A/HRC/36/46/Add.2 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples visited Australia from 20 March to 3 April 2017. She expresses her appreciation to the Government of Australia for the support provided throughout the visit. 2. During the visit, the Special Rapporteur met with high-level representatives of the federal, state and territory governments, members of Parliament, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, members of the judiciary, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, the Australian Human Rights Commission and a broad range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organizations and representatives and civil society organizations working for their rights. 3. The Special Rapporteur held meetings in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and New South Wales. She met with a number of indigenous communities, including in Broome, Darwin and the Torres Strait, to hear directly from indigenous peoples about their concerns and priorities. She also visited two detention facilities, Bandyup Women’s Prison in Perth and Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville, and the Children’s Koori Court in Melbourne. 4. Among the priorities for the visit, the Special Rapporteur reviewed the progress made in implementing recommendations made by her predecessor during his country visit to Australia in 2009 (A/HRC/15/37/Add.4), noting at the outset the limited progress that had been made by the Government to implement those recommendations. II. Background on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 5. The history of the continent’s first inhabitants, the Aboriginal Australians, goes back more than 50,000 years before the arrival or European settlers. At the time of colonization in 1788, it is estimated that 750,000 to 1,000,000 people lived in Australia. 6. British settlers declared the land “terra nullius” as they considered that Aboriginal Australians were nomads with no concept of land ownership. The loss of traditional lands, food sources and water resources was often fatal, particularly to communities already weakened by disease. Aboriginal Australians groups had a deep spiritual and cultural connection to the land. When they were forced away from traditional areas, the cultural and spiritual practices necessary to their cohesion and well-being were destroyed. 7. During colonization, Aboriginal Australians were murdered, raped and enslaved for forced labour. Massacres occurred across Australia and, in the course of frontier conflict, it is estimated that about 2,000 British colonizers and over 20,000 indigenous Australians suffered violent deaths.1 8. Aboriginal people were moved to mission stations under assimilation policies to be taught European beliefs and used as cheap labour. The term “Stolen Generations” refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families and communities by government, welfare or church authorities and placed into institutional care or with non-indigenous foster families. The forced removals began around the mid-1800s and continued until the 1970s. 9. In 2008, the federal Government formally apologized to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and particularly to the Stolen Generations for the grief and suffering inflicted by laws and policies of successive Parliaments and Governments. 10. Today, indigenous peoples are estimated to constitute approximately 3 per cent of the Australian population, or 670,000 individuals. More than 400 distinct indigenous Australian peoples have been identified through their ancestral languages. The largest 1 See http://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/first-encounters-and-frontier-conflict. 3