fustea We Archaeological evidence shows that the ancestors of Australia’s Aborigines came to Australia more than 60,000 years ago. Aborigines lived in family units of 15-30 people. People respected the environment around them and made sure animals and plants were never over hunted or over collected. The Aborigines were hunters and gatherers. The men hunted the large animals such as kangaroos, emus and turtles, and the women and children hunted smaller animals and collected fruits, berries, and other plants. On the coast people caught fish and collected shellfish. To protect nature, and because of seasonal variations, people would only stay in an area for a certain time, The older men and women of a group passed its history and laws down to young people in the form of stories, dances, and paintings on rocks. According to the beliefs of many Aboriginal groups, people have been in Australia since the beginning - the Dreaming, sometimes called “the Dreamtime”. This was the creation period when the landscape was created and the plants, animals, and human beings were given life. The Dreaming sets up a spiritual relationship between the people and the land with its plants, and animals and it is the basis of the traditional Aboriginal way of life. The spirit ancestors gave Aboriginal people their laws and customs and are the source of their songs, dances, and rituals. It is estimated that there were about 300,000 Aborigines in Australia in 1788 when the first European settlers arrived, but by 1830 perhaps only 100,000 remained. In the late 1700s the British prisons were overcrowded and it was decided to send convicts to Australia. This was a time when Europe’s nations believed they could colonize countries they considered less developed than their own. The Aborigines saw their land invaded and their people killed, either because of strange diseases transmitted by the Europeans or as a result of direct conflicts. From the 1840s many Aborigines were placed in settlements run by the government or church authorities. From the early 1900s until 1970 tens of thousands of children who were part Aboriginal were forcibly taken away from their families and placed in institutions run by the government. Australia today is completely different from when the First Fleet arrived in 1788 with convicts and marines. Aborigines still live throughout Australia, both in cities and in the outback, but it was not until 1967 that the Aborigines became full citizens. Aboriginals have gradually won the right to determine their own future and to preserve their cultures, but, in spite of more positive social and political attitudes, they still have to fight against prejudice and intolerance. Aboriginal and Aborigine are both nouns used about inhabitants of a place, especially Australia, from a very early period, Aboriginal can also be an adjective Indigenous is an adjective meaning belonging naturally to a place, ¢.g. an indigenous people