Indigenous land rights in Australia

Indigenous land rights in Australia, also known as Aboriginal land rights in Australia, are the rights and interests in land of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia; the term may also include the struggle for those rights. Connection to the land and waters is vital in Australian Aboriginal culture and to that of Torres Strait Islander people, and there has been a long battle to gain legal and moral recognition of ownership of the lands and waters occupied by the many peoples prior to colonisation of Australia starting in 1788, and the annexation of the Torres Strait Islands by the colony of Queensland in the 1870s.

As of 2020^[update], Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 40 per cent of Australia’s land mass, and sea rights have also been asserted in various native title cases.