Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia, explained

'Indigenous Australians' is an umbrella term covering two distinct groups. Aboriginal peoples are the First Peoples of mainland Australia and Tasmania. Torres Strait Islander peoples are Melanesian peoples of the islands between Cape York and Papua New Guinea, with their own languages, seafaring culture, flag and history. Conflating them is a common and avoidable error.

Within Aboriginal Australia there was never a single nation, language or culture. At colonisation there were roughly 250 distinct language groups and many more clan groups, each with defined country, law, kinship systems and ceremonial obligations. A Yolŋu person from Arnhem Land and a Noongar person from south-west Western Australia are as culturally distinct as a Finn and a Portuguese.

The preferred terminology varies by region and by person. 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' and 'First Nations' are widely accepted; specific nation names — Wurundjeri, Gadigal, Yawuru, Larrakia — are better where you know them. 'Aborigine' as a noun is generally avoided.

In this context 'Country' means far more than land. It refers to a specific territory together with its waters, sky, plants, animals, stories, songs and the responsibilities that attach to them. People speak of belonging to Country rather than owning it, and of Country as something that can be healthy or unwell.

This is why an Acknowledgement of Country names a specific people — the Traditional Custodians of that place — rather than making a generic statement. A Welcome to Country is different: it can only be given by a Traditional Owner or Custodian of that particular place, and it is a permission and a greeting rather than a statement of respect.

Both protocols are relatively recent as public practice, dating largely from the 1970s onwards in their current form, though the underlying obligations regarding entering another group's Country are ancient.

These are frequently confused. Land rights are statutory grants: parliaments passing laws to hand back title. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 is the largest example, and roughly half the Northern Territory is now Aboriginal inalienable freehold held by land trusts. Several states have their own land rights Acts.

Native title is different. It is not granted by a parliament; it is recognised by a court as having survived colonisation. In Mabo v Queensland (No 2) in 1992 the High Court held that the doctrine of terra nullius was wrong in law and that traditional rights and interests could persist where they had been continuously maintained and not extinguished by an inconsistent government grant.

The Native Title Act 1993 created the claims process, run through the Federal Court with the National Native Title Tribunal. Determinations now cover more than half the continent by area, but the evidentiary burden is heavy — claimants must demonstrate continuous connection under traditional law and custom — and native title is extinguished outright by freehold title, so it is largely unavailable in the settled south-east where dispossession was most complete.

Native title rights are also often non-exclusive: rights to access, hunt, fish, camp and conduct ceremony, coexisting with pastoral leases or mining tenements rather than displacing them.

Closing the Gap is the national agreement between Australian governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak organisations, refreshed in 2020, setting targets across health, education, employment, housing, justice and land. The Productivity Commission reports annually on progress against them.

The persistent gaps are large and well documented: a life expectancy difference of roughly eight years, substantially higher rates of chronic disease, lower school completion and employment rates, and incarceration rates many times the non-Indigenous rate — First Nations adults make up around a third of the adult prison population despite being about 3.2 per cent of adults.

Progress against targets has been uneven, with some improving, several static and a few going backwards. The 2020 agreement's distinctive feature is its four priority reforms, which commit governments to shared decision-making with community-controlled organisations rather than programmes designed in Canberra.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, issued in 2017 by a constitutional convention of delegates from across the country, called for three things in sequence: Voice, Treaty, Truth — a constitutionally enshrined advisory body, agreement-making, and a truth-telling process.

The first of these was put to a referendum on 14 October 2023 and defeated. About 60 per cent voted no, and no state recorded a majority in favour. Interpretation of the result remains contested; polling and post-referendum analysis have been read as showing everything from rejection of the specific model to broader disengagement.

Work has continued at state level regardless. Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania have all progressed treaty or truth-telling processes at various speeds, with different governments changing course. Victoria's Yoorrook Justice Commission was the first formal truth-telling inquiry of its kind in Australia.