The Australian Aboriginal peoples are one of two distinct groups of Indigenous peoples of Australia, the other being the Torres Strait Islander peoples.

It is believed that Indigenous Australians came to Australia and the Torres Strait Islands from 50,000 to 100,000 years ago from Southeast Asia, although there is a tradition that spirit ancestors created them and they have always been there.

While Indigenous Australians is the term commonly used to describe both the Aboriginal Australians, many Aboriginal people do not like to be called Indigenous and would prefer to be known as Aboriginal Australians or Torres Strait Islanders rather than the generic collective term.

Prior to the late 18th-century colonization of the Australian continent, Aboriginal people used their own names that were local to the hundreds of separate and distinct cultural groups that inhabited Australia.

While there are not as many distinct groups of Aboriginal Australians today as there once were, most Aboriginal people prefer to be called by their own group or regional name, such as Gurindji, Larrakia, Pitjantjatjara, or Wiradjuri. Aboriginal people themselves will often use terms such as Koori, Murri, or Nunga to refer to their people.

Aboriginal Australians have a wide variety of cultural practices and beliefs, representing what may be the oldest continuous cultures in the world.

Aboriginal culture, religion, practices, and ceremonies are centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythologies, in which reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasized.

All of life and culture is believed to have originated in the Dreamtime. Ancestral beings surfaced from the subterranean world to move over what was then a featureless Earth. Dreamtime was the creative time when the ancestral beings created the geographical features of the land, animals, plants, and people. Distinct from gods, the ancestral beings are revered but not worshipped.

Aboriginal Australians are linked to the land through spiritual links known as totems. The kangaroo is a manifestation of the Giant Kangaroo, while the emu represents the Emu Ancestor.

The ancestral beings established the boundaries, sacred sites, and ceremonies that bound people to the land. When the deeds of creation were completed, the ancestral beings withdrew into the land in places where they could watch over the land and the activities of its caretakers.

People receive their spiritual identification from the totems at birth or just before they were born. A parent might observe an unusual phenomenon, such as a species of fish leaping from the water or a screeching or a raven flying suddenly from a bush. These would suggest the totemic group that the child belongs to and will become the child's personal totem through life.

Children inherit their family ancestry from their parents, giving them rights and responsibilities in both their father's and mother's family country. The social organization of the family's group dictates the child's social position relative to those who are not members of their immediate family. This affects their later choice of a marriage partner and defines the relationships they may have with people in their extended family and group, including who they can play with as children or work with as adults, as well as who they should avoid.

Every individual has responsibility, not only for themselves but for the well-being and status of the family and group.

A child's essential being is established by this totem, which tells where the child's spirit has come from and where it will return, as well as the spiritual responsibilities the child will share with those who share its totem. It also maps the child's path to spiritual and social maturity.

This will involve a series of spiritual initiations. Beginning at puberty, they will continue so long as the individual accepts the responsibilities that come with the knowledge they will acquire. In their middle and later years, they will become masters of all of the law that is theirs to learn.

Elders are the ones who are charged with watching over the law for other members of their group. They are the decision-makers, the judges, the teachers, and the guardians of the group's knowledge and traditions. Passage to the status of elder is not inevitable, however. Seniority is the privilege of those who respect the law and accept the responsibilities that each revelation brings.

Oral traditions are a significant part of Aboriginal culture. They include the story of the Dreamtime and the ancestral beings involved in the creation, as well as some of the spirit beings who inhabit the countryside and have the capability of intervening in people's lives.

A major story, song, or dance is part of ceremonial rituals evoking the power of ancestral beings. There are public and private ceremonies.

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