Aborigines: History and Culture

Written by Luiz Monografia AC - Monografias from Brazil

Australian Aborigines descend from African emigrants who had populated Asia 60 thousand years ago and had crossed the sea, using canoes and coarse boats.

English people had colonized the island in the century XVIII. They had found 300 thousand aborigines, divided in more than 500 groups, some of them with only 100 members, others with 1500, according to the surrounding diversity and abundance of alimentary resources.

They spoke 200 languages - today only 20 are alive -, and made commerce between themselves.

English colonizers had dealt with aborigines population as second category people and had been sufficiently violent with them. There were enormous slaughters, discriminatory laws and Anglican religion wanted to erase all the traces of animistic cults.

Currently, Australia has 20 million inhabitants, but only 200 thousand aborigines.

Australian aborigines have in common a nomad life, basically living of hunting and vegetable collectors, and to practise the animistic religion.

In the desert, populations concentrate themselves where they can found some water, in temporary encampments, formed of habitations that are simple shelters.

Families raise for-winds with branches and underbrush and, if the ground is arenaceous,, they excavate hollows to better protection against the wind. In the cold nights, they sleep around the fire. Dog is the only domestic animal.

The men hunt great animals, as the kangaroo, and fish, by a very patient technique. Hunting practices compels them to remain hours waiting, occult, behind the shrubs. Women collect vegetables and honey, hunt small animals e get crustaceans.

Aborigines do not use the arc and the arrow to hunt, but they are served by spears, batons and boomerangs. For their purpose, they use rock axes and the wood to excavate. They manufacture these utensils with wood, bones and rock.

They prepare the food directly on live coals: they do not have resistant kitchen containers.

Aljauara are about 500. They are the only aborigines that embed their deceased and in others population cremation of corpses is more common. The most important people can be conserved in hollow trunks of tree.

Aranda also is formed by afew hundreds; they had left the hunting and dedicate to cattle farming. In the desert of Gibson there are a people with same name formed by only 300 members.

Another small population is the Gurindji, with 250 elements. Some are Christian and have biblical texts translated to their language.

Of equally scarce population, the Mudbara wors in the reserves of the government from the occidental region of the desert; they are Christian. Already the Pitjantjara works in the governmental reserves in the central region. They are some thousands of individuals, some Christians.

The Pintubi are also diligent dependents; they live in reserves and work for white proprietors in the cattle creation. Ualpari people totalizes 300 members; they live in the center of the country; they work for the government or cattle farmers. The Uarramunga had also abandoned the nomadism to apply for remunerated works; they are some hundreds.

In the center of the country live about 1500 Ualpiri; some keep the millenarian traditions, others work in farms. As the Mardus, that, however, are less numerous.

The clans

The clans identify themselves with one totem, that is the representation of some deity that they believe to be descendents. It has the figure of an animal, a plant or an objecto, that cannot be deceased, eaten or destroyed, because they are sacred.

Each clan has a proper territory, but it does not possess exclusive rights on it, since another clan can get authorization or be invited to hunt there. Marriages become enter second cousins. In extreme conditions, unions between clans are possible. A tribal government does not exist. When necessary, the familiar heads play the role of local heads transitory.

Aborigines are not warlike. They only appeal to war in rare occasions, over all to apply justice.

Aboriginal culture characterizes for the strong union of all the beings - Sun, air, rain, the animals, plants, human beings... -, with the Nature, a superior Being that integrates everything.

In this conception, human being is not superior, but share Nature with all the other beings and everything is indispensable.

And the human beings must honor Nature in everything what they make.

While they work, they pray, if they amuse and in any another activity, aborigines use the art as a communication media. Work instruments are made with fine atention and dexterity and take paintings and registrations, where they count histories of people, the clan or some person, and it evokes the relation with their deities.

Body paintings or in rinds of eucalypt are used as subject mythology or portray scenes of the quotidian.

Music is all over vocal. The main musical instrument is "didgeridu", that it is a representation of the Mother Serpent, the creator of Land, and consists of a hollow trunk that extends vocal sounds.

To mark the rhythm of voice and dances, batons are used.

There are in the desert places of great historical, cultural and sacred value, as giant monoliths and meteorite craters.

Among them three rocky formations are distinguished: the "Chambers Pillars", the "Kata Tjuta" and the "Ayers Rocks".

During the sunset, rocks reflect the solar light and seem to be in live coal. While the Sun puts down, the rock becomes grayish, until finishing as if they were total black.

Curiosity

In aboriginal culture, Moon is a masculine being, while the Sun is a feminine figure.

The reason is the importance that they dedicate to women representation, without which life is not possible. Without the Sun also life in the Land is not possible.

Recent dramas

Between 1910 and 1970, the government of Australia removed 100 thousand aboriginal children - the majority of clear skin - from their parents and interned them in educative centers, to infuse into them the occidental culture.

Australians call them the"lost generation".

Up to 1962, aborigines did not vote. Five years later they had been able to be counted for the first time. However, still today they suffer many discriminations: in comparison with white population, wages are three times inferior and unemployed people five times superior; tax of infantile mortality is double; and, on average, they lives18 years less.