Indigenous Peoples of Australia
Their beliefs and lifestyle
Native Australians. Known as Aborigines. Primitive nomadic people.
Treated like scum.
I recently read ‘The Secret River’ by Kate Grenville which for the most part, is set in Australia in the early 1800s. Poverty-stricken Londoner, William Thornhill is found guilty of stealing a piece of wood and is sentenced to be hanged. He pleads for mercy and he and his wife, Sal, are deported to Australia instead.
He has the opportunity now to make a good life for himself — if only those damned Aborigines weren’t in the way.
Damned Aborigines, eh?
They were living in Australia thousands of years before invaders came and took over, destroying their way of life, dismissing their culture as insignificant and murdering them with no more compunction than they might swat an annoying gnat.
The novel prompted me to look up native Australia life and culture which dates back over 65,000 years.
Beliefs — The Dreaming
Their creation story starts with Ancestor Spirits who came to Earth in human form and created the land, the sea, the rocks and all that exists on Earth. They then transformed themselves into stars, watering holes, rocks and other features in the environment. This is why some places such as Uluru, once known as Ayers Rock, are deemed sacred - because the Spirits reside there. These Ancestor Spirits also passed down laws describing how people should live. They strongly believed in protecting the land and the environment.
The Rainbow Serpent is one of these great Spirits and is responsible for rivers and lakes. He is vital to life, but can easily be angered, sending floods and thunderstorms as punishment.
The beliefs of indigenous Australians include death and re-birth and an afterlife not very different from life on Earth. They have a very close connection to nature and follow a nomadic lifestyle. They have their own songs, chants and musical instruments, the most well-known perhaps being the didgeridoo. The Dreaming Stories are vitally important to their culture and have been passed down for around fifty-thousand years via those songs and through storytelling, as well as ceremonial body-painting and dance.
There is no word in the their language for ‘time.’ Their concept of The Dreaming is not that it happened in the past; it is with them — in the environment in which they live, residing in the animals, plants, rocks and rivers. It is never-ending, linking the people to the land and connecting to the spiritual world.
Indigenous Australians did not have any concept of owning land. They lived on it and took what they needed and no more, collecting fruit, plants and berries and killing animals for food.
Art
Native Australians do not have a written language so their stories of The Dreamtime and every other aspect of their culture is passed on orally and also by way of symbolic art.
Traditional paintings were created on rock walls using natural pigments like ochre on stone, but were also drawn in sand or dust or even depicted on human bodies. Modern paintings on canvas only began in the 1930s. One of the most famous watercolour artists was Albert Namatjira whose works were displayed in an exhibition in Adelaide in 1937.
For Native Australians, Dreaming is their identity which shines through in their paintings. Particular stories are inherited and artists need permission to paint them; they cannot paint a story that does not belong to their family.
Many of the paintings feature dots. It is believed, by some, that these dots were used to hide information from those intruders who were not of The Dreaming, obscuring symbols that depicted the secret knowledge meant for Aboriginal eyes only.
Indigenous Australians may appear on the surface to be simple people but that is far from the truth. They have rich traditions, history, language and beliefs that have been all but snuffed out by the arrival of Europeans.
The British played a huge part in destroying their traditional lifestyle. Convicts were deported to Australia as punishment for their crimes but once they arrived, they found they could make a decent life for themselves. Land was freely available and new arrivals grabbed it with both hands and to hell with the people who were already living there, even though they were merely wandering through or maybe residing in the area for a short while.
Native Australians were murdered in huge numbers.
Just as the Native Americans were slaughtered.
Just as the Aztecs were destroyed.
Same old miserable story.
In modern times, Native Australians have been forced to adapt to living in towns or cities. This is not their tradition, nor are they comfortable with it and conditions are often poor and unpleasant. Racism and violence towards them still occurs and their traditions have been reduced to dot-drawings produced for the tourist trade.
A little understanding of their lifestyle, a little respect for another culture, a few gestures of friendship and this great tragedy could have been avoided with everyone living in harmony.
Ah, who am I kidding?
