Aboriginal Australians - history.

Aboriginal Australians - history. I INTRODUCTION Aboriginal Music of Australia The didjeridu is a unique musical instrument found among the Aboriginal people of northern Australia. It is an end-blown, straight, trumpetlike instrument traditionally made from a termite-hollowed eucalyptus branch. The didjeridu is played by men to accompany singing and dancing during communal ceremonies and clan songs. The player must inhale through the nose while blowing into the instrument (a method known as circular breathing) in order to keep a constant drone (sustained tone) over which rhythmic, voiced sounds are interjected by the same player. Gordon Gahan/Photo Researchers, Inc./"Kwa (Dance of the Crows)" performed by Ash Dargan, didgeridoo, from Corroboree-Do (Traditional Ceremonial Didj Dance) (Cat.# Indigenous Australia IA2048D) ©and(p)Indigenous Australia. All Rights Reserved. - history. Aboriginal Australians or Aborigines, original inhabitants of Australia and their descendants. The term Aboriginal does not include the Torres Strait Islanders, a much smaller indigenous population in Australia whose homelands are the islands off the tip of the Cape York Peninsula in far northeastern Australia. Archaeological evidence suggests that Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years. They have inhabited every region of the island continent. Today they live in all states and mainland territories of Australia, with the highest population concentrations in the states of Queensland and New South Wales. In 2001 the Aboriginal population of Australia numbered approximately 427,000, or about 2.2 percent of the total population. Aboriginal people traditionally lived as hunter-gatherers in small family groups, hunting, fishing, and collecting a variety of plant foods. Most groups were nomadic or seminomadic and built simple brush or bark shelters. Hundreds of culturally distinct Aboriginal groups were spread across the Australian continent. They occupied a wide range of environments, from the savanna woodlands of the north to the harsh desert outback and temperate woodlands of the south. Like indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world, they developed an intimate understanding of the environment in which they lived. This connection to the land, and to its animals and plants, permeated every aspect of Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal Children at School Children from Australia's outback listen to their schoolteacher during class. From 1883 to 1940, students of Aboriginal heritage could be officially and legally prohibited from attending Australia's state-run schools. In response to protests from indigenous communities, federal funding for education programs increased in the 1990s. Bill Bachman/Photo Researchers, Inc. Europeans began settling in Australia in 1788. Their impact on the indigenous population was devastating. Many Aboriginal people died from epidemics of European diseases or from fighting to retain control of their land. Only those inhabiting the most remote areas of the continent were able to continue their traditional way of life. By the early 1900s many Aboriginal people were reduced to an impoverished, sedentary life, either on their own lands at the fringe of urban areas or on government-established reserves. Many also grew dependent on European society, which had little sympathy for them. Government assimilation policies, which sought to absorb Aboriginal people into white society, further eroded their culture. Until the 1960s Aboriginal people were denied basic political rights, including the right to vote. However, by the mid-1960s Aboriginal people had the right to vote in both state and federal elections. A 1967 referendum gave the federal government the power to pass legislation relating to all indigenous people in Australia. Since then the Australian government has tried to make up for past mistreatment by greatly increasing funding to improve Aboriginal people's socioeconomic standing and by passing legislation to restore Aboriginal land rights. In addition, decisions by the High Court of Australia have given legal recognition to the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were the original landowners of the country. Issues of reconciliation between the white majority population and Aboriginal people figure prominently in Australian public life today. Nevertheless, compared to the Australian population as a whole, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today continue to suffer disproportionately from serious social problems such as poverty, unemployment, lack of education, substandard housing, and poor health. The term aborigines can refer to the original inhabitants of any land and their direct descendants. When capitalized as Aborigines it refers to the indigenous people of mainland Australia and Tasmania. However, in Australia today the preferred term is Aboriginal people or, when referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people collectively, Indigenous Australians. Most urban Aboriginal people prefer to identify themselves by a regional term: Muri in Queensland, Koori in New South Wales and Victoria, Palawa in Tasmania, Nungah in South Australia, and Noongah in Western Australia. Aboriginal people in more remote regions may identify themselves by their language name. For example, a person may say, "I am Warlpiri," meaning that he or she speaks the Warlpiri language of the Northern Territory desert. II ABORIGINAL SETTLEMENT OF AUSTRALIA Current archaeological evidence suggests that human occupation of Australia began around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. The first settlers are believed to have migrated from Southeast Asia in gradual stages, by way of the islands of Indonesia. Around 50,000 years ago sea levels were as much as 120 m (390 ft) lower than they are today, and Australia was joined with New Guinea and Tasmania to form one giant landmass called Sahul, or Greater Australia. Scholars believe that the first migrants to Sahul came via a series of open-water crossings from island to island, and that the longest crossing required probably was no more than 80 km (50 mi). It is not known whether such journeys were intentional or what kinds of watercraft were used. Many anthropologists and archaeologists think that small boatloads of people continued to arrive from time to time on the Australian coast from what is now Indonesia, either intentionally or because they were blown off course. A Adaptations to New Environments National Park, Tasmania Franklin-Lower Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, located in the Australian state of Tasmania, includes quartz peaks, rain forest, and limestone caves. The Kutikina Caves, also inside the park, were inhabited by Aboriginal people more than 10,000 years ago. Paul Souders/Corbis The first arrivals to Sahul probably landed near what is now western New Guinea. They would have found the vegetation in the areas where they landed similar to that they had left. However, many of the land animal species--including marsupials such as kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and koalas--would have been unfamiliar to them. As the descendants of the original migrants moved south toward the arid center of the continent, they would have had to make substantial adjustments, particularly to new plant foods. Further adaptations would have been required as they moved into the temperate woodlands of southern Australia. By 35,000 years ago Aboriginal people had established themselves throughout the continent, although only sparsely in the inhospitable central desert. Over time, Aboriginal groups developed many regional differences in language, religion, social organization, art, economy, and material culture. These cultural differences emerged because of limited interaction between local groups, the desire of neighboring groups to differentiate themselves from one another, and the way each group adapted to the unique topography, climate, and resources of its environment. For example, whereas desert dwellers lived in temporary shelters and wore little or no clothing, Aboriginal people in the far southeastern region of Australia developed more solid housing structures and wore skin cloaks to cope with the cold, subalpine climate. B Effects of Climate Changes Grampians National Park Grampians National Park is the largest in Victoria, Australia. The area includes mountains that are the historical homeland of the Aboriginal Koori people. J. Carnemolla/Australian Picture Library The changes in the global climatic conditions over the past 50,000 years substantially affected human settlement patterns in Australia. The earliest Aboriginal groups experienced climate conditions only slightly different from those of today. Cooler and wetter conditions then prevailed for a time, peaking between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago. These conditions created a relatively lush environment in many areas, with large lakes and waterways that provided abundant amounts of fish and shellfish far inland. Then the climate turned colder and more arid, with sea levels falling to 150 m (490 ft) below present levels and desert-like conditions emerging across much of Australia's interior. By 15,000 years ago the climate started becoming warmer and wetter, and by 5,000 years ago temperature and rainfall levels reached modern conditions. Clearly all of these climate changes would have influenced Aboriginal population density and distribution, in particular affecting how hospitable the desert regions were. In most cases the climate changes would have been gradual and largely unnoticed, rather than dramatic changes requiring rapid migration by large groups of people. Rising sea levels led to the separation of Australia from New Guinea about 12,000 years ago, creating the many islands of the Torres Strait. The peoples of these islands regularly traveled by sea to trade and visit with people on both sides of the strait. In southern Australia the rising sea cut off Tasmania from the mainland, isolating the Aboriginal population of Tasmania for 12,000 years until the arrival of Europeans. III TRADITIONAL CULTURE Until Europeans began to settle in Australia in 1788, the Aboriginal way of life was supported by hunting, gathering, and fishing. Like other hunting and gathering peoples, Aboriginal people had an extremely detailed knowledge of their environment, especially plant ecology and animal behavior. The deep connection between Aboriginal people and the natural world influenced every part of their culture, including their food gathering, tools, trade, religion, art, music, language, and social organization. Knowledge of Aboriginal ways of life before European contact comes primarily from observations made after European arrival. Although traditional practices observed during the post-contact period were probably similar to those of many thousands of years ago, it is also clear that climate, environment, fauna, material culture, and social and cultural practices changed during the intervening period. This section primarily describes how Aboriginal people were living in the early 18th century, in the period just prior to European settlement of Australia. Many of these descriptions are based on anthropologists' studies of Aboriginal people whose traditional ways survived intact into the 20th century and who had little if any regular contact with Europeans. These included Aboriginal groups in parts of the central desert, Arnhem Land (in the Northern Territory), the northern Kimberley region (in Western Australia), and the western Cape York Peninsula (in Queensland). A Food and Subsistence...