Migration to Mainland Australia and Torres Strait Islands Aboriginal people and
Captain James Cook and his crew on the shores of the
Kurnell Peninsula, New South Wales The ancestors of
Aboriginal Australians moved into what is now
Oceania about 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the
last glacial period, arriving by
land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. The first phase of occupation of the Torres Strait Islands began about 4,000 years ago. By 2,500 years ago more of the islands were occupied and a distinctive
Torres Strait Islander maritime culture emerged. Agriculture also developed on some islands and by 700 years ago villages appeared. Several settlements of humans in Australia have been dated around 49,000 years ago.
Luminescence dating of sediments surrounding stone artefacts at
Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia, indicates human activity as early as 65,000 years BP. Genomic studies, however, suggest that the main wave of modern humans into Australia ancestral to Aboriginal Australians happened as recently as 37,000 to 50,000 years ago. Indigenous Australians and other Oceanians were probably part of the same
southern route dispersal as the ancestors of
Ancient Ancestral South Indians,
Andamanese, and
East Asians. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of
Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old. The initial comparison of the
mitochondrial DNA from the skeleton known as
Lake Mungo 3 (LM3) with that of ancient and modern Aboriginal peoples indicated that Mungo Man is not related to Australian Aboriginal peoples. The sequence has been criticised as there has been no independent testing, and it has been suggested that the results may be due to posthumous modification and thermal degradation of the DNA. Although the contested results seem to indicate that Mungo Man may have been an extinct subspecies that diverged before the most recent common ancestor of contemporary humans, the administrative body for the
Mungo National Park believes that present-day local Aboriginal peoples are descended from the
Lake Mungo remains. It is generally believed that Aboriginal people are the descendants of a single migration into the continent, a people that split from the ancestors of East Asians. Recent work with mitochondrial DNA suggests a founder population of between 1,000 and 3,000 women to produce the genetic diversity observed, which suggests that "initial colonisation of the continent would have required deliberate organised sea travel, involving hundreds of people". Aboriginal people seem to have lived a long time in the same environment as the now extinct
Australian megafauna.
Genetics {{multiple image Rasmussen et al. 2011 shows that Aboriginal Australians have a lower proportion of European alleles compared to Asians, which they believe is indicative of a multiple dispersal model. Genetically, while Aboriginal Australians are most closely related to
Melanesian (including
Papuan) people, McEvoy et al. 2010 believed there is also another component that could indicate Ancient Ancestral South Indian admixture or more recent European influence. Research indicates a single founding
Sahul group with subsequent isolation between regional populations which were relatively unaffected by later migrations from the Asian mainland, which may have introduced the
dingo 4,000–5,000 years ago. The research also suggests a divergence from the Papuan people of
New Guinea and the
Mamanwa people of the
Philippines about 32,000 years ago, with a rapid population expansion about 5,000 years ago. A 2011 genetic study found evidence that the Aboriginal, Papuan and Mamanwa peoples carry some of the alleles associated with the
Denisovan peoples of Asia, (not found amongst populations in mainland Asia) suggesting that modern and archaic humans interbred in Asia approximately 44,000 years ago, before Australia separated from New Guinea and the migration to Australia. A 2012 paper reports that there is also evidence of a substantial genetic flow from India to northern Australia estimated at slightly over four thousand years ago, a time when changes in tool technology and food processing appear in the Australian archaeological record, suggesting that these may be related. Bergström et al 2016 and Nagle et al 2016 could not replicate the 2012 study, noting that Indigenous Australians split from mainland Asia 50,000 years ago. Mallick et al. 2016 and Mark Lipson et al. 2017 study found that the bifurcation of Eastern Eurasian and Western Eurasian dates back to least 45,000 years ago, with Australasians nested inside the Eastern Eurasian clade. Vallini et al. 2024 noted that the divergence between Ancient East Eurasians and West Eurasians most likely occurred on the
Persian Plateau >48,000 years ago, with East Eurasians dispersing throughout the Asia-Pacific region >45,000 years ago. Nevertheless, Cook also noted in his journal two men at Botany Bay who "seem'd resolved to oppose" his first landing. According to Cook, after one of the men threw a rock, Cook fired a musquet loaded with small shott, which struck him with little effect. Some shott was lodged into one of the men's shields and was taken back to England by Cook, where it remains in the British Museum. Cook spent a greater period of time among the Guugu Yimithirr people around modern
Cooktown in Queensland, where his ship was nearly wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. Here relations were generally amicable and Cook recorded words from their language including "kangaroo", though a fight broke out when the British took turtles from the river without sharing them. Peace was restored when an elder presented Cook with a broken-tipped spear as a peace offering – remembered as a first "act of reconciliation". The encounter is commemorated annually by the Guugu Yimithirr to this day. Cook's favourable impression of the East Coast of Australia led directly to the commencement of the British colonisation of Australia, commencing at Sydney in 1788. The
First Fleet of British ships was commanded by Governor
Arthur Phillip, who had been instructed to "endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections", and to enjoin his British subjects to "live in amity and kindness with them" so as "to cultivate an acquaintance with them without their having an idea of our great superiority over them".
Dates by area people at the signing of
Batman's Treaty, 1835
British colonisation of Australia began with the arrival of the
First Fleet in
Botany Bay, New South Wales, in 1788. Settlements were subsequently established in
Tasmania (1803),
Victoria (1803),
Queensland (1824),
Western Australia (1826), and the
Colony of South Australia (1836). The first settlement in the
Northern Territory was built after Captain
Gordon Bremer took possession of the
Tiwi Islands of
Bathurst and
Melville, claiming them for the
colony of New South Wales, although that settlement failed after a few years, along with a couple of later attempts; permanent settlement was only finally achieved at
Darwin in 1869. Australia was the exception to British imperial colonisation practices, in that no treaty was drawn up setting out terms of agreement between the settlers and native proprietors, as was the case in North America and
New Zealand. Many of the men on the First Fleet had had military experience among Native American tribes in North America, and tended to attribute to the Aboriginal people alien and misleading systems or concepts like
chieftainship and
tribe with which they had become acquainted in the northern hemisphere. British administrative control began in the Torres Strait Islands in 1862, with the appointment of John Jardine, police magistrate at
Rockhampton, as Government Resident in the Torres Straits. He originally established a small settlement on
Albany Island, but on 1 August 1864 he went to Somerset Island. English missionaries arrived on
Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871. In 1872 the boundary of Queensland was extended to include
Thursday Island and some other islands in Torres Strait within of the Queensland coast, and in 1879 Queensland
annexed the other islands, which became part of the British
colony of Queensland.
Impact One immediate consequence was a series of epidemics of European diseases such as
measles,
smallpox and
tuberculosis. In the 19th century, smallpox was the principal cause of Aboriginal deaths, and vaccinations of the "native inhabitants" had begun in earnest by the 1840s. This smallpox epidemic in 1789 is estimated to have killed up to 90% of the
Darug people. The cause of the outbreak is disputed. Some scholars have attributed it to European settlers, but it is also argued that
Macassan fishermen from
South Sulawesi and nearby islands may have introduced smallpox to Australia before the arrival of Europeans. A third suggestion is that the outbreak was caused by contact with members of the
First Fleet. A fourth theory is that the epidemic was of
chickenpox, not smallpox, carried by members of the First Fleet, and to which the Aboriginal people also had no immunity. Moreover, Aboriginal people were infected with sexually transmitted infections, especially syphilis and gonorrhea. Another consequence of British colonisation was European seizure of land and water resources, with the decimation of kangaroo and other food sources which continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as rural lands were converted for sheep and cattle grazing. Settlers also participated in the rape and forcible prostitution of Aboriginal women. Some Europeans, for example escaped convicts, lived in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In 1834 there occurred the first recorded use of
Aboriginal trackers, who proved very adept at navigating their way through the Australian landscape and finding people. During the 1860s,
Tasmanian Aboriginal skulls were particularly sought internationally for studies into
craniofacial anthropometry. The skeleton of
Truganini, a Tasmanian Aboriginal who died in 1876, was exhumed within two years of her death despite her pleas to the contrary by the
Royal Society of Tasmania, and later placed on display. Campaigns continue to have Aboriginal body parts returned to Australia for burial; Truganini's body was returned in 1976 and cremated, and her ashes were scattered according to her wishes. Place names sometimes reveal discrimination, such as Mount Jim Crow in
Rockhampton, Queensland (now
Mount Baga), as well as racist policies, like Brisbane's Boundary Streets, which used to indicate boundaries where Aboriginal people were not allowed to cross during certain times of the day. There is ongoing discussion about changing many of these names. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had their lives under the jurisdiction of various state-based protection laws. These
Acts of Parliament appointed
Protectors of Aborigines and
Aboriginal Protection Boards, whose role was to control the lives of Indigenous Australians. Wages were controlled by the Protectors, and Indigenous Australians received less income than their non-Indigenous counterparts in employment. During this time, many Aboriginal people were victims of slavery by colonists alongside
Pacific Islander peoples who were kidnapped from their homes, in a practice known as
blackbirding. Between 1860 and 1970, under the guise of protectionist policies, people, including children as young as 12, were forced to work on properties where they worked under horrific conditions and most did not receive any wages. In the
pearling industry, Aboriginal peoples were bought for about 5 pounds, with pregnant Aboriginal women "prized because their lungs were believed to have greater air capacity". Aboriginal prisoners in the Aboriginal-only prison on
Rottnest Island, many of whom were there on trumped up charges, were chained up and forced to work. In 1971, 373 Aboriginal men were found buried in unmarked graves on the island. Up until June 2018, the former prison was being used as holiday accommodation. 's "Australia's coloured minority" book From 1810, Aboriginal peoples were moved onto mission stations, run by churches and the state. After this period of protectionist policies that aimed to segregate and control Aboriginal populations, in 1937 the Commonwealth government agreed to move towards assimilation policies. These policies aimed to integrate Aboriginal persons who were "not of full blood" into the white community in an effort to eliminate the "Aboriginal problem". As part of this, there was an increase in the number of children forcibly removed from their homes and placed with white people, either in institutions or foster homes.
Frontier wars and massacres , 1838 , 1883 As part of the colonisation process, there were many conflicts and clashes between colonists and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the continent and islands. In Queensland, the killing of Aboriginal peoples was largely perpetrated by civilian "hunting" parties and the Native Police, armed groups of Aboriginal men who were recruited at gunpoint and led by government officers to eliminate Aboriginal resistance. There is evidence that massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, which began with arrival of British colonists, continued until the 1930s. Researchers at the
University of Newcastle under
Lyndall Ryan have been mapping the massacres. they have mapped almost 500 places where massacres happened, with 12,361 Aboriginal people killed and 204 Colonists killed, numbering at least 311 massacres over a period of about 140 years. After losing a significant number of their social unit in one blow, the survivors were left very vulnerable – with reduced ability to gather food, reproduce, or fulfill their ceremonial obligations, as well as defend themselves against further attack. Estimating the total number of deaths during the frontier wars is difficult due to lack of records and the fact that many massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander were kept secret. It is often quoted that 20,000 Aboriginal Australians and 2000 colonists died in the frontier wars; however, recent research indicates at least 40,000 Aboriginal dead and 2,000 to 2,500 settlers dead. Other research indicates a minimum of 65,000 Aboriginal peoples may have been killed in Queensland alone. There have been arguments over whether deaths of Aboriginal peoples, particularly in Tasmania, as well as the forcible removal of children from Aboriginal communities, constitutes
genocide. There has been a broad range of historical research on the massacres and treatment of Aboriginal peoples, including by Lyndall Ryan at the Centre for 21st Century Humanities, the Frontier Conflict Database, and the Australian Commonwealth government's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children From their Families. According to the analysis of Justice Ronald Wilson in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Report Australia's policy of forcible removal was genocidal in nature. Quoting Raphael Lemkin, Wilson defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the lives of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves." The objectives of which were "the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." Wilson states that "Genocide can be committed by means other than actual physical extermination. It is committed by the forcible transfer of children, provided the other elements of the crime are established." He points out that "Genocide is committed even when the destruction has not been carried out. A conspiracy to commit genocide and an attempt at genocide are both crimes which are committed whether or not any actual destruction occurred." Further, Wilson found that "The debates at the time of the drafting of the Genocide Convention establish clearly that an act or policy is still genocidal when it is motivated by a number of objectives. To constitute an act of genocide the planned extermination of a group need not be solely motivated by animosity or hatred."...and that "reasonable foreseeability...is sufficient to establish the Convention's intent element." He concluded that "The policy of forcible removal of children from Indigenous Australians to other groups for the purpose of raising them separately from and ignorant of their culture and people could properly be labelled 'genocidal' in breach of binding international law from at least 11 December 1946...The practice continued for almost another quarter of a century." There are few memorials in Australia acknowledging the widespread massacres of Aboriginal Peoples, and no memorials describing it as genocide. However, the massacres were often recorded by Australians as place names, for example:
Murdering Gully in Newcastle, Murdering Creek at Lake Weyba, Skull Pocket and Skeleton Creek near Cairns, Rifle Creek near Mt Molloy Qld, Skull Lagoon near Mt Carbine Qld, Skull Hole near Winton Qld, Battle Camp Road, Range and Station east of Laura Qld, Slaughterhouse Creek (Waterloo Creek) NSW.
1871–1969: Stolen Generations The Stolen Generations were those children of Australian Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander descent who were forcibly removed from their families by the Australian
federal and
state government agencies and
church missions for the purpose of eradicating Aboriginal culture, under
acts of their respective parliaments. The forcible removal of these children occurred in the period between approximately 1871 and 1969, although in some places children were still being taken in the 1970s.
Early 20th century By 1900, the recorded Indigenous population of Australia had declined to approximately 93,000. However, this was only a partial count, as both Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders were poorly covered, with desert Aboriginal peoples not counted at all until the 1930s. During the first half of the twentieth century, many Indigenous Australians worked as
stockmen on
sheep stations and
cattle stations for extremely low wages. The Indigenous population continued to decline, reaching a low of 74,000 in 1933 before numbers began to recover. By 1995, population numbers had reached pre-colonisation levels, and in 2010 there were around 563,000 Indigenous Australians. Although, as
British subjects, all Indigenous Australians were nominally entitled to vote, generally only those who merged into mainstream society did so. Only Western Australia and Queensland specifically excluded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the electoral rolls. Despite the
Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which excluded "Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and Pacific Islands except New Zealand" from voting unless they were on the roll before 1901, South Australia insisted that all voters enfranchised within its borders would remain eligible to vote in the Commonwealth, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continued to be added to their rolls, albeit haphazardly. ,
South Australia, Despite efforts to bar their enlistment, over 1,000 Indigenous Australians fought for Australia in the First World War. 1934 saw the first appeal to the
High Court by an Aboriginal Australian, and it succeeded. Dhakiyarr was found to have been wrongly convicted of the murder of a white policeman, for which he had been sentenced to death; the case focused national attention on
Aboriginal rights issues. Dhakiyarr disappeared upon release. In 1938, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the British
First Fleet was marked as a
Day of Mourning and Protest at an Aboriginal meeting in Sydney, and has since become marked around Australia as "Invasion Day" or "Survival Day" by Aboriginal protesters and their supporters. Hundreds of Indigenous Australians served in the Australian armed forces during World War Two – including with the
Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion and The
Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, which were established to guard
Australia's North against the threat of Japanese invasion. However, most were denied pension rights and military allotments, except in Victoria, where each case was judged individually, without a blanket denial of rights accruing from their service.
Late 20th century at the
Albert Namatjira Gallery,
Alice Springs.
Aboriginal art and artists became increasingly prominent in Australian cultural life during the second half of the 20th century. The 1960s was a pivotal decade in the assertion of Aboriginal rights and a time of growing collaboration between Aboriginal activists and white Australian activists. In 1962, Commonwealth legislation guaranteed Aboriginal people the right to vote in
Commonwealth elections, which had previously been denied to Indigenous people in Queensland and Western Australia. A group of
University of Sydney students organised a bus tour of western and coastal New South Wales towns in 1965 to raise awareness of the state of Aboriginal health and living conditions. This
Freedom Ride also aimed to highlight the social discrimination faced by Aboriginal people and encourage Aboriginal people themselves to resist discrimination. As mentioned above, Indigenous Australians received lower wages than their non-Indigenous counterparts in employment. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland in particular had their income quarantined by the Protector and were allowed a minimal amount of their income. In 1966,
Vincent Lingiari led the famous
Wave Hill walk-off (Gurindji strike) of Indigenous employees of
Wave Hill Station in protest against poor pay and conditions (later the subject of the
Paul Kelly and
Kev Carmody song "
From Little Things Big Things Grow"). Since 1999, the
Queensland Government, under pressure from the
Queensland Council of Unions, has established a number of schemes to give any earned income not received at the time back to Indigenous Australians. The landmark
1967 referendum called by Prime Minister
Harold Holt allowed the
Commonwealth to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people by modifying
section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, and for Aboriginal people to be included when the country does a count to determine electoral representation by repealing
section 127. The referendum passed with 90.77% voter support. In the controversial 1971
Gove land rights case, Justice Blackburn ruled that Australia had been
terra nullius before British settlement, and that no concept of
native title existed in Australian law. Following the 1973
Woodward commission, in 1975 the federal government under
Gough Whitlam drafted the Aboriginal Land Rights Bill. This was enacted the following year under the
Fraser government as the
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, which recognised Aboriginal Australians' system of land rights in the Northern Territory, and established the basis upon which Aboriginal people in the NT could claim rights to land based on
traditional occupation. In 1985, the Australian government returned ownership of
Uluru (Ayers Rock) to the
Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people. In 1992, the
High Court of Australia reversed Justice Blackburn's ruling and handed down its decision in the
Mabo Case, declaring the previous legal concept of
terra nullius to be invalid and confirming the existence of
native title in Australia. Indigenous Australians began to serve in parliaments from the late 1960s. In 1971,
Neville Bonner joined the
Australian Senate as a Senator for Queensland for the
Liberal Party, becoming the first Indigenous Australian in the Federal Parliament. A year later, the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on the steps of
Parliament House in
Canberra. In 1976, Sir
Douglas Nicholls was appointed as the 28th Governor of South Australia, the first Aboriginal person appointed to vice-regal office. In the
general election of 2010,
Ken Wyatt of the
Liberal Party became the first Indigenous Australian elected to the
Australian House of Representatives. In the
general election of 2016,
Linda Burney of the
Australian Labor Party became the second Indigenous Australian, and the first Indigenous Australian woman, elected to the
Australian House of Representatives. She was immediately appointed
Shadow Minister for Human Services. In sport
Evonne Goolagong Cawley became the world number-one ranked tennis player in 1971 and won 14 Grand Slam titles during her career. In 1973
Arthur Beetson became the first Indigenous Australian to captain his country in any sport when he first led the Australian National Rugby League team,
the Kangaroos. In 1982,
Mark Ella became captain of the
Australia national rugby union team. In 2000, Aboriginal sprinter
Cathy Freeman lit the
Olympic flame at the opening ceremony of the
2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and went on to win the
400 metres at the Games. In 2019, tennis player
Ashleigh Barty was ranked world number one. In 1984,
a group of Pintupi people who were living a traditional
hunter-gatherer desert-dwelling life were tracked down in the
Gibson Desert in Western Australia and brought in to a settlement. They are believed to have been the last
uncontacted people in Australia. During this period, the federal government enacted a number of significant, but controversial, policy initiatives in relation to Indigenous Australians. A representative body, the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), was set up in 1990.
Reconciliation Reconciliation between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians became a significant issue in Australian politics in the late 20th century. In 1991, the
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established by the federal government to facilitate reconciliation. In 1998, a Constitutional Convention which selected a Republican model for a referendum included just six Indigenous participants, leading Monarchist delegate
Neville Bonner to end his contribution to the convention with his Jagera tribal "Sorry Chant" in sadness at the low number of Indigenous representatives. An inquiry into the
Stolen Generations was launched in 1995 by the
Keating government, and the final report delivered in 1997 – the
Bringing Them Home report – estimated that around 10% to 33% of all Aboriginal children had been separated from their families for the duration of the policies. The succeeding
Howard government largely ignored the recommendations provided by the report, one of which was a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians for the Stolen Generations. The republican model, as well as a proposal for a new Constitutional preamble which would have included the "honouring" of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, was put to
referendum but did not succeed. In 1999, the Australian Parliament passed a
Motion of Reconciliation drafted by Prime Minister
John Howard in consultation with Aboriginal Senator
Aden Ridgeway naming mistreatment of Indigenous Australians as the most "blemished chapter in our national history", although Howard refused to offer any formal apology. On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd issued a formal
apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples, on behalf of the federal government of Australia, for the suffering caused by the Stolen Generations.
21st century In 2001, the Federal Government dedicated
Reconciliation Place in Canberra. On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd reversed Howard's decision and issued a
public apology to members of the
Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian Government. ATSIC was abolished by the Australian Government in 2004 amidst allegations of corruption.
Emergency Response/Stronger Futures The
Northern Territory National Emergency Response (also known as the Intervention) was launched in 2007 by the government of Prime Minister
John Howard, in response to the
Little Children are Sacred report into allegations of
child abuse among Aboriginal communities in the NT. The government banned alcohol in prescribed communities in the Territory; quarantined a percentage of
welfare payments for essential goods purchasing; dispatched additional police and medical personnel to the region; and suspended the permit system for access to Aboriginal communities. In addition to these measures, the
army were released into communities and there were increased police powers, which were later further increased with the so-called "paperless arrests" legislation. In 2010, United Nations Special Rapporteur James Anaya found the Emergency Response to be racially discriminatory, and said that aspects of it represented a limitation on "individual autonomy". These findings were criticised by the government's Indigenous Affairs Minister
Jenny Macklin, the Opposition and Indigenous leaders like
Warren Mundine and
Bess Price. In 2011, the Australian government enacted legislation to implement the
Stronger Futures policy, which is intended to address key issues that exist within Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory such as unemployment, school attendance and enrolment,
alcohol abuse, community safety and child protection, food security and housing and land reforms. The policy has been criticised by organisations such as
Amnesty International and other groups, including on the basis that it maintains "racially-discriminatory" elements of the
Emergency Response Act and continues control by the federal government over "Aboriginal people and their lands".
Constitutional change proposed In 2010, the federal government appointed a panel comprising Indigenous leaders, other legal experts and some members of parliament (including Ken Wyatt) to provide advice on how best to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the
federal Constitution. The panel's recommendations, reported to the federal government in January 2012, included deletion of provisions of the Constitution referencing race (
Section 25 and
Section 51(xxvi)), and new provisions on meaningful recognition and further protection from discrimination. Subsequently, a
proposed referendum on Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians was ultimately abandoned in 2013. The
Uluru Statement from the Heart was released 26 May 2017 by delegates to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Referendum Convention, held near
Uluru in Central Australia. The statement calls for a "First Nations Voice" in the Australian Constitution and a "Makarrata Commission" to supervise a process of "agreement-making" and "truth-telling" between government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The statement references the
1967 referendum which brought about changes to the Constitution to include Indigenous Australians. == Population ==