Connection to country is in Aboriginal DNA

An important part of Australian Aboriginal culture is connection to country — the idea that our Indigenous residents are irrevocably linked to a particular region of the land we now know as Australia. But according to recent research from the Aboriginal Heritage Project, this connection is far more than just spiritual in nature.

As part of the project, led by the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) in partnership with the South Australian Museum, researchers analysed mitochondrial DNA from 111 hair samples that were collected during a series of anthropological expeditions across Australia from 1928 to the 1970s (two in South Australia, one in Queensland). Analysis of these mitogenomes allowed the scientists to produce detailed reconstructions of the genetic and historical relationships among Aboriginal Australian groups prior to European settlement.

The results, published in the journal Nature, found that modern Aboriginal Australians are the descendants of a single founding population that arrived in northern Australia around 50,000 years ago, while Australia was still connected to New Guinea. Populations then spread rapidly around the east and west coasts of Australia, eventually reaching South Australia around 49,000 to 45,000 years ago.

According to project leader and ACAD director Professor Alan Cooper, these basic population patterns persisted up until the arrival of the Europeans, showing that communities remained in discrete geographic regions. “This is unlike people anywhere else in the world and provides compelling support for the remarkable Aboriginal cultural connection to country,” said Professor Cooper.

As noted by study co-author Dr Wolfgang Haak, formerly at ACAD and now at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, “Reconstructing the genetic history of Aboriginal Australia is very complicated due to past government policies of enforced population relocation and child removal.” The study is thus a remarkable achievement, and is only the first phase of a decade-long project that will allow people with Aboriginal heritage to trace their regional ancestry and reconstruct family genealogical history.

The research will be extended to investigate paternal lineages and information from the nuclear genome. Additionally, ACAD postdoctoral researcher Dr Ray Tobler has received an ARC Indigenous Discovery Fellowship to examine how the longevity of Aboriginal populations in different habitats across Australia has shaped the remarkable physical diversity found across modern Aboriginal Australians.

“Aboriginal people have always known that we have been on our land since the start of our time,” said Kaurna Elder Lewis O’Brien, who is one of the original hair donors and has been on the advisory group for the study. “But it is important to have science show that to the rest of the world. This is an exciting project and we hope it will help assist those of our people from the Stolen Generation and others to reunite with their families.”

Image courtesy of Steve Evans under CC BY-NC 2.0