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Aboriginal Australians represent one of the longest continuous cultural complexes known. Archaeological evidence indicates that Australia and New Guinea were initially settled approximately 50 thousand years ago (ka); however, little is known about the processes underlying the enormous linguistic and phenotypic diversity within Australia. Here we report 111 mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from historical Aboriginal Australian hair samples, whose origins enable us to reconstruct Australian phylogeographic history before European settlement. Marked geographic patterns and deep splits across the major mitochondrial haplogroups imply that the settlement of Australia comprised a single, rapid migration along the east and west coasts that reached southern Australia by 49-45 ka. After continent-wide colonization, strong regional patterns developed and these have survived despite substantial climatic and cultural change during the late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. Remarkably, we find evidence for the continuous presence of populations in discrete geographic areas dating back to around 50 ka, in agreement with the notable Aboriginal Australian cultural attachment to their country.

This review shows that the evidence for the effectiveness of indigenous cultural training programmes in Australia is poor. Critiques of cultural training from indigenous and non-indigenous scholars suggest that a 'cultural safety' model may offer the most potential to improve the effectiveness of health services for indigenous Australians.

Since the 1970s, “self‐determination” has been the dominant trope for expressing national aspirations for Indigenous Australians. Through the principles of self‐determination, the liberal multicultural state has attempted to deliver postcolonial justice to its first peoples. In this new century, the sheen of the self‐determination era has faded. Once heralded as the antidote to the racist assimilation era, it is now depicted as the cause of social ills. In this article, I draw on an ethnographic study of White antiracists working in Indigenous health in northern Australia to analyze the brand of liberal rationality that dominated the discourse of the self‐determination era. By engaging with a “tribe” of White people who identify with the aims of the self‐determination era, we can decipher the logic of self‐determination as an instrument of the liberal state and better understand the internal contradictions and ambiguities that have led to its recent demise.

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