Aboriginal Australians
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 606,164 (2011) 2.7% of Australia's population |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Northern Territory
|
29.8% |
 Queensland
|
4.2% |
 Western Australia
|
3.8% |
 New South Wales
|
2.9% |
 South Australia
|
2.3% |
 Victoria
|
0.85% |
| Languages | |
| Several hundred Indigenous Australian languages, many no longer spoken, Australian English, Australian Aboriginal English, Kriol | |
| Religion | |
| Majority Christian (mainly Anglican and Catholic), Large minority no religious affiliation, small numbers of other religions, various local indigenous religions grounded in Australian Aboriginal mythology | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| see List of Indigenous Australian group names, Tasmanian Aboriginals | |
Aboriginal Australians are legally defined as people who are members "of the Aboriginal race of Australia" (indigenous to mainland Australia or to the island of Tasmania).
A new definition was proposed in the Constitutional Section of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs' Report on a Review of the Administration of the Working Definition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Canberra, 1981):
An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is 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 (she) lives.
Justice Gerard Brennan in his leading judgment in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) stated:
Membership of the Indigenous people depends on biological descent from the Indigenous people and on mutual recognition of a particular person's membership by that person and by the elders or other persons enjoying traditional authority among those people.
The category "Aboriginal Australia" was coined by the British after they began colonising Australia in 1788, to refer collectively to all people they found already inhabiting the continent, and later to the descendants of any of those people. Until the 1980s, the sole legal and administrative criterion for inclusion in this category was race, classified according to visible physical characteristics or known ancestors. As in the British slave colonies of North America and the Caribbean, where the principle of partus sequitur ventrem was adopted from 1662, children's status was determined by that of their mothers; if born to Aboriginal mothers, children were considered Aboriginal, regardless of their paternity.
In the era of colonial and post-colonial government, access to basic human rights depended upon your race. If you were a "full blooded Aboriginal native ... [or] any person apparently having an admixture of Aboriginal blood", a half-caste being the "offspring of an Aboriginal mother and other than Aboriginal father" (but not of an Aboriginal father and other than Aboriginal mother), a "quadroon", or had a "strain" of Aboriginal blood you were forced to live on Reserves or Missions, work for rations, given minimal education, and needed governmental approval to marry, visit relatives or use electrical appliances.
The Constitution of Australia, in its original form as of 1901, referred to Aboriginals twice, but without definition. Section 51(xxvi) gave the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate with respect to "the people of any race" throughout the Commonwealth, except for people of "the aboriginal race". The purpose of this provision was to give the Commonwealth power to regulate non-white immigrant workers, who would follow work opportunities interstate. The only other reference, Section 127, provided simply that "aboriginal natives shall not be counted" in reckoning the size of the population of the Commonwealth or any part of it. The purpose of section 127 was to prevent the inclusion of Aboriginal people in section 24 determinations of the distribution of House of Representatives seats amongst the states and territories.
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