Talk:Indigenous Australians

Request for this article to be renamed/moved/redirected to First Nations Australians

Hey All,

I've seen that this has been discussed before with no real resolution, I have created a temple Template:First Nations Australians which is based on Australian Government Style Manual[5] and a couple of other sources, I have also added it to this page. According to the style guide 'First Nations Australians' is now the preferred term over 'Indigenous', I feel like Wikipedia should also reflect this change. I have already made this change on Racism in Australia and Institutional racism § Australia. If anyone else would like to help with either the template, or changing 'Indigenous' to 'First Nations', 'First Australians', 'First people', etc. that would be great.

Thanks,

AverageFraud (talk) 07:25, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't ready for this move. First nations is not an article in its own right. It's simply a redirect to Indigenous peoples. So you're tackling the whole breadth of Wikipedia here, not just Australian articles. HiLo48 (talk) 09:30, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Properly spelt First Nations. ....Talk:First Nations has a small talk with sources and guess work.Moxy- 09:50, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Moxy, I do think that in general we refer to them as Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander peoples, and we already have individual articles about each. Equating Indigenous Australians to Aboriginal Australians is a false equivalency. Torres Strait Islander people are different from Aboriginal people. This article should just be a list of redirects to both articles. I think that it should be changed to First Nations in Australia. AverageFraud (talk) 09:38, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I actually think a good compromise might be "First Peoples of Australia". Doesn't seem forced. AverageFraud (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Disputed trifurcation mention

Disputed text: Phylogenetic data suggests that an early initial eastern lineage (ENA) trifurcated somewhere in South Asia, and gave rise to Australasians (Oceanians), the indigenous South Asians/Andamanese, and the East/Southeast Asian lineage including the ancestors of Native Americans

A possible mini edit might be: Phylogenetic data based on the single dispersal Out of Africa theory suggests that an early initial eastern lineage (ENA) trifurcated and gave rise to Australasians (Oceanians), the Andamanese, and the East/Southeast Asian lineage including the ancestors of Native Americans

Ideally the multiple dispersals out of africa theory could be mentioned as well.

This sentence seems to be scattered across many Wikipedia pages, added around August/September 2022. They mostly say quite similar statements "Phylogenetic data ... East Eurasians... trifurcated... South Asia...indigenous South Asians". And they tend to list the Yang paper as a reference.

• Out of Africa theory
• Indigenous Australians
• Southern Dispersal
• Prehistory of Australia
• Early human migrations
• Genetic history of East Asians
• Indigenous people of New Guinea
• Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia
• Peopling of China

The issue is that the idea of trifurcation seems to come from a David Reich "single dispersal" out of Africa theory. Where he didn't mention South Asia as the place of trifurcation. And he didn't mention that one of the trifurcated lines was "indigenous South Asians" or AASI (Ancient Ancestral South Indians), what he did mention was Onge. Which is not the same. Refer to Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia

Whereas the Yang paper presents both the single and multiple dispersals out of Africa theories. And while viewing Fig 1, could seem as if a type of trifurcation visually is situated in South Asia, but the caption clearly cautions: "The tree diagram shows divergence patterns and is not meant to depict migration routes from the branches or geographic origins of ancestral populations from the internal nodes".

The trifurcation appears to be more likely in South East Asia rather than India.

One of the users that seemed to have added a few of these trifurcation sentences on a few pages: 2A10:1FC0:1:0:0:0:3657:2D30 , Bharat99x2, 93.180.134.125 Sausage_Link_of_High_Rule — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aufumy (talk • contribs) 06:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

By all respect, the Out of Africa theory (single dispersal model of modern humans) is not contested by any reliable source or research (also not by the alleged paper cited by you), but there is disputed about if there was an earlier out of Africa migration (xOoA) which went largely extinct, other than leaving some traces in Australasian populations. The paper by Yang does not only cite Reich, but multiple other papers. Furthermore, the 2016 paper is not bypassing multiple more recent and more detailed papers such as Vallini et al. 2022, etc. Ergo: the concensus is a single dispersal of modern humans, with or without traces of an earlier xOoA migration. There is no dispute about that. A rewording in line with WP:Weight is probably a good idea, yet the tag is unnecessary. Furthermore, mentioning the possibility for an earlier xOoA influence may be useful, see again Vallini et al. 2022:

"Taken together with a lower bound of the final settlement of Sahul at 37 ka (the date of the deepest population splits estimated by Malaspinas et al. 2016), it is reasonable to describe Papuans as either an almost even mixture between East Asians and a lineage basal to West and East Asians occurred sometimes between 45 and 38 ka, or as a sister lineage of East Asians with or without a minor basal OoA or xOoA contribution. We here chose to parsimoniously describe Papuans as a simple sister group of Tianyuan, cautioning that this may be just one out of six equifinal possibilities."

As such, the evidence for the affinity between Australasians and East Asians, both descending from one East-Eurasian meta-population, is strong and not disputed at all. Yours sincerely, Wikiuser1314 (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2023 (UTC).

Just removed the unnecessary tags, note that the paragraph talks about the findings of Yang (which is an review article and also cited other papers). Nothing is disputed within this paragraph cited by the reference. There may be differing models and views, all being now considered as minor or competing to the major model, as such fall into WP:Weight. I would suggest if you have any papers clearly advocating a "multiple migration out of Africa and ancestral to modern human populations", than cite this paper in an own paragraph. Otherwise it would be WP:OR or simply a personal opinion, henceforth see WP:NPOV. Thank you.Wikiuser1314 (talk) 18:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Yang (2022) mentions the multiple dispersal model in the historical overview as an abandoned idea, and also explains how the discovery of Denisovan ingression into the Australasian gene pool helped to sort things out. I agree with Wikiuser1314 that the state-of-the-art which WP should reflect is the single dispersal model (with possible traces of xOoA that did not significantly contribute to East Eurasian ancestries).

The "trifurcation" model however is still open for debate, as Lipson & Reich (2017) note. They take a agnostic stance, but the exact relations of the AASI ghost population, the Andamanese hunter-gatherers and the ancient Hoabinhians vis-a-vis the East Asian and Australasian lineages are still poorly understood and will probably remain so without further ancient samples. Things are complicated further by deep ancestry contributions to the Tibetan gene pool, which may include ghost populations basal to the other East Eurasian lineages. –Austronesier (talk) 20:25, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, my point wasn't to suggest to remove the trifurcation text or dispute the possibility of single dispersal. But to point out 1) There is no mention of South Asia as the trifurcation point, neither in David Reichs paper or Yangs paper 2) When trifurcation is mentioned one of the forks is Andamanese/Onge not Ancestral South Indian or AASI. These are not the same lineages.

Reading through the Vallini et al. 2022 paper they mention "multiple waves of expansion" which they infer from somewhere out of Africa, but doesn't seem as there is any certainty where the "mutliple waves of expansion" emanated from exactly, just some "population hub". Even the name of the Vallini paper "Genetics and Material Culture Support Repeated Expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a Population Hub Out of Africa" seems like they are saying much more than just asserting a "single dispersal" theory. Especially as you mentioned with the 6 equifinal possibilities shown in Figure s7.

The Vallini paper also cites the Clarkson C paper which suggests a new minimum age for the arrivals of humans to Australia as 65, 000 years, the subsequent interactions of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans. The Clarkson paper doesn't seem to consider this an extinct migration.

Rasmussen 2011 suggested a single-wave model seems not likely because "the Aboriginal Australian would have a European allele (Group 1) as often as the Asian individual would (Group 2)" which is not the case.

This Lopez 2015 paper notes almost makes it seem as if single dispersal is completely out of the question.

"The split time for European and East African populations (57–76 kya) was again estimated to be somewhat more recent than that for East Asia and Africa (73–88 kya), and significantly more recent than that between Australo-Melanesians and Africa (87–119 kya) even after accounting for Denisovan introgression into the ancestors of Australo-Melanesians."

Based on the 2022 Vallini paper you mentioned, 2011 Rasumssen, 2015 Lopez papers; are these not reliable sources and research that contest a single dispersal of modern humans? At least nothing seems to be settled.

Aufumy — Preceding undated comment added 08:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the section in Yang's paper that calls the multiple dispersals a "historical overview" or an "abandoned idea".

thus were best explained as originating from an earlier dispersal of modern humans out of Africa [56]. Though an earlier dispersal may be partially represented in the genomes of Australasians, the main pattern observed in their genomes indicates a shared evolutionary history with populations widespread today in much of the eastern regions of Asia.

One of my main points was if mentioning the single-dispersal "trifurcation" idea it should relate to the Andamanese/Onge and not the indigenous South Asians or AASI. Even the wikipedia pages Onge and Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia seem to consider the two as distant cousins rather than the same population grouping.

Second main point, I haven't yet seen any article that mentioned they trifurcated in South Asia. David Reich's article doesn't mention it, and other papers seem to suggest South East Asia rather than South Asia.

Aufumy — Preceding undated comment added 08:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

At first, please comment below and not in between the comments of other users, as you did in my reply. Secondly, the various "multiple out of Africa hypotheses", just like the "multiregional origin model outside of Africa", inferring distinct migration/ancestries for modern Eurasian populations, are considered fringe and not supported by any such papers. The inferred diverging dates are better to be explained by admixture and or drift. The papers do not speak about multiple out of Africa migrations.

Thirdly, and more relevant, the trifurication model is not necessarily correct, and likely to simplistic, as Vallini et al. 2022 shows there were multiple East-Eurasian lineages, not only three. Yet, the paragraph mentions the findings of Yang 2022, as such the tag is unnecessary. However removing or correcting wrong or misleading parts are the way to go (such as the mention of South Asia etc.) Lipson & Reich (2017) for example remain neutral, but also mention other possibilities, such as admixture either in Onge or in Aboriginal Australians. But again, as Yang 2022 specifically talks about the trifurication, we should go with that, other there is any source which clearly contradicts or rejects that. This must follow WP:Weight, such as: "Yang 2022 concludes this..." however "xxxx 20xx caution... and suggest that..." etc. A possible solution: "these populations diverged from a common early East-Eurasian meta-population". Lastly, would you please provide the papers which explicitly speak from a "trifurication in Southeast Asia". Yours sincerely Wikiuser1314 (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Apologies about the comment structure. I got confused with the quotation indentation and thought there were different threads so to speak. I realize my mistake now.

I really don't place high priority on whether multiple dispersals idea is included or not, but will expand on why I believe it is still in debate today, further on. Just for conversation sake.

My main points are:

1) South Asian is not synonymous with South Indian as one of the trifurcated forks.

2) South Asia as the point of trifurcation, I can't find mention of it in papers I looked at.

South Asian vs South Indian

• There might be an attempt to expand the grouping of South Indians to South Asians, thereby encompassing North Indians in the initial dispersal of East Eurasian lineage. This would be quite clearly incorrect I believe?
• When using "trifurcation" it may denote a close genetic linkage in a short span of time. Thus North Indians don't fit within this grouping of one of the trifurcated forks. Therefore the use of "South Asians" as one of the forks is in my opinion, quite misleading. Ancient South Indians or AASI or Andamanese Onge more specifically, sure.
• Reich uses the more specific terminology of one of the forks as "Onge" or "Andamanese Onge". Whereas Yang expands the grouping to "Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) lineage". Some papers suggest Andamanese Onge may not be a perfect fit for AASI, but maybe one of the closest. Yang never referred to AASI as "indigenous South Asians", as Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia tries to claim. Most papers seem careful to not use the phrase "Indigenous South Asians" at all.
• From Onge

According to Chaubey and Endicott (2013), overall, the Andamanese are more closely related to Southeast Asians and East Asians than they are to present-day South Asians.[30] according to Yelmen et al. 2019, certain South Indian tribal groups are a better proxy for Ancient Ancestral South Asian (AASI) ancestry than the Andamanese Onge are.[31]

South Asia as the trifurcation point

• While Yang mentions AASI, she never uses the phrasing "trifurcation" and also cautions in Figure 1 about not to infer "migration routes from the branches or geographic origins of ancestral populations". Are you referring to a different Yang 2022 paper? I couldn't find her mention of trifurcation
• While I found papers that mention Southeast Asia as where the Onge might have migrated from to South Asia, I wasn't proposing the wholesale replacement of "South Asia" with "Southeast Asia". I just wanted to point out that "South Asia" is not a foregone conclusion. I was thinking that the mention of South Asia should be removed, or maybe changed to "Asia". I'm not sure there is a clear consensus whether South Asia or Southeast Asia or elsewhere.

Southeast Asia as the trifurcation point

• Marrero 2016

Founder ages of M lineages in India are significantly younger than those in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Near Oceania.

The existence of a northern route, previously proposed for the mtDNA macrohaplogroup N, is confirmed here for the macrohaplogroup M. Both mtDNA macrolineages seem to have differentiated in South East Asia from ancestral L3 lineages.

• Lopez 2015

Some of this evidence is in light of autosomal DNA studies that have indicated Southeast Asia was settled by multiple waves of peoples, the first most related ancestrally to modern day groups such as the Onge and the second more closely related ancestrally to modern day East Asians.

• From Andamanese people

Bulbeck (2013) shows the Andamanese maternal mtDNA is entirely mitochondrial Haplogroup M.

• Haplogroup M (mtDNA) refers to possible place of origin as either South Asia, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, or East Africa
• Hallast 2020 point to Southeast Asia using y chromosome

In a simple model of gradual human expansion from Africa to Asia and Oceania without subsequent continental-scale reshaping, we would expect the initial divergences in the Y-chromosomal phylogeny to have occurred in geographical locations close to Africa, and the present-day Y-chromosomal phylogeography to reflect this history by showing the presence of the early-diverging lineages within C, D and FT now being located geographically in Central/West Asia (Fig. 3a), with lower lineage diversity further east. In stark contrast, the observed distributions of these lineages all lie further to the east, suggesting that a simple model of this kind cannot explain the observed present-day data

Current debate on multiple dispersals

• Connell 2018 is a strong proponent for the single dispersal idea, and believes there just isn't enough evidence to prove multiple dispersals yet, he doesn't state there is anything that disproves multiple dispersals. He mentions the limits of radiocarbon analysis to 50ka and suggests luminescence analysis is needed to prove > 50ka. Interestingly he does point out the debate happening in the past decade:

Over the past decade or so, some analysts have suggested a more complex series of events beginning well before 50–55 ka

We conclude that the case for an AMH expansion across the SCS arc >50 ka remains weak. More compelling evidence from the human fossil record, identification of genetic signals of a >50-ka Sahul population, or support from a well-dated archaeological site in Sahul would change this picture.

• From the Connell 2018 paper, it would show the "multiple dispersals" theory is not considered completely out of the picture. It may not be a favoured hypothesis for sure, but there is ongoing debate in the last decade.
• Connell 2018 seems to dismiss the point of an earlier split time of Austro-Melanesians due to the timing of Neanderthal admixture, but Lopez 2015 suggests that there could be different sources of Neanderthal DNA

Opponents of an early migration into Australia and Oceania assert that if an early migration had taken place before AMH spread into Eurasia, then we would not expect to see evidence of Neanderthal admixture in these genomes given our current understanding of the Neanderthal geographic range.118,153 A conciliatory explanation for the fact that Australo-Melanesians have similar levels of Neanderthal admixture as other non-African populations has been proposed by Weaver,155 who has speculated that the Neanderthal genetic component present in Australasians may be the result of introgression from another group that was in direct contact with Neanderthals.109,125,156,157

• I would say the Vallini 2022 paper also doesn't exclude "multiple disperals" theory. The title even mentions "Repeated Expansions" but from a "Population Hub" that seems to be undetermined at this point. So maybe the "multiple dispersals" theory is not necessarily "out of africa" but rather "out of population hub".
• Vallini's paper in Figure s7 seems to suggest that the Papuan lineage could be a earlier split (D,E sections) before the split between East and West Eurasian lineages
• Vallini's paper cites a reference to Clarkson C paper which suggests a new minimum age for the arrivals of humans to Australia as 65, 000 years.
• the Yang 2022 paper presents both single and multiple dispersal hypothesis. She does not refer to multiple dispersals as a historical overview or an abandoned idea. But favours the majority of AMH to be due to single dispersals with only a small percentage in Papuans perhaps due to an earlier dispersal

they examined haplotypes in Papuans associated with a deeper divergence and found that 2% of the haplotypes in Papuan genomes could not be explained by Denisovan admixture or shared origins with mainland Eurasians, and thus were best explained as originating from an earlier dispersal of modern humans out of Africa [56].

• Rasmussen 2011 suggested a single-wave model seems not likely because "the Aboriginal Australian would have a European allele (Group 1) as often as the Asian individual would (Group 2)" which is not the case.
• Lopez 2015

The split time for European and East African populations (57–76 kya) was again estimated to be somewhat more recent than that for East Asia and Africa (73–88 kya), and significantly more recent than that between Australo-Melanesians and Africa (87–119 kya) even after accounting for Denisovan introgression into the ancestors of Australo-Melanesians.

Aufumy (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Np, but I do not see any support for a multiple route hypothesis in either of these papers. Many of them are rather old, although not bad, yet it is clear in which direction the concensus goes. Take this summary paper for example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366580805_The_future_of_the_Eurasian_past_highlighting_plotholes_and_pillars_of_human_population_movements_in_the_Late_Pleistocene. Wikiuser1314 (talk) 23:25, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree that the consensus is mostly single dispersal, but I just wanted to point out there are still proponents for the multiple dispersal hypothesis this decade. It doesn't seem as if the single dispersal proponents are able to completely dismiss a multiple dispersal hypothesis. There just needs to be more data collected either way.

But back to the main points. Would you have any objections to change the mention of "Indigenous South Asians" to Ancient Ancestral South Indians / AASI or Anadamanese Onge in context of the trifurcation sentence? As well as to remove "South Asia" as the point where trifurcation happened?

Since this sentence is mentioned on so many pages, with slight variations, I just wanted to check on these 2 points. Aufumy (talk) 00:45, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

No objections from my side. Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:36, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Ok! Completed changes to above pages as well as Tianyuan man where the trifurcation mention was added 2 Oct 2022 by 94.131.108.213 and Andamanese people

1) Removed trifurcation point as South Asia. Though left mention of "Eastern South Asia" on Out of Africa theory and Prehistory of Australia. Not sure that its clear that "Eastern South Asia" might encompass South East Asia, but left it as is.

2) Changed "indigenous south asian" to "Ancient Ancestral South Indian" Aufumy (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was not to merge. Poketama (talk) 11:40, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

---

I propose merging Aboriginal Australians into Indigenous Australians. The only difference between them is Torres Strait Islanders so that the problem of WP:REDUNDANT exists, and a merger would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Indigenous Australians. John Smith Ri (talk) 06:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose That "only difference" seems like a rather major thing to me. These are two different ethnic groups which make up the indigenous peoples of the country, Aboriginal Australians should have their own article just like Torres Strait Islanders do. If the Indigenous Australians article covers too much of the same content then it should simply be rewritten.★Trekker (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose Was there review of the articles beyond the title and lede before this... interesting suggestion was put forth? While a high degree of overlap between the articles is to be expected, duplication is primarily exacerbated by confusion between the terms. If anything is needed, it is a cleanup and appropriate sorting of present information, not a merger between two articles that have significant differences. Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 02:24, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose If the Indigenous Australians article covers too much of the same content from the Aboriginal Australians article, then it should be rewritten, not merged. Equating Indigenous Australians to Aboriginal Australians is a false equivalency. Treetoes023 (talk) 17:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Alternative How about we just get rid of most of the stuff in the Indigenous Australians page and just have it be a very basic overview of both groups that redirects to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Eilanders.__ - Troopersho (talk) 03:48, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think making it a redirect is a good idea, but yes making it a shorter basic overview is a reasonable idea.★Trekker (talk) 11:13, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Oppose same reason as above - Torres Strait Islander people are different from Aboriginal people, merging would create unnecessary confusion and in my opinion would create weighting problems. Knittea (talk) 12:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Comment Some Cocos Malays have been fighting for recognition as Indigenous Australians as well. Might be worth a mention.★Trekker (talk) 12:54, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

k 2601:646:9A80:20C0:A43E:123D:C476:4CA2 (talk) 00:19, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Very well thought out reply, thank you.★Trekker (talk) 20:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Support Per nomination, see above. Surveyor Mount 00:02, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

• • What do you have to say for the arguments against?★Trekker (talk) 20:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose If anything, the Indigenous Australians page should be a smaller page, as the other person said. This page should be kept. Poketama (talk) 11:29, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 May 31#Australian Pygmy race

For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:27, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion?

Why indigenous australians refers to both aboriginal and torres strait islanders in general? I dont have any idea torres strait islander is such little population but significant australians. 2404:8000:1027:D5FD:CCA9:4FA5:4C8D:A8A2 (talk) 01:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Please be on the lookout for a user such as the above with Indonesian IPs making disruptive edits to do with Torres Strait Islanders on Wikipedia. This question has been answered before for them, so I'm ignoring it. Poketama (talk) 01:41, 24 October 2023 (UTC)