Aboriginal Australians, also referred to as Aboriginal people, are people whose ancestors were indigenous to the Australian continent— that is, to mainland Australia or to the island of Tasmania—before British colonisation of the continent began in 1788. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal Flag (right), designed in 1971 by the Aboriginal artist Harold Thomas, has been one of the official “Flags of Australia” under section 5 of the Flags Act 1953.
