MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia will hold a national referendum within the next three years on the question of formally recognizing Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, a government minister said on Wednesday, a significant step for a marginalized population that has long sought an official voice in government.

Ken Wyatt, the minister for Indigenous Australians, said the conservative government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison would commit more than $100 million to holding the referendum, but he provided few details on what the government planned to include in its proposal.

“The Morrison government is committed to recognizing Indigenous Australians in the Constitution and working to achieve this through a process of true co-design,” Mr. Wyatt, the first Indigenous person to hold his ministerial post, said in a speech in Sydney.

Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples have sought to be recognized in the Constitution and given a formal representative role in the government since the document was ratified in 1901. Those years of activism came to a head in 2017, when a group of Indigenous leaders presented to the public the Uluru Statement From the Heart, a road map for recognition.