Understanding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia

The idea beneath the places

Country

Common Ground, a First Nations organisation, describes Country as a living presence. It takes in land, waters, sky, plants, animals and Ancestors, and people have duties towards it. The national curriculum and AIATSIS, the national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies, name this connection to Country, together with strong kinship systems, as widely shared across the nations. The English word is the same as the one for a nation state. The meaning is not.

Two peoples, many nations

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are two distinct groups. Within them are hundreds of nations, each with its own language, Law and Country. Counts differ, from about 200 to more than 250, so we give no single number. In 2021 there were an estimated one million Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, 3.8% of Australians, and about four in ten of them lived in major cities. So anything said across all of them has to be said carefully. “Many First Nations describe” is honest. “Aboriginal people believe” is not.

Everywhere you go in Australia, you are on someone’s Country.

Law that is still in force

The Law that governs Country is often called the Dreaming in English. Some reject the older word “Dreamtime”, because it puts the Law in the past when it is continuing. Each nation has its own word. At Uluṟu it is Tjukurpa, which Aṉangu describe as the foundation their way of life stands on: law, moral code and a map of where to find water and food. Authority sits with Elders, who, in Common Ground’s words, “often hold authority and decision-making power in our families and communities”. Some knowledge belongs only to those with the right to hold it.

What happened to Country, and what has come back

British settlement from 1788 took land without a treaty. People were moved onto missions and reserves, and from 1910 to the 1970s children were taken from their families: the Stolen Generations. In 1992 the High Court’s Mabo decision rejected the idea that the land had belonged to no one, and recognised native title. Some land had already come back: Uluṟu was handed back to Aṉangu in 1985. More has followed, often to be run jointly with a parks service.

The gap has not closed. On the government’s own Closing the Gap figures, First Nations men and women born in 2020–22 can expect to live 8.8 and 8.1 fewer years than other Australians. The Productivity Commission finds progress where governments share power with communities. This is a living culture with a hard history, and you will see both.

One trace of that history runs across Western Australia. In 1931 three girls, Molly, Daisy and Gracie, escaped from the Moore River Native Settlement, where they had been taken from their families. They walked home to Jigalong, about 1,600 kilometres, by following the No. 1 Rabbit-Proof Fence, which, finished in 1907, ran from the south coast to the north-west coast and crossed the Great Eastern Highway at Burracoppin. Molly’s daughter, Doris Pilkington Garimara, told the story in Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996).

How to recognise it

Country named and welcomed

The most common sign is a welcome. A Welcome to Country is given by Traditional Owners, often Elders. An Acknowledgement of Country can be given by anyone, and you will hear one at the start of meetings, concerts and tours (Amnesty International Australia sets out the difference). You will also see Country in names. Fraser Island became K’gari in June 2023; the Grampians are dual-named Gariwerd. The mistake is to treat a welcome as a formality to sit through. It is an invitation onto someone else’s land. Example: Sydney Harbour.

Knowledge shared, and knowledge held back

Some stories are public. Others belong to particular people, by age, gender or initiation, and are not told to visitors at all. You may see a sign asking you not to photograph a stretch of rock, or hear a guide say that a story is not theirs to tell. Some communities also hold back the names and images of people who have died. The mistake is to read this as secrecy for effect, or as knowledge lost. It is knowledge kept. Example: Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa.

Land returned, and run together

Across Australia, parks and land have been handed back to their Traditional Owners, often to be managed jointly with a government parks service. You can see it in a park’s name, in its signs, and in the rangers who work there. The mistake is to think a handback closes a park. Usually it stays open, and the owners decide its future. Example: The Daintree and Cape Tribulation.

Culture made and shown

Most visitors meet the culture through art, museums and tours. So the question to ask is a plain one: who made this, and who is telling its story?

Much of what is sold as Aboriginal art is not. The Productivity Commission found in 2022 that about two-thirds of Indigenous-style souvenirs are made without input from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. That is misrepresentation for profit. The goods borrow the look of Aboriginal art and sell it to visitors who think they are buying the real thing. The Commission says such products take sales, and income, from First Nations communities and misrepresent their cultures. It recommended that sellers be required to say when a product is not made or licensed by a First Nations person.

It can also be against the law. In 2019 the Federal Court fined a wholesaler, Birubi Art, $2.3 million for selling almost 50,000 boomerangs, bullroarers, didgeridoos and message stones labelled “Authentic Aboriginal Art”. They were made in Indonesia.

A museum or a show raises the same question. An exhibition made with Elders tells you something a souvenir cannot. The mistake is to take a souvenir, or a performance, for the culture itself. Example: Melbourne Museum.

What changes across Australia

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Torres Strait Islanders are a Melanesian people of the islands between Cape York and Papua New Guinea, seafarers across about 48,000 square kilometres of water. Their way of life is Ailan Kastom, the customs, traditions and beliefs of the islands.

The Mabo decision began with an Islander: Eddie Koiki Mabo, who fought for his land on Mer, or Murray Island. The Torres Strait Islander flag, designed by Bernard Namok of Thursday Island and adopted in 1992, shows the land in green, the people in black and the sea in blue, with a white dhari, a headdress, at its centre. We have no guide to the Torres Strait yet, so none of the places below is an Islander place.

City and remote

Four in ten First Nations people live in major cities, and the cities stand on Country too: Sydney on the Country of the Eora and Dharug (also spelled Daruk) nations, Melbourne on that of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong. In remote areas the difference is practical. Some Aboriginal land and communities need a permit to enter, so ask your tour operator or the local land council before you go.

Where people disagree

First Nations Australians do not speak with one voice. The 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament split them as it split the country. Noel Pearson argued for Yes: “Voting no is not a neutral choice.” Senator Lidia Thorpe opposed it from the other side: “it shouldn’t happen before Truth and Treaty”. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price opposed it because it “seeks to create different levels of citizenship”. The result, and the argument over 26 January, are on our culture and etiquette page. Stories are disputed too, as the Blue Mountains show. We report the disagreements and take no side.

Places that reveal Country

Each of these eight places, all with a guide of their own on this site, shows a different side of Country: the Law held in a landscape, land taken and handed back, a city built on it, a story told by others, and a culture still told and made by its own people. The table sets them side by side; the cards say what to notice at each.

Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa

The land is the Law. Aṉangu own the park and run it with Parks Australia. Their Tjukurpa is law, moral code and map at once. Some of it is told to visitors by rangers at the base; some is not told at all, and certain sites may not be photographed. The climb closed in 2019. Walk the base instead, and read the rules in our guide first.

The Daintree and Cape Tribulation

A park handed back. In September 2021 the Daintree and three neighbouring national parks were returned to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people, who now manage them jointly with the Queensland Government. The Queensland Government called it the first handback of a World Heritage Area to combine ownership and joint management. The parks stay open to visitors. What has changed is who decides the park’s future, and that is the point to notice.

Kuranda

Removal, and the way back. Kuranda is Djabugay Country. Near the village, the Mona Mona mission held people from 1913 to 1962; you will not find its story in the village. In 2004 the Djabugay won native title over Barron Gorge National Park, the first such determination over a Queensland national park. We have ridden both the Skyrail and the railway, which cross that Country; the guide says what you will and will not be told.

Sydney Harbour

Country under a city. NSW National Parks still records this harbour as Aboriginal Country, and engravings and middens survive on its shores. At Manly Cove on 31 December 1788, a man named Arabanoo was seized on the governor’s orders; he died of smallpox the following May. We have crossed the harbour many times, and its engravings at Grotto Point lie on the walk to Manly.

The Blue Mountains

Whose story is told. Blue Mountains City Council names the Dharug and Gundungurra as Traditional Owners. One researcher has traced the famous tale of the Three Sisters turned to stone to a non-Aboriginal schoolgirl, and a Gundungurra Elder tells a different story. We cannot settle which is older. Take the difference with you to Echo Point, and ask whose version you are being told.

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne

The city read as Country. The gardens stand on Kulin Nation Country and call themselves a significant cultural site for the Kulin. Their Aboriginal Heritage Walk, led by a First Peoples guide, reads the plants and the land through the people who knew them long before 1846. We walked the gardens in 2023 but did not take the walk. The guide has its times; check the price when you book.

Melbourne Museum

Culture told by its own people. In the museum’s Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, the First Peoples exhibition was made with the Yulendj Group of Elders. It tells the history, cultures and survival of south-eastern Australia’s First Peoples through more than 600 objects, in their own voice. It is a gallery to plan a visit around, not one to pass through, and our guide to the museum and the Royal Exhibition Building has the details.

National Gallery of Victoria

Culture still being made. At the Ian Potter Centre, the story of Australian art begins in the First Nations galleries, where Wurrdha Marra shows the gallery’s First Nations collection, free and ongoing. Placed first, it reads as the start of Australian art, not a preface to it. Read the labels as you go: who made each work, where they come from, and when. The guide covers both NGV sites.

How to experience it respectfully

On most days you are a guest on Country, and sometimes a customer. At a Welcome you may be an invited listener, and on a guided walk a learner. You are rarely invited further than that, and you should not expect to be. Visitors are not always good guests. At a 2022 summit, Queensland’s Indigenous mayors made disrespectful tourists a top priority. Patricia Yusia, mayor of the Northern Peninsula Area, described “so much disrespect to the Country that we are trying to sustain and care for”.

• Listen to the Welcome. It is an invitation onto someone’s Country, and the room usually tells you how to receive it: quietly.
• Ask before you photograph, and accept no. Rules at sensitive sites are the owners’ to set, and people are not exhibits. Each place guide carries that site’s rules.
• Choose who tells you the story. Book Aboriginal-led where you can, and ask who owns the business. Tourism Australia’s Discover Aboriginal Experiences collection describes its experiences as Aboriginal-guided, but publishes no ownership test. The Northern Territory’s definition is a business wholly, or at least majority, owned and controlled by Aboriginal people.
• Buy art with a name on it. The Indigenous Art Code suggests buying from its members, looking for the artist’s name and a certificate from an art centre or gallery, and being wary of deep discounts.
• Do not question who is Aboriginal. “It simply doesn’t matter whether you’re one 16th Aboriginal or 100 per cent Aboriginal,” says the Gomeroi journalist Danny Teece-Johnson. Identity is connection to Country and community.