Black Like Me: Australia’s Aborigines

The original Aussies are making moves Down Under.

Australia’s Aborigines - Although Australia’s Aborigines were there before Europeans, today they make up just 2 percent of the country’s population. As Aborigines and indigenous people become a more powerful force in the halls of parliament, mainstream media and other parts of society, BET.com takes a look at the original Australians. — Naeesa Aziz   (Photo: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
Who Are Australia’s Aborigines? - Aborigines or indigenous Australians are the brown-skinned people who lived on mainland Australia and the Torres Strait Islands centuries before European settlers arrived.  (Photo: REUTERS/Tim Wimborne /Landov)
Original Africans? - In 2011, after analyzing Aborigine hair collected by a British anthropologist more than a century ago, scientists concluded that the Aborigines are direct descendants of the first modern humans to leave Africa nearly 50,000 years ago.  (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Black Power - Regardless of differences in skin color, many Aborigines refer to themselves as Black. Many aligned themselves with the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, adapting the ideology to their local plight. “The Australian version of Black Power, like its American counterpart, was essentially about the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms, and to seek self-determination without white interference,” said Australian activist Gary Foley.  (Photo: Patrick Riviere/Getty Images)

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Australia’s Aborigines - Although Australia’s Aborigines were there before Europeans, today they make up just 2 percent of the country’s population. As Aborigines and indigenous people become a more powerful force in the halls of parliament, mainstream media and other parts of society, BET.com takes a look at the original Australians. — Naeesa Aziz   (Photo: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

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