AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINESAustralian Aborigines are Australians whose ancestors were the first people to live in Australia. The word comes from the latin phrase aborigine, meaning from the beginning. When spelled with a small "a," the word aborigines refers to any people whose ancestors were the first people to live in a country. Aborigines have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years or longer. Most scientists believe that they originated in south-eastern Asia. When Europeans began to settle in Australia in I 788, there were at least 750,000 Aborigines living on the continent. Today, according
to modern Australian census figures, which make no distinction between
full Aborigines and part Aborigines, there are only about 265,000 Aborigines
and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. The population of part Aboriginal
descent outnumbers the population of full Aboriginal origin by about 2
to I. Aborigines represent about 1.5 percent of the Australian population,
but they make up nearly a quarter of the population of the Northern Territory,
which has the largest number of full Aborigines of any state or territory.
New South Wales has the next largest population, followed by Queensland,
Western Australia, South Australia Victoria, and Tasmania. The Australian
Capital Territory, which includes the Capital City of Canberra, has the
smallest number of Aborigines. |