Constitutional Conventions in Australia are significant meetings that have debated the Australian Constitution. The first two gatherings debated Federation and what form of Constitution to adopt, while the following conventions debated amendments to the document.
Australian Indigenous sovereignty, also recently termed Blak sovereignty, encompasses the various rights claimed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within Australia. Such rights are said to derive from Indigenous peoples' occupation and ownership of Australia prior to colonisation and through their continuing spiritual connection to land. Indigenous sovereignty is not recognised in the Australian Constitution or under Australian law.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu, also known as James Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Dr Yunupingu, was an Indigenous Australian activist who was a leader in the Aboriginal Australian community. He was involved in Indigenous land rights throughout his career. He was a Yolngu man of the Gumatj clan, from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. He was the 1978 Australian of the Year.
Lowitja O'Donoghue,, also known as Lois O'Donoghue and Lois Smart, was an Australian public administrator and Indigenous rights advocate. In 1990–1996 she was the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). She is particularly remembered for her work in improving the health and welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, and also for the part she played in the drafting of the Native Title Act 1993, which established native title in Australia.
The second question of the 1967 Australian referendum of 27 May 1967, called by the Holt government, related to Indigenous Australians. Voters were asked whether to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians in states, and whether Indigenous Australians should be included in official population counts for constitutional purposes. The term "the Aboriginal Race" was used in the question.
Patrick Lionel Djargun Dodson is an Australian indigenous rights activist and former politician. He was a Senator for Western Australia from 2016 to 2024, representing the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Marcia Lynne Langton is an Aboriginal Australian writer and academic. As of 2022 she is the Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Langton is known for her activism in the Indigenous rights arena.
William Edward Hanley Stanner CMG, often cited as W.E.H. Stanner, was an Australian anthropologist who worked extensively with Indigenous Australians. Stanner had a varied career that also included journalism in the 1930s, military service in World War II, and political advice on colonial policy in Africa and the South Pacific in the post-war period.
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and/or recognised membership of, the various ethnic groups living within the territory of present day Australia prior to British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups, which includes many ethnic groups: the Aboriginal Australians of the mainland and many islands, including Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islanders of the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea, located in Melanesia. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2021 Australian Census, representing 3.2% of the total population of Australia. Of these Indigenous Australians, 91.4% identified as Aboriginal; 4.2% identified as Torres Strait Islander; while 4.4% identified with both groups. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag have been official flags of Australia.
Indigenous Australian customary law refers to the legal systems and practices uniquely belonging to Indigenous Australians of Australia, that is, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The National Congress of Australia's First Peoples was the national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians from 2009 to 2019.
Aboriginal History is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal published as an open access journal by Aboriginal History Inc. It was established in 1977 and covers interdisciplinary historical studies in the field of the interactions between Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples. The Journal has been described as "... a flagship of the field of Australian Aboriginal history."
Tanya Hosch is an Indigenous Australian social activist and business executive. She has held leadership roles in sport, the arts, social justice and public policy. She was joint campaign manager of the "Recognise" campaign run by Reconciliation Australia from 2012 to 2016. At her appointment as social inclusion manager to the Australian Football League (AFL) in June 2016, she became the first Indigenous person and the second woman appointed to an executive position in the AFL.
Thomas Edwin Calma,, is an Aboriginal Australian human rights and social justice campaigner, and 2023 senior Australian of the Year. He is the sixth chancellor of the University of Canberra, a post held since January 2014, after two years as deputy chancellor. Calma is the second Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person to hold the position of chancellor of any Australian university.
Mick Gooda is an Aboriginal Australian public servant. He has particularly served as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016 and as Co-Commissioner of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory from 2016 to 2017. He is a descendant of the Gangulu people of Central Queensland.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a 2017 petition to the people of Australia, written and endorsed by the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders selected as delegates to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. The document calls for substantive constitutional change and structural reform through the creation of two new institutions; a constitutionally protected First Nations Voice and a Makarrata Commission, to oversee agreement-making and truth-telling between governments and First Nations. Such reforms should be implemented, it is argued, both in recognition of the continuing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and to address structural "powerlessness" that has led to severe disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These reforms can be summarised as Voice, Treaty and Truth.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, also known as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the First Nations Voice or simply the Voice, was a proposed Australian federal advisory body to comprise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to represent the views of Indigenous communities.
Lynette Wendy Russell, is an Australian historian, known for her work on the history of Indigenous Australians; in particular, anthropological history ; archaeology; gender and race, Indigenous oral history, and museum studies.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians refers to various proposals for changes to the Australian Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in the document. Various proposals have been suggested to symbolically recognise the special place Indigenous Australians have as the first peoples of Australia, along with substantial changes, such as prohibitions on racial discrimination, the protection of languages and the addition of new institutions. In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released by Indigenous leaders, which called for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as their preferred form of recognition. When submitted to a national referendum in 2023 by the Albanese government, the proposal was heavily defeated.
