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The word Aborigine is derived from Latin and means "from the beginning". This is the name given to the native Australians by the Europeans. This is not the name they called themselves. They prefer to call themselves: Koori. They are a dark-skinned people belonging to the Australoid group who probably came from Asia. Nobody is quite sure how they came to Australia around 60000 years ago.
They may have walked and sailed here from Asia. They hunted animals using spears and boomerangs. They also gathered fruits, nuts and yams which they ate. There were around 300000 aborigines in about 250 tribal groups before the first white settlers came. Each group had its own territory, traditions, beliefs and language. The Aborigines have one of the oldest civilizations in the world.
120000 BC they found remains in New South Wales which suggest that Aborigines are already living there. Australian technology leads the world, as tools found in Arnhem Land(Northern Territory) show in 23000 BC. The Tasmanian Tiger, which looked like a great striped dog, and other now extinct animals are painted at Ubirr Rock in West Arnhem Land in 18000BC.In 1588 till 1906 AD are Aborigines in Northern Territory in contact with trades from Indonesia. In 1642 Abel Tasman discovered an island off the south coast of Australia. He was the first European there and he called it Van Diemen´s Land.
It was a hilly island covered in dense forest of pine, beech and eucalyptus. The aborigine people had never seen white people until Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay in 1770. They were shocked to see these white people in their strange clothes. In 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, the country was inhabited by an estimated 300000 Aboriginals. The British did not wish harm the Aboriginals- in fact, Captain Phillip began the penal settlement with the good intentions of "reconciling the Aboriginals to live amongst us, and to teach them the advantages they will reap from cultivating the land". When the aborigines realised that the white men were not the spirits of their dead ancestors and the settlers were taking more and more of their land and destroying the trees and wild life they began to fight back.
The aborigines killed a number of the settlers and even wounded Captain Phillip in an attack. The British colonists declared that before their arrival all of the continent was terra nullius( uninhabited by humans). They used this as justification for taking whatever they wanted. For more than a century the Europeans weren't interested in the island of Tasmania. But in 1803 the British claimed the island and decided to use it as a prison and send convicts there. By 1820 there were European settlements at both ends of the island, and by 1840 there were more free settlers than convicts, because they haven't enough money to go back.
At last the British moved to their island, but things didn't improve. In 1876 the last Tasmanian Aborigine died and that was the end of a whole population. In 1912 laws introduce social benefits for all people, but not for Aborigines. An Aboriginal conference in Sydney is the first of many demonstrations against discrimination. British nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga in 1953 till 57, where they leave many Aborigines with radiation sickness, because they can't read the signs saying DANGER! KEEP OUT!. Aborigines were second class citizens in their own land.
They only got the right to vote in 1962(1967). This is a shameful part of Australian history. in 1920 till69 thousand of Aboriginal children were legally taken from their mothers. Many are still trying to find their families. The statistics from 2000 show that Aboriginal people are still highly disadvantaged in all areas of life compared to all other groups. The Aboriginal flag is divided horizontally into two equal halves of black(top) and red (bottom), with a yellow circle in the centre.
The black symbolises Aboriginal people and the yellow represents the sun, which is very hot in Australia. Red depicts the earth. In Australia are red dirt roads, the streets are also red.
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