1800s, where colonial power was consolidated, Aboriginals were pretty much completely absent in all depictions of the Outback, including the legendary poems of Creator/BanjoPaterson and contemporaries, and the official attitude was that they were a 'dying race' and whites could only 'smooth the deathbed pillow'.

During the 20th century, the government policy towards them was, effectively, ''[[https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/genocide-in-australia/ genocide]]'' up to the 1960s [[note]] Children were still being taken from their parents in the ''1970s''[[/note]] (see the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations Stolen Generations]]), with efforts made to eradicate their culture, language, history, heritage, and general assimilation into a supposedly more 'enlightened' (read: white) way of living - on top of, of course, [[SarcasmMode good old fashioned]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians massacres]]. During the 60s, Aboriginal activists became increasingly associated with the 'Black Power' movement in the United States of America. One activist, Charles Perkins, was even dubbed 'Australia's Martin Luther King' by a US commentator. Aboriginals slowly gained many of the rights and recognition they fought for, and have become recognised as an inseparable part of Australia as a culture, a nation and a place, but many, ''many'' problems still remain to be solved.

!!The situation today

Today, the subject and issues of Australian Aboriginals continue to be a difficult, sensitive and touchy issue amongst Australians, especially white ones, which still urgently needs discussion. Aboriginals have, on average, a life expectancy twenty years shorter than that of the many other races in Australia, being particularly afflicted with heart and liver problems linked to rife alcoholism in the community. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd officially gave a national apology to the Stolen Generations (mostly likely encouraged by the previous Prime Minister's well-known refusal to do so) meant to indicate a change in national policy towards Aboriginals. Since then there has been a concentrated effort in regards to racism (notably centered on former AFL player and Australian of the Year Adam Goodes) as well as varying degrees of acceptance from both races.

At last count, according to government statistics, there are estimated to be about half a million Australian Aboriginals living in the country. This accounts for less than 3% of Australia's population. Many live in remote communities. [[UsefulNotes/AustralianStatesAndTerritories The Northern Territory]] has the biggest population of Australian Aboriginals on the continent (around 30%). The first Indigenous leader of a state or territory, Adam Giles, became Chief Minister[[note]]which is the equivalent of an American state Governor[[/note]] of the Northern Territory in March of 2013. Many Australian Aboriginals are of mixed White and Aboriginal descent to varying degrees, but this is rarer in the more northern and central populations. Aboriginals in media are somewhat rare, although more common than other non-White Australians.[[note]] Asian Australians comprise 12% of Australia's population for example, but are less likely to have appearances or central roles in fiction[[/note]] [[LandDownUnder Foreign-written portrayals of Australia]] tend to consider them interchangeable with the standard MagicalNativeAmerican, which some Australian works are also prone to. Others range from the NobleSavage take to attempts at more nuanced and realistic representations of native Australians.

It's notable to point out that most of the films mentioned star [[MagicalNegro David Gulpilil]] in some capacity or another.

Recently, Budj Bim [[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-06/indigenous-site-joins-pyramids-stonehenge-world-heritage-list/11271804 became recognised as a world wonder]]. It is one of the oldest built structures, a series of artificial lakes and channels that Indigenous South Australians used to capture, harvest, and store eels, and even had relatively large villages around.

!!Depictions of Australian Aboriginals in fiction:

[[AC:{{Anime}}]]
* DarkSkinnedRedHead (at least in the anime), cyborgized supercop Kiddy Phenil from ''Manga/SilentMobius''.
* A particularly embarrassing portrayal occurs in an episode of ''Anime/{{Gigantor}}'', where they look and act like stereotypical Native Americans. This is because in the original Japanese anime version, ''Tetsujin 28'', they ''were'' stereotypical Native Americans, since the episode involved the cast traveling from Japan to America, but since the English version was already (ostensibly) set in America...
* ''Anime/TheSwissFamilyRobinsonFloneOfTheMysteriousIsland'' introduces Tom-Tom, a native Australian boy, halfway through the series. It is mentioned that his parents were killed by white settlers, which why he is initially distrustful of the Robinsons, but later he opens up with them and teaches them how to survive more effectively on the island.

[[AC:ComicBooks]]
* ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'': One annual story takes place in Australia and features an Aboriginal tribe living at Uluru. They are contemptuous of white {{New Age Retro Hippie}}s who have fled to the area but tolerate their presence. When the Crossed finally reach Uluru, the tribe flees into the desert and expresses confidence about their continued survival.
* Betty Clawman of ''ComicBook/TheNewGuardians'' is an Aboriginal person who attained powers related to Dreamtime (naturally). Most of the time she appears as a disembodied green [[TheFaceOfTheSun sun head]].
* Appearing in Marvel's ''ComicBook/ContestOfChampions'', Talisman was an Aboriginal shaman with vaguely defined magical powers. He has had only one subsequent appearance.
* From ''ComicBook/XMen'' there's Gateway (an Aboriginal shaman who associated with the team during their stay in Australia) and his time-travelling great-grand children, siblings [[ComicBook/{{Bishop}} Lucas Bishop]] (a former member who was revealed to be Aboriginal rather than African-American as previously assumed) and DarkSkinnedBlonde Shard (who was transformed into a sentient hologram after getting killed in the line of duty before getting killed for good a second time).
* ''ComicBook/SecretWarriors'' member Eden Fesi, an Aboriginal RealityWarper who mostly uses his powers for ThinkingUpPortals. He was under the care of Gateway before being recruited by ComicBook/NickFury. More recently, he was recruited to ''ComicBook/TheAvengers''.
* One of the members of ''ComicBook/GlobalFrequency'' is an Australian police officer of Aboriginal descent.
* ''Comicbook/TheMultiversity'': The Thunderer of [[AlternateUniverse Earth-7]] is an Aboriginal thunder god, an AlternateCompanyEquivalent of [[Comicbook/TheMightyThor Thor]].
* Comicbook/TheNew52 version of the wizard Comicbook/{{Shazam}} was Aboriginal, later revealed in ''Comicbook/DarkseidWar'' to be Mamaragan, an Aboriginal god of lightning.
* During ''ComicBook/HouseOfM'', the Hulk had a MightyWhitey storyline where he became the champion of an oppressed Aboriginal tribe. When reality is restored to normal, he's still in Australia, and an Aboriginal shaman manages to detect this alternate history with the Hulk and offers him a place with them.
* ''Comicbook/Elektra'' (2014) by W. Haden Blackman and Michael Del Mundo features an Aboriginal villain named Bloody Lips. A superhuman capable of absorbing the powers, skills and memories of others through [[CannibalismSuperpower cannibalism]], he is presented as an [[HollywoodNatives animalistic character]] who shuns modern society, dresses in animal skins, fights with spears and worships a mystical serpent (seemingly a perversion of the Rainbow Serpent, a benevolent creator spirit significant to many Aboriginal cultures) who encourages him to kill. The portrayal, perhaps unwittingly, taps into racist characterisations of traditional Aboriginal cultures as savage and cannibalistic, ideas which date back to early colonialism and persist in the present day. Pauline Hanson, a current member of the Australian Parliament, made [[https://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v7n1/mcglade71_text.html false claims]] in 1997 that Aboriginal peoples historically ate their babies and elderly, and in 2010 former AFL footballer Mal Brown was [[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-17/afl-figure-sorry-for-cannibal-remark/870512 decried]] for referring to Aboriginal players as "cannibals".
* ''Comicbook/SuicideSquad'' (2020) by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo features a Ngarluma vigilante named Thylacine. In creating the character, Taylor (who is white) [[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-13/aboriginal-superhero-thylacine-new-dc-comic-book-hero/12136148 consulted extensively]] with Aboriginal writer, actress and director Shari Sebbens and writer Ryan Griffen. Although the extinct marsupial predator from which Thylacine takes her name is most commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger, the thylacine was originally found throughout the Australian mainland, including the Ngarluma country of the Pilbara, which still has songs, language, rock art and cultural knowledge about the animal.

[[AC:Fan Fiction]]
* The ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' fancomic ''Maaf'' does bring up the issue of Australian Aboriginals, although how nuanced, balanced or fair it is (especially in relation to the colonists and immigrants) is up to the reader.

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* ''Film/TheTracker'', a somewhat strange and surreal [[TheWestern Western-style]] film, is considered a major turning point in the portrayal of Aboriginal peoples and white perceptions of them. [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory There's been debate on exactly what it means]].
* ''Film/{{Australia}}''
* ''TheChantOfJimmyBlacksmith''
* ''Film/{{Walkabout}}'', in which two white children stranded in the outback are saved by an Aboriginal boy.
* ''Film/CrocodileDundee''
* ''Film/KangarooJack:'' An Aboriginal man appears in a minor role as a NativeGuide, and later [[spoiler:gets an UndercoverCopReveal.]]
* ''Film/RabbitProofFence'': {{Very loosely based on a true story}}.
* ''Film/TheSapphires'': the titular group are four Aboriginal women who form a soul group and sing for [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar the American troops in Vietnam]]. Issues like the Stolen Generations (one of the girls was fairer than the others and was removed to Melbourne when she was a child) and racism (the girls lose a contest they should have won because the people holding it give the prize to an inferior singer) come up over the course of the film.
* ''Film/{{Mabo}}'': A made-for-tv film about Eddie Mabo, the Torres Strait Islander who spearheaded a successful campaign and court battle for Aboriginal land rights.
* ''Film/QuigleyDownUnder'': The villain is an [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain obvious bigot]] who hates them. (But he does give a FreudianExcuse.)
* ''Film/TheProposition''
* ''Film/TheRightStuff''
* ''Film/TheNightingale2019'': Set in Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land), but depicts the bloody "Black War" against the Palawa people of Tasmania, while the two protagonists are respectively an Irish convict woman and a young Aboriginal man who bond over the shared suffering at the hands of the British.
* ''Film/MysteryRoad'': The main character is an Aboriginal police detective who has to suffer a lot of racial persecution from the community, while witnessing his superiors uncaring attitude towards the murder of an Aboriginal girl.
** The sequel, ''Film/{{Goldstone}}'' discusses the family history of the character, and what his people have endured at the hands of colonization, while he tries to get closer to his roots. A subplot also follows the villains' attempt to forcibly acquire the local tribes land, with the head of the council being in their pocket, but a respected elder resisting them.
* ''Film/Cargo2013'': The feature-length remake focuses greatly on the local Aboriginal community, and their response to the ZombieApocalypse, prospering with their knowledge of the land and skill with melee weapons. At the end of the movie, they, and the refugees they've taken in are doing the best out of the cast.


[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' includes a few, most notably Dread.
* The hero of the ''Literature/{{Bony}}'' mystery series is a half-Aboriginal police detective. Aboriginals and tribal culture feature strongly in several books.
* ''Literature/DarkHeavens'': Uluru's human form is that of an elderly Aboriginal woman.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Modern Australian kids shows tend to feature Aboriginal kids as more-or-less average Aussie kids, e.g. Fiona from ''Series/RoundTheTwist'' (Season 2 only), Egg from ''Lockie Leonard''.
* The brilliant historical drama ''Series/MyPlace'' features many Aboriginal main characters - the end of the first episode deals with the effect of the National Apology for the Stolen Generations on an Aboriginal girl and her family.\\
\\
Season 2 covers the lives of many Aboriginal characters and families, notably including those at the time of, and ''before'', the first colony.
* ''Series/DoubleTrouble'', a short-lived series for Australia's Creator/DisneyChannel, was about identical twin Aboriginal teenage girls, one from the city and one from the country, who discover each other's existence and decide to switch identities.
* ''Series/RedfernNow'', a phenomenally passionate, challenging, and realistic depiction of working-class, inner-city trials with a focus on Aboriginal Australians in the suburb of [[UsefulNotes/{{Sydney}} Redfern]].
* ''The Gods of Wheat Street'', a 2014 ABC series revolving around a middle-class Aboriginal family in the rural NSW town of Casino.
* The 2007-2009 SBS series ''The Circuit'' followed a half-Aboriginal city lawyer who moves to the remote Kimberley region in Western Australia to work in the local circuit court.
* As one could expect several ''Series/BlueHeelers'' episodes centered on the treatment of the Original Australians such as the collection of artifacts from exhumed aboriginals or the Stolen Generation. They very much try and keep an even keel and treat the matters with the gravity it deserves from all sides involved.
* ''{{Series/Cleverman}}'' is a science fiction series based in Indigenous Australian mythology and featuring a predominantly Aboriginal cast and crew.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Australian companion Tegan is fluent in Aboriginal languages, and in ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'', Sarah tells the kids that Tegan later became an activist for Aboriginal rights.

[[AC: Mythology and Religion]]
* Most if not all Myth/AboriginalAustralianMyths characters are aboriginal australians. Aside from Captain Cook.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':
** ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'': Up until the recent past, Awakened Aboriginals who joined a Tradition generally joined up with the shamanistic Dreamspeakers (the other Traditions left Australia to them, feeling that whatever magical secrets Australia possessed, the Dreamspeakers had a lock on them).
** ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'': Australia's Changing Breeds, having been established long before colonisation, have historically drawn their human Kinfolk from the Aboriginals: the now-extinct Bunyip werewolves (actually thylacines), Camazotz werebats, and the Mokole werelizards' Australian stream, the Gumagan. The Uktena werewolves, who arrived post-colonization, now include Australian Aboriginals among their numbers.
** ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'': Australian Aboriginal wraiths reside in Karta, the Dark Kingdom of Clay, a hidden island in TheUnderworld. Australian wraiths of other ethnicities reside in Australia's Shadowlands, the continent's dark mirror in the Underworld.
** ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming'': Australia's native fae, the Spirit Beings, have long and deep ties to their mortal Aboriginal kin, and some European Kithain have been born to, or adopted by, Aboriginal kinships.

[[AC:Theatre]]
* ''Theatre/BranNueDae'' is the musical story of a boy from Broome who runs away from his school in Perth. Notable because it was written and performed almost entirely by Aboriginals, and has an "Aboriginal Pride" theme. In 2009 it was made into a movie, with Creator/GeoffreyRush as the white antagonist.

[[AC:VideoGames]]
* Purna, the gun-specialist of the four playable characters of ''VideoGame/DeadIsland'', is a former cop turned bodyguard of Koori descent. She spent over a decade clawing up ranks, the progress of which was hampered because of her ethnicity and gender, which she lost due to an altercation with [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections a guy who could screw the rules over with his connections]]. She decided that being a cop in such a corrupt place wasn't worth it and went to be a bodyguard despite her distaste for her clientele.
* Jeffrey [=McWild=] from ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'', a fisherman who practices the Greek fighting art Pankration. He enters the World Fighting Tournament seeking prize money in order to fund his expeditions in finding the Devil Shark. Jeffrey is, oddly, sometimes given more Jamaican traits.
* ''VideoGame/PinkPantherPassportToPeril'': Kumoken, one of the children in Camp Chilly Wa-Wa, is an Aboriginal. In the same game, Pink also visits Australia, where he meets Kumoken's family and learns a lot about Aboriginal culture.

[[AC:Web Original]]
* ''Literature/LandsOfRedAndGold'' is a deeply-researched work of AlternateHistory fiction in which prehistoric ancestors of Aboriginals gradually discover various forms of agriculture and eventually form numerous developed native civilizations with very complex histories, societies and culture. They even greatly influence the Maori and later the first European colonists, once they come into contact with them.

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* The cartoon ''Country Mouse And City Mouse'': when Emily and Alexander travel to Australia, they speak with an older Aboriginal man. This is notable as he is one of the only adults the mice speak to in the entire series, considering they usually befriend children (the other adults being Santa and Mrs. Claus).
* ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheLegendOfTheVampire'': SixthRanger Daniel and his grandfather (a superstitious tribal elder) are both Aboriginal natives of Australia.
* ''WesternAnimation/Epic1984'' features a native Australian girl and her family in a scene.
* Courtney (a one shot antagonist) in ''WesternAnimation/WeBareBears'' is implied to be aboriginal, as he has an olive skin tone and facial features different from the show's black and latino characters. For the most part, he's an archetypical AwesomeAussie who is not particularly in tune in nature beyond exploiting it for his own gains.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Australian_Aboriginal_Flag_9938.png

[[AC:The Official Australian Aboriginal Flag.]]
----

* ''ComicBook/Elektra'' (2014) by W. Haden Blackman and Michael Del Mundo features an Aboriginal villain named Bloody Lips. A superhuman capable of absorbing the powers, skills and memories of others through [[CannibalismSuperpower cannibalism]], he is presented as an [[HollywoodNatives animalistic character]] who shuns modern society, dresses in animal skins, fights with spears and worships a mystical serpent (seemingly a perversion of the Rainbow Serpent, a benevolent creator spirit significant to many Aboriginal cultures) who encourages him to kill. The portrayal, perhaps unwittingly, taps into racist characterisations of traditional Aboriginal cultures as savage and cannibalistic, ideas which date back to early colonialism and persist in the present day. Pauline Hanson, a current member of the Australian Parliament, made [[https://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v7n1/mcglade71_text.html false claims]] in 1997 that Aboriginal peoples historically ate their babies and elderly, and in 2010 former AFL footballer Mal Brown was [[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-17/afl-figure-sorry-for-cannibal-remark/870512 decried]] for referring to Aboriginal players as "cannibals".

* During ''ComicBook/HouseOfM'', the Hulk had a MightyWhitey storyline where he became the champion of a tribe of oppressed aboriginals. When reality is restored to normal, he's still in Australia, and an Aboriginal shaman manages to detect this alternate history with the Hulk and offers him a place with them.

The native inhabitants of UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, known as Aboriginal or Aborigine Australians. The peoples who lived on that continent for thousands of years before British invasion. They are the oldest surviving culture in the world, and [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15020799 recent DNA evidence]] has it they were the first group to separate from modern humans, around 70,000 years ago. Even though they look African, the Aboriginal Australians are the people least genetically related to Africans, because they did not intermarry with or become displaced by humans who came from the later migrations from Africa, as everyone else (e.g. Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) did. As a result, they have an older claim to the land they currently inhabit than any other population known. Interestingly, a later group seems to have [[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/study-shows-gene-flow-from-india-to-australia-4000-years-ago-20130115-2cqpp.html arrived from India around 4,000 years ago]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'': One annual story takes place in Australia and features an Aboriginal tribe living at Ayer's Rock. They are contemptuous of white {{New Age Retro Hippie}}s who have fled to the area but tolerate their presence. When the Crossed finally reach Ayer's Rock, the Aboriginals flee into the desert and express confidence about their continued survival.
* Betty Clawman of ''ComicBook/TheNewGuardians'' is an Australian aborigine who attained powers related to Dreamtime (naturally). Most of the time she appears as a disembodied green [[TheFaceOfTheSun sun head]].

* During ''ComicBook/HouseOfM'', the Hulk had a MightyWhitey storyline where he became the champion of a tribe of oppressed aboriginals. When reality is restored to normal, he's still in Australia, and an aboriginal shaman manages to detect this alternate history with the Hulk and offers him a place with them.

* ''Film/TheTracker'', a somewhat strange and surreal [[TheWestern Western-style]] film, is considered a major turning point in the portrayal of Australian Aboriginals and white perceptions of them. [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory There's been debate on exactly what it means]].

* ''Film/TheNightingale2019'': Set in Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's land), but depicts the bloody "Black War" against the Aborigines of Tasmania, while the two protagonists are respectively an Irish convict woman and a young Aboriginal man who bond over the shared suffering at the hands of the British.

Today, the subject and issues of Australian Aboriginals continue to be a difficult, sensitive and touchy issue amongst Australians, especially white ones, which still urgently needs discussion. Aboriginals have, on average, a life expectancy twenty years shorter than that of the many other races in Australia, being particularly afflicted with heart and liver problems linked to rife alcoholism in the community. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd officially gave a national apology to the Stolen Generations (mostly likely encouraged by the previous Prime Minister's well-known refusal to do so) meant to indicate a change in national policy towards Aboriginals. Since then there has been a concentrated effort in regards to racism (notably centered on former AFL player and Australian of the Year Adam Goodes) as well as varying degrees of acceptance from both races, however [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment this page is potentially inflammatory enough without getting into that]].

Australian Aboriginals are also often an awkward subject for Aussies, due to a long history of white-dominated government actively discriminating against them. Students studying Australian history have been known to describe it as "200+ years of Aboriginals getting fucked over", when confronted with the fact Aboriginals have been disregarded, feared, and generally treated with hostility by European colonists. The popular European conception of Aboriginals tells enough of a story: Starting as [[NobleSavage noble savages]] during the early years of colonisation, then shifting to [[TheSavageIndian uneducatable barbarians]] as the colonists started wanting more land and outright supplanting them. By the time of the late 1800s, where colonial power was consolidated, Aboriginals were pretty much completely absent in all depictions of the Outback, including the legendary poems of Creator/BanjoPaterson and contemporaries, and the official attitude was that they were a 'dying race' and whites could only 'smooth the deathbed pillow'.

Today, the subject and issues of Australian Aboriginals continue to be a difficult, sensitive and touchy issue amongst Australians, especially white ones, which still urgently needs discussion. Aboriginals have, on average, a life expectancy twenty years shorter than that of the many other races in Australia, being particularly afflicted with heart and liver problems linked to a rife alcoholism in the community. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd officially gave a national apology to the Stolen Generations (mostly likely encouraged by the previous Prime Minister's well-known refusal to do so) meant to indicate a change in national policy towards Aboriginals. Since then there has been a concentrated effort in regards to racism (notably centered on former AFL player and Australian of the Year Adam Goodes) as well as varying degrees of acceptance from both races, however [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment this page is potentially inflammatory enough without getting into that]].

The native inhabitants of UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, known as Aboriginal or Aborigine Australians. The peoples who lived on that continent for thousands of years before British invasion. They are [[OlderThanDirt the oldest surviving culture in the world]], and [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15020799 recent DNA evidence]] has it they were the first group to separate from modern humans, around 70,000 years ago. Even though they look African, the Aboriginal Australians are the people least genetically related to Africans, because they did not intermarry with or become displaced by humans who came from the later migrations from Africa, as everyone else (e.g. Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) did. As a result, they have an older claim to the land they currently inhabit than any other population known. Interestingly, a later group seems to have [[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/study-shows-gene-flow-from-india-to-australia-4000-years-ago-20130115-2cqpp.html arrived from India around 4,000 years ago]].