Indigenous Australians

Aboriginal Australians were social beings who lived in a number of social groups sometimes called bands, clans, sub-tribes and tribes, but essentially in a family or kinship group who were 1) of the same blood-line and 2) were related to other people through totems. The social groupings of ATSI people meant that their relationships were far more extensive than our own method of identifying people as mother, father, brother, sister and cousins (etc).

Torres Strait Islanders

There are several hundred Indigenous peoples of Australia, many are groupings that existed before the British annexation of Australia in 1788. Before Europeans, the number was over 400. Indigenous or groups will generally talk of their "people" and their "country". These countries are ethnographic areas, usually the size of an average European country, with around two hundred on the Australian continent at the time of White arrival. Within each country, people lived in clan groups - extended families defined by the various forms Australian Aboriginal kinship.