| Indigenous Australians | |
|---|---|
| Peoples | |
| People | |
| Culture | |
| Languages | |
| Organisations | |
| Bushcraft |
Bushfood · Bush medicine · Bush bread · Fibrecraft · Soaks · Shelter · Possum-skin cloak · Buka · Food groups · Sweet foods · Fire-stick farming · Woomera · Boomerang · Coolamon · Waddy · Spinifex resin
|
| Arts |
Visual Art · Bark painting · Papunya Tula · Music · Rock · Music groups · Didgeridoo · Vibe · NATSIA Award
|
| History | |
| Issues | |
- In other countries forced unpaid labor is called slavery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7yMsWRzBzsAboriginal life, customs video.
Semang woman.
Cave drawings of closely allied people the Semangs
of Malaysia to Australian Aborigines.
Australian Aboriginal prisoners ( virtually a slave people)
...
"Living off the land" is something all Aborigines were comfortable with. They knew the land well and the habits of the animals they hunted. They used insects as food, medicine, and part of their cultural beliefs. They talked about insects in myths, legends, and fables. Many fables often had morals and were helpful in explaining their physical surroundings.
The myths and legends the Aborigines shared about creation were known as Dreamtime. These stories sometimes talked about monsters, some real and some maybe not. Since records were not kept by the Aborigines, they passed knowledge and traditions orally from one generation to the next. Because oral traditions tend to change and become distorted over the years, many believe that some of these animals talked about may still have been living in Australia some two to three hundred years ago.
Later, when the English arrived in Australia, they caused violent disruption to the lives of the Aborigines. Europeans were known to mistreat the Aborigine people to acquire the land they wanted. They would often poison main watering holes and give the Aborigines flour and bran mixed with strychnine and arsenic. Aborigines fished with either spears or by scooping fish into nets or fish traps. Canoes were used by the Aborigines for travel between islands and the mainland. Canoes were made from bark tied together with sapling strips. After the canoes were woven together with kangaroo sinews, they were made watertight with gum and resin. Canoe trees can still be seen on some tours and are recognized because the shape of a canoe is seen missing from the skin of the trunk. In conclusion, Australian Aboriginal heritage is rapidly being lost.
The massacre
A party of twelve men, consisting of eleven convict settlers and one free man, John Fleming, arrived at a hut on Henry Dangar's Myall Creek station on 10 June. They told the station hand there, George Anderson, that they intended to round up any Aboriginal people they could find. They claimed to be acting in retaliation for the theft of cattle, although they did not attempt to identify any individuals who were responsible for the theft. The men gathered up twenty-eight people, mostly women and children, out of a group of forty or fifty Aboriginal people who were camping in the area. They were taken behind a hill, away from the hut. The shepherd later heard shots. The twenty-eight had all been killed, and some of the young women had been raped.[citation needed] Later, on 11 June, after Fleming and his men could not find any more Aboriginal people, they collected the bodies together and burned them.[citation needed] When the manager of the station, a Mr Hobbs, returned several days later and discoveredthe bodies, he decided to report the incident, travelling 250 miles across the
Liverpool Plains
to Muswellbrook. The magistrate there, Captain Edward Day, reported the
incident to the Colonial Secretary, Edward Thomson, who then reported it to the
Governor of New South Wales, George Gipps.[citation needed]
Gipps did not immediately make a decision, but by July, after being urged
to do so by the Attorney-General John Plunkett, he ordered Day to take
a group of mounted police to investigate. On investigating the site where
the Aboriginal people were said to have been killed, Day found many charred bones,
with pieces of at least twenty different skulls, and other identifiable
skeletal remains in numbers enough for Day to conclude that at least twenty-eight
people had been killed there.[1]
Typical Events at a cattle Station in the Outback. .....Charles Cowle was the superintendent from 1895 to 1903. He advocated the arrest of aboriginal people who were perceived as troublemakers, rather than the shooting of them on sight (the latter policy being commonplace in the region at the time). Aboriginal offenders were brought in to the station in neck chains and sometimes they were beaten as well. Aboriginal attacks on pastoralists became less frequent over time, as the police officers rounded up more and more people, and population numbers dropped with deaths from introduced diseases such as measles and whooping cough. The station continued to operate until 1912 as a general arm of government in the region and as a point for the distribution of rations to aboriginal people. Aboriginal culture, as well as being threatened by the impact of disease and the disintegration of social life resulting from police raids and loss of land to pastoralists, was also under attack.
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(above) native corroborree.
| Senior Kimberley artist Jack Dale provides an artistic snapshot of life in the West Kimberley since the 1920s. Jack paints his memories of working bullock teams, Afghan camel traders, life in the stock camps, Aboriginal incarceration, and most of all his detailed knowledge of Ngarinyin Dreaming sites of the Wandjina spirit. We are pleased to announce that Jack will be attending the opening of this seminal exhibition ./www.cre.gov.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew0rl.RefLocID-0hg01b001006009.Lang-EN.htm |  |
traditional Ngarinyin Law by his maternal grandfather. His traditional country is Imanji near Mt House Station. Jack went on to lead a remarkable life that bridged both cultures. He was a highly regarded head stockman and bushman, as well as a respected tribal Elder and Lawman. Jack began painting in the 1990's, working with traditional ochre pigments. He has made large ceremonial boards used by traditional dancers to re-enact Dreaming stories. has used his extensive cultural knowledge to record aspects of the Wandjina Dreaming sites of his people. He has also recorded his own memories from a long life lived at the frontier of Kimberley life, recalling the historical changes he had witnessed. These have included the arrival of afghan camel drivers, the enforced captivitaboriginal workers, the conflicts between whites and blacks, the work of missionaries, and other sometimes humorous memories from life in the stock camps. Jack Dale is assisted in his work by his wife, artist Biddy Dale, and other close members of his family including his daughter Edna Dale. Today Jack spends his time between the Kimberley town of Derby and the community at Imanji on his traditional lands. Jack describes parts of his early life as follows: "My father worked for a man called Scotty Saddler, he came from ScotlandAll my family worked for this man. My father Jack Dale and Scotty kill plenty of Aborigines 'cleared them out' for the cattle, when it was clear they the land. We saw plenty of men walking along the bush road to Derby; they weall chained up "poor bugga's". The boss man who took them to Derby and then to Fremantle. I was just a kid hiding in the long grass watching. They were tied outside and inside the prison tree, never took the chains off. Poor old blackfellow didn't know what he was being killed for. My mother told me about my father shooting people, my father would not tell me. He shot me in the leg one time and always tied me up to a tree with a dog chain in the hot sun. I thought he was going to kill me, I was always frightened. I tried many times to run away to my mother and grandmother's country in the bush. He was always drunk. Him and his mates, grog and the hot sun made their minds crazMy mother was working at Napier Downs, Alex Thompson was the boss, a good man. He helped me grow up Mount House, everywhere. Later my dad found me and took me home and put a chain around my leg so I could not run away again. My mother told me stories about the blackfellas making the roads, lifting rocks. If they complained they were too heavy the boss men would knock them down with axes, anything. They used to be a mob of donkeys more than 50. Later we all camped in Saddlers Spring. All the mail used to come from Mount House. The mailman used to drink a lot, falling off his horse all the time. My father died at Mount House, killed himself on grog. After he died my Grandmother took me bush. They grew me up at Lady Forest Ranges, King Leopold. I was a real bushman, no clothes on, we had a hair belt cover. We ate kangaroo, yam, and goanna. We didn't leave the ranges, too frightened of the police. My grandfather saw plenty of shootings and we were all scared. I was there a long time. I was just about black with sunburn. Alex Thompson went looking for me; he wanted to send me away to Queensland for school. They found me in a bush camp on a hill; I was wild, growing up in the bush. I then worked as a Jackaroo at Mount House. Archie Blythe was a really good boss, he never gave me a hiding. We collected fowl eggs and he would give us cakes, sweet ones. When he left we pinched the eggs back and took then back to him for more cake. Doug Blythe took over Mount House, but he's in Perth now, with a walking stick poor fellow. That's why I know every Wandjina my grandfather showed me, you can only put your Wandjina's in paintings nobody else's that all.
2 illustrations by Ric (using adobe 7 photoshop)
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A 'Land Without People' Children were taken from
their parents and enslaved
to work for one twentieth the "white" wage on sheep
and
cattle stations
(ranches in pitiful conditions) the girls as domestic
drudges.
Despite the presence of native inhabitants, Australia
in 1788
was declared void by the British First Fleet of any pre-
existing civilisation under the doctrine of terra nullius -
essentially, a land without people. Without recognisable
systems of ruler and ruled, of religious ceremony or
worship,
of permanent settlement, ownership and organised
trade, the land was
deemed to be empty.
The devastating effects of this assumption are still
felt today.
It has meant that the land to which the Aboriginal
people are
bound by intricate webs of totemism (clans who believe
in
totems - revered natural objects) has beencleared and
developed, its natural resources depleted and its
spiritual
significance disregarded. Though having no notions of
private
property in the European sense, the native Australians
were
in fact fiercely territorial, dependent upon their ancestral
land
for both physical and psychic survival.
The basis of this intensely spiritual relationship with
the land
-The Dreaming or Dreamtime - is a rich and complex
pattern
of belief, interwoven with accounts of the ancestral beings
who
created the world and its inhabitant and who ensure the
protection
and continuity of Aboriginal life. This elaboratemosaic of
faith did
not find expression in idolatry or purpose-built places of
worship, but in song, dance, art and speech. The Australian
natives carried notion of the sacred within them, and imbued
the landscape with it in a powerful mutual relationship. The
significance
of ancestral land could not simply be picked up like a picnic
blanket
and spread out on some other piece of ground - the land did
not belong
to them, but their intense attachment to
it stemmed from the fact that they belonged to and were
dependent upon it.
Victims of Colonialism
Dispossessed of this land, lacking immunity to foreign diseases
such as small pox,
tuberculosis and influenza whilst their food sources were
destroyed or diminished
by exotic animals and European farming methods, the Aboriginal
people became more dependent on the white settlers for their existence. Forced to eat unaccustomed foods high in sugar and starches, they fell prey to malnutrition, obesity and diabetes, heightened by the ravaging effects of rum. As the young colony grew, Aborigines were reviled, harassed and murdered - both by bitter convicts, seeking an outlet for their frustration and by settlers in the grab for land on which to make their farming fortunes. Active resistance was met with punitive raids and massacres - the worst recorded taking place in 1838, during which 300 Aborigines were killed over the course of 3 days. The killings continued well into the 20th century and it is estimated that in the 150 years after settlement, the population of Australian natives was reduced from approximately 300,000 to about 75,000. In Tasmania, full-blooded Aborigines were wiped out altogether. Fate of the Stolen Generation Based on these figures and on notions of Darwinism, it was assumed that the Aboriginal population was dying out. 'Protection' policies for the survivors in the early 1900s amounted to segregation and restrictions on freedom. Since it was believed that the full-blooded race would soon disappear anyway, the government focussed on breeding out Aboriginal culture. "Assimilation", as the policy was called, sanctioned the forcible removal of non full-blood children from their families. These children were placed in institutions where they were expected to learn European values, integrate into white culture, breed with other "half-castes" or whites and ultimately eliminate the Aboriginal blood line. These measures were attempts at genocide. External links
References
Palm Island, QueenslandFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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*http://www.geocities.com/roblobb/links.html
Melbourne Cup
It's another record-breaking win when Phar Lap beat Second Wind and Shadow
King in the Melbourne Cup of 1930.http://au.geocities.com/melbournecups/
Melbourne Cup Winners.
The Man from Snowy River
by "Banjo" Patterson.
There was movement at the station for the word had
got around,
that the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses --
he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
- All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
The old man with his hair as white as snow;
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up --
He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
No better horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle-girths would stand,
He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.
And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast, He was something like a racehorse undersized, With a touch of Timor pony -- three parts thoroughbred at least -- And such as are by mountain horsemen prized. He was hard and tough and wiry -- just the sort that won't say die -- There was courage in his quick impatient tread; And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye, And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.
But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay, And the old man said, "That horse will never do For a long and tiring gallop -- lad, you'd better stop away, Those hills are far too rough for such as you." So he waited sad and wistful -- only Clancy stood his friend -- "I think we ought to let him come," he said; "I warrant he'll be with us when he's wanted at the end, For both his horse and he are mountain bred."
"He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side, Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough, Where a horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride, The man that holds his own is good enough. And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home, Where the river runs those giant hills between; I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam, But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen."
So he went -- they found the horses by the big mimosa clump -- They raced away towards the mountain's brow, And the old man gave his orders, "Boys, go at them from the jump, No use to try for fancy riding now. And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right. Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills, For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight, If once they gain the shelter of those hills."
So Clancy rode to wheel them -- he was racing on the wing Where the best and boldest riders take their place, And he raced his stock-horse past them, and he made the ranges ring With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face. Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash, But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view, And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash, And off into the mountain scrub they flew.
Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black Resounded to the thunder of their tread, And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead. And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way, Where mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide; And the old man muttered fiercely, "We may bid the mob good day, No man can hold them down the other side."
When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull, It well might make the boldest hold their breath, The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full Of wombat holes, and any slip was death. But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head, And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer, And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed, While the others stood and watched in very fear.
He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet, He cleared the fallen timber in his stride, And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat -- It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride. Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground, Down the hillside at a racing pace he went; And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound, At the bottom of that terrible descent.
He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill, And the watchers on the mountain standing mute, Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still, As he raced across the clearing in pursuit. Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet, With the man from Snowy River at their heels.
And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam. He followed like a bloodhound on their track, Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home, And alone and unassisted brought them back. But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot, He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur; But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot, For never yet was mountain horse a cur.
She was Truganini and the last.
All her tribe were in the past.
Her children stole by "whitefella boss,"
And one child soon a final loss.
A Stolen Generation Cries Out
By Michael Perry, Reuter 20 May 1997
SYDNEY, May 20 - Haunting voices of elderly Aborigines tell of babies being snatched from their mother's breast by police on horseback in Australia's outback.Black and white film shows rows of Aboriginal children with empty faces, dressed in striped uniforms reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps, and others bent over sweeping the dirt with their bare hands.
The Australian Archives exhibition travelling the country titled "Between Two Worlds" reveals a dark chapter in Australia's past when it attempted to breed out Aborigines.
Tens of thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents under a government policy of assimilation from the 1880s to the 1960s. Those children are called the "Stolen Generation" or "People of the Bleaching."
"It clearly was attempted genocide," Sir Ronald Wilson, president of Australia's Human Rights Commission, told Reuters. "It was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out."
STOLEN CHILDREN STILL SUFFERING
Today, thousands of Aborigines face a life of family breakdowns, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and mental anguish they say is directly linked to being taken from their parents.Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson has just completed a year-long national inquiry into the Stolen Generation and he, too, said it was an attempt at genocide.
Dodson's report is now before the government and is expected to formally charge Australia with attempted genocide and call for an apology and compensation, possibly millions of dollars.
"Certainly an apology is a very good beginning in healing what is a real sore, a real wound in the Australian pysche," said Aboriginal leader Dodson. "There's this huge scar that we have to perhaps re-open in order to heal."
Joy Williams is a Stolen Generation child. Her mother Dora was taken away when she was 10 hours old, Joy was taken at seven hours and Joy's daughter Julie Anne at 10 months. The only reason ever given was the colour of their skin.
"How do you assist a nation of people who are grieving because this policy affected every Aboriginal community in Australia?" demands Williams, one of hundreds of Aborigines suing Australia's national and state governments. "You have a nation in mourning and nothing is being done," Williams said angrily.
ABORIGINAL CHILD SLAVES Many Aboriginal children were raised on government and church missions in remote, outback locations where life was tough and sexual abuse widespread.
Wilson said Aboriginal children were used as virtual slaves and one in 10 were sexually assaulted. "The children would be stripped naked and tied to a post in the yard to be flogged for some minor misdemeanour," he said.
"We have had mothers say to us, 'I'm a rotten mother. I don't know how to cuddle my baby', and then add, 'The only time I have ever been cuddled was when I was being raped'." Australia's churches have apologised for their part in what they say was a Nazi-style policy of assimilation. They admit their role was was to break the Aboriginal spirit. "People believed that if we were going to make good Catholics or Christians out of the Aboriginal people we had to take them away from what we would have seen as pagan influences...," said Catholic Bishop Pat Power. Dodson said Aboriginal Australia is today dysfunctional as a result, with family breakdowns endemic and drug and aclohol abuse widespread. Aboriginal juveniles are 30 times more likely to be jailed and also suffer the country's highest suicide rate.
"Every story is its own little tragedy, that amount to a national tragedy," Dodson said. "They were told 'your parents are dead, your mother's a drunk, your mother's a whore, your mother's no good, she doesn't want you'."
SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY
Archie Roach, a leading Aboriginal musician, is a Stolen Generation child who has searched all his life for his identity."I don't remember much because I was only three, but I do remember running with my cousin down to the river and hiding in the bracken and under sticks," Roach said.
As a child Roach was sent to several white foster homes -- one family forced him to eat raw potatoes and sleep in the grain shed. He only discovered he was Aboriginal at 11, and at 14 his lost sister wrote him a letter saying his mother had died. "I don't know what my mother looks like," Roach said. For years Roach lived on the streets searching for his (family).
Aboriginal people have moved up in the world. Some of them now have their own houses. Many have their own gaol cell they can share with three or four of their mates.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=6xEKJLBTnkQC&dq=don't+take+your+love+to+town.+ginibi&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=oJ_Li9UvDB&sig=m7Kb05cerwSnvjvQLJFBqqPuDpY&hl=en&ei=ZoMHSrOLIJCOtgOCvPnxAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=re book by Ruby Langford Ginibi
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