Artwork depicting the first contact that was made with the Gweagal Aboriginal people and Captain James Cook and his crew on the shores of the Cronulla sand dunes, New South Wales

Indigenous Australians are members of groups that existed in Australia and the surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. The term is therefore somewhat broad in scope, including such ethnically diverse groups as Tiwi people, Noongar people, and Torres Strait Islanders, and does not generally imply a close relationship or common origin of all included groups.

Quotes

• The realistic timeframe that should be considered to achieve outcomes for Indigenous people equal to the rest of the community is to focus on the outcomes that should be expected for the children to be born in 20 to 25 years from today.
  • Australian Education Union, authorised by Angelo Gavrielatos, AEU Federal President, in the Australian Education Union's 'Submission on the Australian Government's draft Indigenous Education Action Plan 2010–2014', (2010)

• Too much emphasis is being placed in the current debate on providing opportunity for indigenous kids in very remote Australia for imagined futures as 'lawyers, doctors and plumbers'…and too little for futures as artists, land managers and hunters living on the land they own.
  • Jon C. Altman, Letter to the Editor, The Australian (2 June 2006)

• We have to get rid of the passive welfare mentality that has taken over our people. Our traditional economy was a real economy and demanded responsibility (you don’t work, you starve). The whitefella market economy is real (you don’t work, you don’t get paid).
  • Noel Pearson, Up From the Mission (2009)

• Do you still throw spears at each other?
  • Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as quoted in "Prince Philip's spear 'gaffe'", BBC News ( 1 March 2002)

• The law as far as the Aboriginal law stands, violence on an Aboriginal woman is not really terrible but a mild one. You can work around it.
  • Wali Wunungmurra, chairman of the Northern Land Council in response to prosecutor Damian Jones' question 'Can you tell this court what is the law on violence to women?' in the Northern Territory Supreme Court, 23 September 2010

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Indigenous Australians at Wikipedia
• Media related to Australian Aboriginals at Wikimedia Commons