Aboriginal Tasmanians
Sign in to saveindigenous people of the Australian island state of Tasmania
Key facts
- Tasmania
- 6,000–23,572 (self-identified)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- ethnic group
- Population
- 300
- Image
- Dowling Natives of Tasmania.jpg
Show 1 more fact
- Commons category
- Aboriginal Tasmanians
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Aboriginal Tasmanians (palawa kani: Palawa, Pakana) are the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, the large island south of mainland Australia. Aboriginal people lived in Tasmania for tens of thousands of years before European settlement. Around 6000 BCE, rising sea levels flooded the Bass Strait and separated Tasmania from mainland Australia. This left the island's Aboriginal communities geographically isolated from other Aboriginal Australian groups for about 8,000 years.
Before British colonisation in 1803, Tasmanian Aboriginal communities maintained distinct languages, cultural traditions, and regional identities across Tasmania, with communities organised through family and clan groups connected to particular territories and seasonal movement patterns. Estimates of the population before colonisation generally range from 3,000 to 15,000 people.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Aboriginal Tasmanians” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.