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Loki-L t1_ja5ap0o wrote

The prefix isn't "a" it is "ab". aboriginal comes from "ab-origine". it is from Latin.

It means "from the origin". The idea is that those are native people who have been here from the start and not immigrated later.

It is similar to the idea of "first people" or indigenous (born inside).

Of course if you go far enough back all people everywhere outside of Africa migrated there from somewhere else, but that touches on some problematic religious ideas and in any case the people who first applied those terms didn't know that.

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Haterbait_band t1_ja5c0mn wrote

That’s always what my thought process is too. Nobody was originally from anywhere, really. I’m sure all the plants and animals that existed in that space for IDK, billions of years before primitive humans crawled across a land bridge would take issue with us saying humans had always been there. It’s not like the “aboriginal” people even purchased the land from the previous inhabitants; probably just ate and killed them. A bit worse than eminent domain if you ask me.

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