Australian Aborigine

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Member of any of the 500 groups of indigenous inhabitants of the continent of Australia, who migrated to this region from South Asia about 40,000 years ago. Traditionally hunters and gatherers, they are found throughout the continent and their languages probably belong to more than one linguistic family. They are dark-skinned, with fair hair in childhood and heavy dark beards and body hair in adult males. There are about 228,000 Aborigines in Australia, making up about 1.5% of the population of 16 million. The Aborigine rights movement campaigns against racial discrimination in housing, education, wages, and medical facilities.

There were about 300,000 Aborigines living on the continent in small kin-based groups at the time of the first European settlement in 1788. Decimated by diseases new to them and killed by settlers, their number dwindled drastically.

The Australian Aborigines have a rich oral tradition of legends, songs, rituals, and bark and cave paintings concerned with their Dreamtime, a primeval era when humans were first on Earth. Tribal totem (see totemism) ancestors of Australian Aborigines include the eagle-hawk, kangaroo, and snake. About 40% still follow the traditional hunter-gatherer way of life and live mostly in the remote desert areas of Northern Territory, the north of Western Australia, and in northern Queensland. About 12% of Australia is owned by Aborigines and many live on reserves as well as among the general population; (65% of Aborigines live in cities or towns). Others work on cattle stations, and a few have entered the professions and government service.

The unemployment rate among Aborigines in 1995 was three times the national average, and their average income reached about half. They had an infant mortality rate three times the national average, a suicide rate six times higher, and an adult life expectancy 20 years below the average for Australians generally; Aborigines living in remote areas of northern Australia faced extremely high death rates – three and four times the national average for men and women respectively. In 2000 Aborigines continued to be severely disadvantaged. Their infant mortality rate remained higher (one in four infant deaths in Australia is Aboriginal), life expectancy lower (53% of Aboriginal men and 41% of Aboriginal women die before the age of 50, while the figures for the wider Australian community are 13% and 7%). Rates of cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, diabetes, injuries, and infectious disease among Aborigines were much higher than among non-Aboriginal Australians. As well as having a higher unemployment rate, imprisonment rate is also higher for Aborigines, compared with the general population. Aboriginal people were also more likely to be homeless or living in overcrowded accommodation.

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