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INTRODUCTION
My name in Frida Nordin and I am studying English at Umeå university in
Sweden. This term we got the assignment to choose a subject which occurs
in an English speaking society so I chose to write about Aboriginals in
Australia.
Aboriginals in Australia suffered a great oppression more than 200 years
ago. Europeans came and took over the country and tried to get rid of
the Aboriginals by taking them away from their homes and placing them in
reservations. But although the Aboriginals managed to survive and get
their rights back, they have had a hard time to be seen as adequate
members of Australian society.
What is amazing is their traditions, their way of life, their music,
their art and their beliefs. I myself did not know much about the
Australian Aboriginals before I started writing this essay and I think
that many of us only know that Australian Aboriginals are people who
live closely with nature and that they make didgeridoos and boomerangs.
Therefore I have chosen to concentrate on a small selection of things, Aboriginal history, culture and
their situation today.
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HISTORY
The history of the Aboriginals and how they first came to Australia is
something no one knows for certain but this is what I have found in most
books and links on the Internet during my research.
About 40.000 years ago, the first people came to Australia from South
East Asia by means of a connection with the mainland created by the low
water level. For generations these inhabitants, the Aboriginals, lived as
hunters and were in total harmony with nature and what it had to offer.
When the British sea captain Arthur Phillip came with his
ship to Botany Bay in 1770, colonization started which later meant
that Australia would no longer be the Aboriginals' country. Captain
Arthur Phillip came to Australia because the British Government had
decided to establish a penal colony. The white Europeans started a
penalty expedition against the Aboriginals and they were forced to leave
their homes in order not to be killed.
Aboriginals were gathered in reservations and missionary stations
where they were supposed to be offered "protection" when it was really all about segregation and getting rid of them. The
consequences of this were that many got contracted illnesses that the Europeans had
brought with them, such as measles, smallpox, syphilis and influenza.
Alcoholism was also a reason why the number of the Aboriginals so
drastically decreased.
Australia, which now was a "white" country, did not see the
Aboriginals as adequate members of the society. Therefore Aboriginal
children could not go to school, Aboriginals did not have a right to
vote, they could not own any land and they were not counted in
population cencuses. If an Aboriginal got a job, he/she could not take it
without certain permission and the salary was paid to a
'protector', as it was called. The ones who where living in reservations had to work
about 32 hours a week without any payment at all and if an Aboriginal was
considered to be lazy or provocative, this person would be punished by
being arrested or get sent away to some prison island for an indefinite time.
The protectors I mentioned above were appointed after the British, in
the middle of the 19th century, demonstrated their incapability to
handle the Aboriginals. The "Protectors of Aboriginals" as they were
called, were special public officials who were supposed to protect and
take care of the interests of the Aboriginals. One terrifying example of
how misleading this was, was the large estate owner Angus McMillian who
was appointed a protector, even though he was well-known for having
planned and been in charge of several bloody massacres and therefore responsible for hundreds of Aboriginal
deaths. Everything was decided and governed by the protector - whether
or not
an Aboriginal could get married, drink alcohol, work, etc. The
Aboriginals were not even allowed to be in charge of their own
belongings and possible savings. The protector took care of that.
Things that clearly show how ignorant the Europeans were of the
Aboriginal mentality and tradition were that e.g. they were forced to
live with complete strangers, some of whom even were enemies from
different tribes, though they were Aboriginals. Another thing was the
missionaries who came to Australia to try to reverse the Aboriginals to Christianity, even though the Aboriginals already had their
beliefs and their religion and had lived with them from time immemorial.
THE STOLEN CHILDREN
One part in Aboriginal history is called the Stolen Children where the
white people forcibly transferred children between 4 and 7 years old to
foster homes and institutions and cut off all family ties. The idea
was that after the children had been in a foster home or an institution
for a while, they would be able to take their place in society on the
same conditions as other Australians. In reality the boys most often
became farmers and earned very little and the girls became nannies or
had to work in a white household, often without any salary.
In the foster homes and institutions the children were not allowed to
speak their own language. The only language accepted was English. A
large amount of time was also dedicated to trying to reverse their
religion to the Christian belief. The conditions under which the
children lived were often poor and the education was often held by
non-educated people which resulted in poor study results. The children
who were placed in private foster homes were totally isolated, in
contrary to the children in the institutions, where they at least had
each other, and this contributed to the fact that the foster parents in
the private foster homes often saw the children as free labour and there
were also many cases of sexual abuse.
THE TURNING POINT
The start of something that would eventually become a turning point came
when the number of Aboriginals started to increase. This was mainly by
a higher number of births and also better access to medical care. This was
an establishment that the Aboriginals were not a dying species, which
the Europeans had hoped, and therefore the reservation politics was
abolished. The Assimilation politics became the official politics in
1951 and it implied that the discriminating laws that existed had to be
changed. These are some examples of the acknowledgement the Aboriginals
got:
· 1962 - The right to vote.
· 1967 - Aboriginals would be included in population cencuses and laws
that concerned that the Aboriginals would be made by the Alliance
Parliament instead of the Federal State Governments which made the
decisions earlier.
· 1968 - Aboriginal farmers got the right of a minimum wage.
· 1982 - The first land conveyance was made and an Aboriginal tribe on
Cape York could purchase land.
The land conveyances continued and at the beginning of 1990 the
Aboriginals had more than a million square kilometers in their
possession again.
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ABORIGINALS TODAY
EDUCATION
Even though the number of Aboriginals who go through compulsory school
has almost quadrupled, there are still problems with the education. A
lot of Aboriginal children have poor study results and this has a lot to
do with their home situations - weak economy, long periods of illnesses
and low self-esteem. It is also not uncommon that Aboriginal children
are being bullied and harassed in school because of their origin - which
in turn leads to many of them dropping out of school. Another big
problem in the suburbs is that English is the second language for many
Aboriginals and in Australian schools English is the language of
communication.
To deal with these problems, leaders in the educational system have
started a special language education for teachers and Aboriginal
students in Australian schools. There are also some schools that
specializes on Aboriginal languages, which is a very good thing. Although some
things are dealt with, the big issue is to try to change the
discriminating views that some people have of the Aboriginals, since
that, in my
view, is the real issue!
The problems in education bring us to another topic, namely the
level of criminality which is high amongst young Aboriginals and the problems in
school are often contributing factors to this problem.
CRIMINALITY
Although criminality today is an issue which the Australian government
is trying to deal with, there are still a large number of Aboriginals who
get on the wrong track. A study from the 1980s (page 19, Richard Nile,
Aboriginals in Australia) showed that the Aboriginals were 1, 5% of the
Australian population. Out of the whole population in Australia, 15%
were Aboriginals in prison, 25% were Aboriginals who die in custody and
30% were Aboriginals who are arrested by the police. Even
though Margaretha Hammarberg's book Australia's Aboriginals - from
prehistoric times to present time was written in 2000, she also talks about the same problem
existing at that time.
The relationship between the police and the Aboriginals has always
been bad. The police seldom see any extenuating circumstances when an
Aboriginal is guilty of a crime and the process called Mandatory
Sentencing which was introduced in 1997 in Australia is also something
that contributes to the fact that many Aboriginals are in prison. Mandatory Sentencing implies that
anyone who has turned 17 years old and is not previously sentenced is
obligatory sentenced to 14 days in prison if he/she is caught
shop-lifting, damaging or committing any other minor crime. If the same
person commits a crime again he/she is sentenced to 3 months in prison
and the third time the person commits a crime he/she is sentenced to a
year in prison. Even if this law is the same for everyone, Aboriginal
and white Australian, it is more likely
that Aboriginals are affected by this, considering their poor situations
at home, in school, alcohol and drug abuse.
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TRADITIONS AND CULTURE
ABORIGINAL DREAMTIME
Earlier, in the history section I mentioned a little about the
Aboriginals' religion, but what really is their religion? Even though
the Aboriginals are very religious, they do not have any priests.
Instead it is the oldest man in each tribe who acts the "priest" and who
translates the messages he gets from the ancestors and the spiritual
world and then passes the messages on to the rest of the tribe. A very
important thing for the Aboriginals is the expression Dreamtime which
was when everything was created; the land, the sea and all living
creatures. There are numerous different stories about the Dreamtime,
depending on which Aboriginal tribe you are talking about, but one thing
is the same all over and that is that the Dreamtime means that all
Aboriginals are offspring of the mysterious ancestors that created Earth
and that they all are forever bound to them. To show that you are
responsible enough to take care of the traditions of the Dreamtime, all
boys must go through something called Initiation. The initiation is a
kind of school which in history could be several months long and its
purpose is for boys to learn about hunting and about all the land
that surrounds them. The boys are taken for long walks, often outside
their own territories to learn how the land looks like and when this
initiation is finished, the boys have shown that they are responsible enough
to pass on the traditions.
The Aboriginals also strongly believe that every little thing
contains their ancestors' souls; mountains, caves, trees, stones,
everything, and that is one of the reasons why the Aboriginals, or at
least some today, are so in touch with the Earth.
To pass on the stories of the creation of Earth and the Dreamtime,
the Aboriginals have corroborees, a kind of festival for the spirits or
a ceremony where they sing and dance. The dancing is often an imitation
of animals and hunting movements. They also dress and paint themselves
and the music is made with drums, boomerangs and sticks clapped together
and by the men playing the didgeridoos. Corroborees are also sometimes
held in order for their ancestors to give them rain or luck in hunting
and also to celebrate a marriage or to mourn someone's death.
Through these kinds of rituals and ceremonies the Aboriginals manage
to maintain the link between past, present time and future and this is
something that is of great importance for the Aboriginals, in addition
to passing on their beliefs to the next generations. These traditions
are
not that common amongst Aboriginals in Australia today since many of
them live in bigger cities and so on, but still it is important not to
forget that they do exist.
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DIDGERIDOO
Something the Aboriginals are well known for is the didgeridoo. The
didgeridoo is a trunk of the eucalyptus tree hollowed out by termites or white ants that
eat their way through it. After the termites and ants have done their job, man has to take over. After you have found a
suitable piece of hollow wood you have to clean the pipe by drenching it
in water for approximately five days. You then strip away the bark from
outside and if there are any cracks in the piece of wood you have to
fill the cracks with beeswax. The mouthpiece is also made out of
beeswax. Now, the didgeridoo is practically finished but if you want to
make it
even prettier you can paint it in different patterns and colours.
Today, didgeridoos are very popular around the world, mostly because
of tourism, and you can get a didgeridoo for a reasonable price. But if
you would want to buy a didgeridoo from one of the two best didgeridoo
makers in the world Djalu Gurruwiwi and David Blanasi, you would have to
be prepared to pay about SKR 20.000!
As I mentioned above, the didgeridoo was/is used at corroborees. The
man playing the didgeridoo at corroborees is much respected and
his skills and knowledge of holy rhythms are greatly admired by his
people.
Apart from using the didgeridoo in music, some Aboriginals also say
that it has a healing power. They say that it can affect energies in the
body with people and animals in a positive way. For example, they say
that the music of the didgeridoo can repair the harmony in the body so
that it can heal on its own. Some Aboriginals claim that the sound of
the didgeridoo remind of the sound in the uterus, which is why people
feel so calm when they hear the sound of the instrument; it is a sort of
comfort and reminder from when they lay in their mother's stomach.
If you are more interested in how to actually play the didgeridoo,
there are several useful web sites. Here are two of them: http://www.mimersbrunn.se/arbeten/816.asp
and http://home.pon.net/kc707/how_to_play.htm
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BOOMERANG
Returnable boomerangs were mainly used as toys and for sports but also
as cooking tools and of course to make music by clapping them together.
But when you think about boomerangs you automatically think of a
boomerang that returns to the thrower. However, the Australian
Aboriginals first started using non-returning boomerangs which they
called kylies. They used them mostly for hunting. Aboriginals often
preferred the boomerang over the spear since the spear had to go up in
the air before hitting the target while the non-returning boomerang was
very accurate on its target straight forward. The theories about how the
returning boomerangs were created are many and no one knows for a fact.
But one theory of how the returnable boomerang came about is that
Aboriginal hunters maybe started to experiment with the shape and design
of the boomerang and then noticed that the boomerang came back to them.
They noticed that the thinner and the smaller the boomerang was, the
more it returned. Another theory that the Aboriginals saw how birds
held their wing in a V shape when they were flying in the air and
therefore came up with the shape of the returning boomerang.
As well as the didgeridoo, the boomerang is also a very popular thing
to use in Aboriginal art and is a way of passing on stories through
paintings. The boomerang is also a very popular sport today and there
are several associations over the world.
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ABORIGINAL ART
Since the Aboriginals did not have a written language they had to
communicate and pass on their stories and traditions through their
paintings. Aboriginal artworks always contain a story behind them
that talk about the history, the land and the creation time Dreamtime.
Other stories were also passed on through paintings, such as stories of
hunting and animals.
As everything else, Aboriginal art differs from tribe to tribe and where
they live. One example is the material the Aboriginals use for their
paintings and also the different techniques they use. While some
tribes use paper, linen and bark for their paintings, other tribes use
weapons, didgeridoos, statues and poles. The symbols and patterns
Aboriginal artists used and are still using are the same symbols and
patterns as their ancestors used. There is therefore a really strong
connection between Aboriginal art and the history of the Aboriginals,
even though much of the artwork is created today.
Caves were also a very common place for paintings and when e.g.
turtles were multiplying, the Aboriginals painted turtles on the wall in
the cave and sang a story about the life of the turtle, what he or she
was doing and so on. They did this to call to the life force which was
special for turtles and which would make the turtles lay a lot of eggs.
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THE ROLE MODEL
Catherine Freeman, the track and field athlete has given Australian
Aboriginals a face. Her list of achievements is too long to fit in
this text and she has been extremely successful over the years. But the
real culmination of her success came when she was the person to light the Olympic fire
at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. To show off her Aboriginal origin she
ran around the stadium at the Olympics in Atlanta 1996 with the Aboriginal flag around her, which, I think, is something
that many Aboriginals were very proud of! She is also an ambassador of
the tourism in Australia and she is very proud of being an Aboriginal,
which you can clearly see on her home page(see list of sources) where she not only has links
to Aboriginal web sites, but also has a special part about the
Aboriginals and their history.
THE ABORIGINAL FLAG
The flag was designed by the Aboriginal artist Harold Thomas in 1971 to be a symbol for the Aboriginal people and a symbol of
their race and identity. It was first raised in Victoria Square in
Adelaide on the National Aboriginal Day the 12th of July in 1971.
The black in the flag represents the Aboriginal people, the red the
earth and their spiritual relationship to the land, and the yellow the
sun, the giver of life.
There have been suggestions to take away the Union Jack in the
current Australian flag to replace it with the Aboriginal flag but
Harold Thomas has been against that suggestion since he felt
that the Aboriginal flag should be treated as standing on its own
instead of a secondary thing.
As I was talking earlier about Catherine Freeman and the Olympics in
Sydney in 2000 it is interesting to know that Australia was the first
nation that had two flags on that event!
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AN INSIGHT IN THE REAL WORLD
PERNILLA HOKANSSON IS A WOMAN I KNOW FROM BACK HOME SINCE HER MOTHER WAS
MY CHILDMINDER WHEN I WAS YOUNG. SHE NOW LIVES IN AUSTRALIA WITH HER
AUSTRALIAN HUSBAND AND I GOT THE OPPORTUNITY TO INTERVIEW HER ABOUT HER
VIEW OF THE ABORIGINALS, ETC.
- Where in Australia do you live?
- Outside of Brisbane, Queensland.
- Do many Aboriginals live there?
- Spread out in different suburbs, yes.
- If yes, are the Aboriginals grouped to special parts in the
society?
- Yes, in poorer and harder suburbs together with other people with
low incomes, both black and white people from several islands outside
Australia, e.g. Torres Strait Island. But then there are probably
Aboriginals who live in better suburbs around the country as well.
The thing is that you only notice those who live in the poorer
areas, in houses that are provided by the state, etc. It is like
there is no hope for these people. In these areas all different
nationalities are mixed so it is not just the Aboriginals who have a
tough time and live on welfare.
- What is your own view of Aboriginals?
- There are both "good and bad" Aboriginals. It does not
really matter where you come from or what group of people you belong
to. There are always those who damage the reputation for the rest of
the group.
- How do people talk about Aboriginals in general? Are the
comments positive or negative?
- Both. Many Aboriginals are still living in the nature with their
own laws as they did in the old times. They live in different tribes
and use everything nature offers them. They are proud of their origin,
they paint beautiful paintings and other art. Many Aboriginal people
are fighting for their rights. The negative comments are mostly about
the Aboriginals who live in the tough suburbs, those who does not care
about anything and live on welfare. These people are destroying for
the Aboriginals who want to become something, those who are proud of
their origin and work and struggle just like everyone else.
- In many books about the Aboriginal people you can read that the
situation of the Aboriginals in today's society is far from good;
many have problems with alcohol and drugs, many are unemployed and
many children and teenagers never finish school. Is this a true
image of their situation or is it different?
- I guess that it is both true and untrue because there are
Aboriginals who finish school, go to the university and get good jobs.
Unfortunately many have a low income, live in poor suburbs, have
problems with drugs and alcohol and the reputation of these people is
not the best. It is very sad because all Aboriginals are regarded a certain way because of this. The Aboriginals who live
in the nature are proud of their origin and are fighting for their
rights. This also goes for the Aboriginals who live
"ordinary" lives. They are constantly fighting with the
fact that people believe that all Aboriginal people are bad people
who only drink, use drugs and live on welfare.
- Has your own picture of Aboriginals changed in any way since you
moved to Australia?
- I do not have much contact with Australia's Aboriginals. It is hard
to say if my opinions have changed. The only thing I knew was the
stuff I had read in different factual books. I meet different children
in different schools when I work as a teacher assistant and
sometimes you can't even see that they have an Aboriginal origin
because of mixed marriages and sometimes you can see it very
clearly. Australia is a country with people from all over the world
so sometimes it is hard to say where someone comes from.
- I think that most countries' indigenous people have similar
problems to the Aboriginals in Australia. Compare the American
Indians in the U.S.A. and also the Afro-Americans. A lot of drugs,
alcohol, unemployment, hopelessness, everyone is looked at the same
way, generalizing, e.g. "all black people are criminals".
It is hard for these people to get away from the hopelessness and
the situations in the ghettos and suburbs.
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CONCLUSION
To say that the Aboriginals have and are still having a hard time in
Australia is a big understatement. One cannot even try to imagine all
the terror and oppression they have been forced to live with throughout
all these years and are still living with. I do not know if the
situation for these remarkable people will ever change but I hope so and
it makes me glad to see that the fighting spirit still lives with some
of them. I cannot help asking myself how it could go this far? How could
this group of people be so misjudged and mistreated? One of my biggest
fears is that the old Aboriginal people who are still living in the
nature in the same way as in the old times will die out and that the
wonderful traditions of this people also will die out. All I can do is
hope that this never happens and that the Aboriginals in Australia one
day can be seen as the proper members of the Australian society they
really are
LIST OF SOURCES
BOOKS
Crawshaw, Peter. Australien. 1988. Sverige:
Almqvist & Wiksell Förlag AB, 1991.
Engelhart, Monica.
Fakta om Australien och Nya Zeeland. Stockholm: Liber AB, 2000.
Hammarberg, M & L.
Austraiens Aboriginer – från urtid till nutid. Trollhättan: Sunes
Tryck AB, 2000.
Koustrup, Sören & Ulla.
Australien – ett land och en världsdel, 1986. Stockholm: Bokförlaget
Natur och Kultur, 1989.
Nile, Richard.
Aboriginer i Australien, 1992. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Natur och
Kultur, 1993.
Gleerups Förlag.
Australien och Oceanen. Italien: Canale, 1997.
Bokorama. Australien –
folk och länder. Amsterdam: Time-Life
Books B.V., 1985.
WEBSITES
Facts and history:
http://www.arhs.net/Society/Ethnicity/IndigenousPeople/AustralianAboriginals/
http://www.crystalinks.com/aboriginals.html
Culture and art:
http://www.walonia.demon.nl/ABOKCE.HTM
http://www.tribalworks.com/ethnbr.html
Catherine Freeman:
http://www.athletics.org.au/athletes/profiles/profile.cfm?ObjectID=205&SearchQueryString=AthleteInitial%3DF
http://www.cathyfreeman.com.au/
The flag:
http://www.ausflag.com.au/flags/ab.html
http://www.wilmap.com.au/aboriginals.html
Boomerangs:
http://www.boomerang.org.au/
http://www.vcnet.com/abosteves/history.html
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/boomerang.htm/printable
Didgeridoos:
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-100696/larswallin/en.htm
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