A difficult past

For almost 50,000 years Aboriginal Australians have lived in this huge country.a dot paintin

Problems today

Today there are about 670,000 Indigenous Australians in Australia -less than 3% of the total population (23.6 million).The Europeans took the lands of the Aboriginal Australians to farm and to build towns- mostly on the coast.Another problem was that the Europeans brought diseases to the continent and many Indigenous Australians died.That means Aboriginal Australians tell their stories in dances and in paintings- 'dot paintings'.Some Indigenous Australians have taken on the modern Australian way of life, but many haven't.a didger

the emu

But if you look at a painting long enough, you might see the stones, plants, trees, tracks and animals of the outback.They lived a simple life and they were mostly nomadic - they moved around a lot, gathered food and hunted wild animals.Many young Indigenous Australians leave school early, are unemployed, or have problems with alcohol.