Aboriginal peoples in Australian society

Early alien contact

Aboriginal peoples who lived on the north coast were the only ones to encounter foreign visitors before European settlement. Seagoing Makassarese traders from the Indonesian archipelago began making regular visits to Arnhem Land sometime before the 1700s to harvest bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber, or trepang) for export to China. They had a powerful impact on local art, music, ritual, and material culture. In the northeast, on Cape York Peninsula, Papuan visitors from New Guinea also had an influence; bows and arrows, dugout canoes, masked ritual dancing, and the use of the drum can all be traced to them. Yet these influences did not penetrate into the rest of the continent, the inhabitants of which had no knowledge of non-Aboriginal people and no need to develop cultural mechanisms aimed at withstanding the impact of alien and culturally different peoples.

The Europeans

British settlement, dating from 1788, was altogether different. The arrival of carriers of a powerful imperialist culture cost the Aboriginal people their autonomy and the undisputed possession of the continent, and it forced them into constant compromise and change as they struggled to accommodate the newcomers. Initial contacts were often tentative but friendly. Although the Colonial Office in London prescribed the safeguarding of Indigenes’ rights and their treatment as British subjects, friction soon developed between the colonists and local Aboriginal peoples. Communication was minimal and the cultural gulf was huge. Once European settlement began to expand inland, it conflicted directly with Aboriginal land tenure and economic activities and entailed the desecration of Aboriginal sacred sites and property. Clashes marked virtually all situations where conflicting interests were pursued, and the Europeans viewed Aboriginal peoples as parasites upon nature, defining their cultures in wholly negative terms.

The frontier was a wild and uncontrolled one for a long period. Aboriginal peoples in some areas used their superior bushcraft to wage prolonged and effective guerrilla campaigns until they were finally overwhelmed by force of arms. In the period of “pacification by force,” up to the 1880s, a large number of Aboriginal people were killed. Others were driven into the bush, remaining in small pockets subject to the “civilizing” influence of missions, or were left to fend for themselves in the fringe settlements of cities and towns; still others remained in camps or pastoral and cattle stations to become the nucleus of a labour force.

Introduced diseases exacted a terrible toll and probably killed many more Aboriginal people than did direct conflict. The disappearance of Aboriginal people in southeast Australia was so rapid that the belief arose that all would soon die out. Growing humanitarian concerns and reactions to frontier excesses led the Australian colonies to pass laws, beginning in 1856 in Victoria, concerning the care and protection of Aboriginal peoples. They were put into reserves and given food and clothing to “smooth the dying pillow” as they awaited what the Europeans took to be cultural extinction. These laws offered Aboriginal people no place in the economy or society of the colonists, and in practice they resulted in much greater restriction and control exerted by whites over the lives of Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people were kept off their land and were therefore unable to survive by hunting and gathering. Those who survived were drawn—often forcibly, always uncomprehendingly—into wretched poverty on the margins of life in the developing colonies. Armed conflict was superseded by a more passive but nonetheless determined opposition to cultural absorption by the invaders. Forced adaptation entailed impoverishment, both material and cultural, but no alternatives were left. Gradually, missionaries and government welfare agents began to have some effect, and questions of humane treatment came to have a more practical meaning. But in outlying areas, maltreatment, violence, and the forced removal of children of mixed descent lingered on beyond the 1940s. Further, wherever European settlement was intensive, miscegenation took place, and Aboriginal people of mixed descent eventually outnumbered those with full Aboriginal ancestry in southern and eastern Australia.

Reserves were established in the late 1920s and early ’30s to serve as a buffer between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans. But many were attracted to, or forced into, the fringe settlements, where they formed tribally and linguistically mixed communities. This meant the emergence of a new form of living, structurally linked to the wider Australian society. It was not until the 1960s that the frontier period finally ended, with the move into settlements of the last few nomadic groups from the Great Sandy Desert. Their traditional life ceased to exist as a living reality over much of the southwestern, southeastern, and middle-eastern areas of the continent, though continuities with the past remained important in the values and modes of behaviour surrounding kinship and social relations, and at the turn of the 21st century there was a strong emphasis on cultural revival. In the central and northern regions traditional life remained, even on some pastoral, mission, and government stations, although in a modified form. In more remote areas it was still possible for Aboriginal peoples to live approximately in the way they had before European colonization but with notable modifications, particularly in the arena of law and order. (See Sidebar: The Quality of Life for Indigenous Australians in the 21st Century.)

In the late 20th century there were growing calls for the Australian government to apologize to Aboriginal people for abuses they had suffered under earlier administrations. For decades the government resisted releasing such a statement, but in February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology for the past mistreatment of Aboriginal people. In October 2023 the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese staged a national referendum on whether the Australian constitution should be altered to formally recognize Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to create an Indigenous body, the “Voice to Parliament,” to advise the government on policies that affect them. In the vote, some 60 percent of those who participated rejected the proposal, and it failed to gain majority support in all six states. The result was a stunning blow for the country’s Indigenous peoples.