The History

The history of Aboriginal Australian is thought to have spanned 40,000 to 45,000 years, although some estimates have put the figure at up to 80,000 years before European settlement. The Aboriginal Australians lived with a strong dependence with the land, and also the water. Each group developed skills for the area in which they would live – hunting or fishing or gathering.

The path of Australian Aboriginal history changed radically after the 18th- and 19th-century settlement of the British: Indigenous people were displaced from their ways of life, were forced to submit to European rule, and were later encouraged to assimilate into Western culture. Since the 1960s, reconciliation has been the pursuit of European Australian–Aboriginal Australian relations.