Captain Cook, on his voyage of discovery, wrote in his journal that the Aborigines "appear to be the most wretched people on the Earth, but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans." Despite Cook's insight, it did not stop him basing his claim on the eastern seaboard of Australia on the legal fiction that he had discovered a terra nullius - a land without people. At the time of Cook's visit, the Aboriginal population was probably between 500,000 and one million. The subsequent interaction between white settlers and Aborigines almost turned Cook's legal fiction into fact. Disease, high child mortality rates and persecution of the local inhabitants dramatically reduced their numbers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Aboriginal population was as low as 50,000. Today it is estimated that there are about 230,000 people of Aboriginal descent living in Australia. Aborigines were displaced, often by force, by early white settlers who spread out from their first settlements to secure grazing land for sheep. In Tasmania, dispossession turned to genocide, nearly wiping out its indigenous population. Only a few survived on offshore islands. The settlers' weapons easily overpowered those of the indigenous people, but the Aborigines did not simply give up their land without a fight.
In many areas of the country, guerrilla warfare tactics were used by Aboriginal people in retaliation The Country and Its People for the white settlers' transgressions of tribal law. In some areas with a high Aboriginal population, such as near Hobart and Sydney and Cooktown on Cape York, different tribes united to launch at- tacks on the colonists. The expansion of the colony, however, was not greatly hindered by Aboriginal resistance, much weakened by the diseases brought by Europeans.
The introduction of alcohol further debilitated their society. In 1905, the government adopted a policy of "protecting" the Aborigines by segregating them from the influences of European society.
This formalized and accelerated a movement initiated in the 1870s of moving Aboriginal people to missions and reserves. This was, in fact, a reaction to wide- spread concern that Australia had witnessed the destruction of a race with the death of Truganini - purportedly "Tasmania's Last Aborigine" - in Hobart in 1876. Aborigines were removed from their traditional territories and different tribes were moved onto the same reserves without any regard to kinship or relationships.
The Aboriginals Ordinance in1918 placed many Aboriginal children of white fathers in the foster care of white families, as a way of ensuring the "purity" of Aboriginal communities.
This institutionalized racism continued until the 1930s and in some cases into the 1960s, resulting in a "stolen generation" of people, forcibly cut off from their Aboriginal heritage. There is a saying among Aborigines that he who loses his dreaming is lost. The arrival of Europeans almost ended the traditional Aboriginal way of life, and today most live in cities and towns or in isolated settlements near tribal lands. In the outback and urban communities, though, elders are making every effort to ensure that their children are told the secrets of the DrCamtirne so they do not lose touch with their religious and spiritual values.
Although few continue their nomadic ways, many of Australia's Aboriginal people still speak traditional languages at home, and there is a growing interest among younger people to learn more about the life, art, stories and music of their forefathers. In recent years, Australia has become more sensitive to the plight of Aborigines, resulting in increased health and educational services, greater recognition of Aboriginal land rights and a growing appreciation of Aboriginal culture.
