[2] Not only Aborigines. On the Indigenous Australians, part II

The most people, when they hear ‘the Indigenous Australians’, ‘the Australian Aborigines’ are the first think to come to their minds. But these sets are not exactly identical. Apart from the Australian Aborigines, there are some other ethnic groups or groups of ethnicities indigenous to Australia that are distinct from Australian Aborigines.

Aboriginal Australians

The flag of Aboriginal Australians: the black symbolizes 'the Black people', the circle represents the sun and the red symbolises Australian deserts famous for the red colour

Who are the Australian Aborigines? These are the people native to the Australian continent (mainland Australia) and to the island of Tasmania, whose ancestors came there before the British colonization of 1788 (probably 44,000 years ago, as the geneticist say, or even 126,000 as some archeological methods claim). They speak (or spoke) the Australian Aboriginal languages, that is an umbrella term for several language families or phyla that are not necessary genetically connected, but probably – they are (later more about them). They are also (at least partially, if mixed) members of the Australoid race – they are one of the darkest people on the planet Earth, and that’s why they are often called ‘the Blacks’ in Australia, but believe me, this is one of their few common traits with the Sub-Saharan Africans, alongside prognathism (large jaws), the texture of hair and dolichocephaly (long skulls – when the head, seen from above, is long relatively to its width) and the genetic distance between the Australodois and the Negroids are one of the biggest within the human species. They are not the only representatives of the Australoid race (although the limits of this broad racial classification are unclear) – there are also, at least the Veddas of Ceylon and the Melanesians (including the Papuans) and the Negrito (the Asian ‘Pygmies’); a similar type of people is found as far as in Hadhramaut region in Yemen, south of the Empty Quarter; also the South Indians (Dravidians) and the non-Melanesian Austronesians do have some Australoid genetic heritage – but we must remember that these groups differ very much from each other. What is interesting, it’s quite common for the Australian Aborigines and the Melanesians to manifest blonde (and curly in the same time) hair, especially in children.

According to the population census of 2011, there are in Australia 600,000 of people of Aboriginal descendent, that is 2,7% of Australian population. Nearly one of three Territorians (i.e. inhabitants of the Northern Territory) are Aboriginal, but their biggest (by number) community lives in New South Wales and Queensland (respectively 208,000 and 188,000 persons). 

Torres Strait Islanders

Official (since 1992) flag of Torres Strait Islanders; the thing in white is not a strange horseshoe, but a traditional local headdress.

A Torres Strait Islander in the traditional headdress

But the Aboriginal Australians are not the only Indigenous Australians: this umbrella term covers also the Torres Strait Islanders who are a group distinct from Aborigines.

The Torres Strait is located between Cape York Peninsula (the farmost point of continental Australia) and the island of New Guinea. There are 14 inhabited island out of more than 200. 

The vast majority of the inhabitants are the Torres Strait Islanders who are Melanesians, culturally connected with the Papuans from New Guinea. They are traditionally sealers trading with coastal people from neighbouring lands, but today majority of them lives in continental Australia (particularly in Queensland; the Torres Strait Islands are also part of the Queensland state): out of 48,000 only 3,800 live in the traditional area, most of them on the Thursday Island, the biggest (by population) island in the region.

They speak two traditional languages: the Western Torres Strait language which is a language genetically connected to languages of people from the Australian mainland from Pama-Nyungan family or probably a mixed Australian-Papuan language (according to some linguists, it’s simply a Papuan language), spoken by 1,200 people, once was a lingua franca for the region; the Eastern Torres Strait language, spoken by 210 people is clearly a Papuan language (classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly family, made up of 4 languages).

The traditional languages are largely replaced by the Torres Strait Creole, a language known also by  a charming name ‘Brokan’. It’s an Englis-based creole developed in 19^th century and spoken by 6,000 people on Torres Strait Island, upper Cape York Peninsula and on the eastern coast of Queensland, not only  by Torres Strait Islanders, but also by some Australian Aborigines. Many of them speak also Torres Strait English which is an extreme point of sociolectal continuum, with the Brokan in the center and the traditional indigenous languages on the other side.