Aboriginal Flag

The Australian Aboriginal Flag is a flag that represents Aboriginal Australians. It is one of the official flags of Australia, and holds special legal and political status, but it is not the "Australian National Flag". It is often flown together with the national flag and with the Torres Strait Islander Flag, which is also an official flag of Australia.

The Australian Aboriginal Flag was designed in 1971 by Aboriginal artist Harold Thomas, who is descended from the Luritja people of Central Australia and holds intellectual property rights to the flag's design. The flag was originally designed for the land rights movement, and it became a symbol of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

The flag's width is 1.5 times its height. It is horizontally divided into a black region (above) and a red (Pantone 179) region (below). A yellow (Pantone 123) disc is superimposed over the centre of the flag.

The Government of Australia granted it Flag of Australia status, under the Flags Act 1953, by proclamation on 14 July 1995.

Due to an "administrative oversight", the 1995 proclamation was not lodged so that it would continue in force indefinitely; hence it automatically expired on 1 January 2008. It was therefore almost identically replaced, on 25 January 2008, with effect as from 1 January.

In the 2008 proclamation, the flag "is recognised as the flag of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and a flag of significance to the Australian nation generally" and appointed "to be the flag of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and to be known as the Australian Aboriginal Flag". The design is reproduced in Schedule 1 and described in Schedule 2.

The symbolic meaning of the flag colours (as stated by Harold Thomas) is:

The flag was first flown on National Aborigines Day in Victoria Square in Adelaide on 12 July 1971. It was also used in Canberra at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy from late 1972. In the early months of the embassy—which was established in February that year—other designs were used, including a black, green and red flag made by supporters of the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league club, and a flag with a red-black field containing a spear and four crescents in yellow.

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