In Australia, 812,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 3.2% of the population.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
Experts estimate the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at more than 770,000 at the time of the invasion in 1788. It fell to its low of around 117,000 people in 1900, a decrease by 84%. At present, 3.2% of Australia's population identify as Aboriginal.
Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. As at 30 June 2021 there were 984,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.
In 2022, an estimated 33% of Indigenous Australians (297,400 people) live in New South Wales and 28% (252,700 people) in Queensland (Figure 2). The Northern Territory has the highest proportion of Indigenous residents among its population – an estimated 32% (79,000 people) in 2022 (Figure 2).
China is the country with the biggest indigenous population in absolute terms. More than 125 million indigenous people – Tibetans, Uyghurs, Zhuang and 52 other recognized groups – still make up only 8.9 percent of the Chinese population.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Between 2014–15 and 2018–19, after adjusting for inflation, the median gross weekly personal income for Indigenous Australians aged 18 and over fell by 5.6%, from $518 to $489 (Figure 1).
Bidyadanga Community, Western Australia.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Some people use 'Nunga' in general reference to Indigenous peoples who reside in and around the area of Adelaide. Many Indigenous South Australians prefer people not to presume the right to use their word 'Nunga'.
In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
See the list of payments and services available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians at Indigenous Australians through Services Australia. It includes: Parenting Payment. JobSeeker Payment.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and Indigenous holding entities don't need to pay income tax or capital gains tax on native title payments or benefits.
At the end of the June quarter of 2016, around 45% of Indigenous Australians aged 15 and over (220,800 people) were receiving some form of Centrelink income support payment, compared with 26% of non-Indigenous Australians of this age (4.9 million people).
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
A white person is defined as a person who has European ancestry. In Australia, about 90.2 percent of the nation's population is white. The following is a breakdown of some of the major ethnic groups that fall under this category: To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
One city, however, stands out. Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, has probably the highest percentage of aboriginal people of any city: almost 90% of Greenland's population of 58,000 is Inuit, and least eight in 10 live in urban settlements.