Indigenous Australians' World Order - Research Paper Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 Origin 2 Political way of life 2 Economic way of life 3 Social way of life 3 History 4 Indigenous Australians: Australia’s First People Introduction This paper will discuss the indigenous people of Australia before the arrival of the British. It will focus on their history, in terms of their economic, political and social way of life. It will then discuss the impacts of the invasion and subsequent settlement of the first British fleet up to the beginning of the 18th century. It will highlight on the struggle for freedom and human rights from the 18th century up to date. The paper will finally focus on two outstanding aboriginal people who have been on the forefront in the fight for the aboriginal culture and the landmark achievement they have set. Origin Aboriginal Australians are the indigenous people in the greater part of the mainland continent of Australia (Jacob 23). However, their origin is not clearly understood but they are thought to have migrated through south East Asia. The time when they settled in Australia is also not well known but human remains have helped in estimating through carbon dating that they have been in Australia for about 45,000 years (Tindale 253). According to Jacob (30), it is estimated that there were about a million aborigines inhabiting Australia before the arrival of the first fleet. Political way of life The aborigines were composed of hundreds of subgroups each characterized by using the same language (Williams and Jolly 92). Each group had its own cultural practices and its own territory. The aborigines did not have an overall political system due to the presence of many languages. There were occasional wars and disputes among the different aborigine language groups over issues of land. For example, according to Tindale (65), there were occasional wars between Katjutja and Aranda language groups of the aborigines over land. Economic way of life The aborigines mainly lived a semi nomadic way of life. They were hunters and gatherers (Burgmann and Lee 218). The hunted wild small animals, like kangaroos, and gathered wild fruits and insects. They also did very small scale farming where they planted vegetables. They did not keep any animals due to their nomadic way of life where they moved from one place to another in search of food. Each language group had good knowledge of its territory and climate and used simple tools, such as arrows and spears, to hunt and gather food. The different aborigine language group also practiced trading between each other as an economic activities depending with what a language group had and what the other language group wanted from them. Social way of life The different aborigine language groups usually interacted with each other during ceremonial occasions. These ceremonies included cross-cultural marriage or wedding ceremonies. All the aborigine people had a common spirituality. They believed in the harmonisation of the physical, spiritual and natural worlds. This is referred to as “the dreaming religion” (Harrison and Williamson 26). They believed that they came from ancestors who were supernatural beings who emerged from a formless earth and assumed forms and identities which were a combination of various living things and humans. Supernatural beings, like “kangaroo man”, were some of their gods. They believed that each human being had a close relationship with an animal or a plant. According to Dudgeon and Fielder (54), the smallest social unit was the family commonly referred to as a hearth. This was a group that usually slept around the fire. It included a husband, his wives, children and other close old relatives like grandparents. The aborigines socially classified themselves according to the skin colour. History Before the invasion of Australia, the aboriginal people had a very diverse history, where their language, songs and culture were the most important part of their social, economic and political structures (Wentworth 100). Language, as already indicated, was a method of life that differentiated the different people in the land and made social ties possible. As researchers indicate, there were more than 700 distinct languages and language groups in indigenous Australia, but after the invasion, these languages dropped significantly. Around the year 1788, the more than 500 aboriginal tribes of Australian origin lived in the mainland, sustaining themselves off the land through agriculture and hunting. After the arrival of the First Fleet into the Australian mainland, there was a drastic effect on the Australian people, significantly on their life and language. When the first colony was set up in 1788, the social, economic, political and life structure of the Australian people was completely changed (Reynolds 65). The main effect on the Australian people came from the settlers and soldiers, for example, the aborigines were inflicted with diseases to which they had no immunity, and they began to die (Saunders and Evans 60). The diseases included typhoid, flu, venereal diseases and other diseases that did not previously exist in the Australian climate. The other effect of the settlement by the British was the displacement of the language and social norms (Harrison and Williamson 65). The aborigine languages were continually eroded by the British effect that forced them to learn English and continually assimilate the British culture. For the next hundred years, the aborigines were forced out of their natural settlements, killed and disposed of their land. This was done as the British inhabitants struggled for land for building, agricultural and mining activities, pasture and business. Despite initial resistance to the invasion, the aboriginal people continually suffered since they were not armed or trained as the British invaders. With the impact of the new repeater rival that the British relied on, coupled by horseback soldiers, the aboriginal people’s rebellion was slowly crushed. The colonial government, therefore, overwhelmed the Australian resistance. After the initial resistance, the indigenous Australians were herded into townships, pastoral properties and land reserves that the British laid out for them to live in (Donaldson 328). They were continually persecuted by the British, and as a result, seeds of resistance slowly built up again. At this moment, most of them had been forced into schooling or even shipped over to Britain for the purposes of the British like sports. The resistance to British rule started by methods like non-cooperation with the laws and general guerrilla warfare. This continued up to the 1900/1901 transfer of power from the British to a federal Australian government. However, the new Federal Constitution did little to change the Australian way of life after the trouble that they had from the British (Reynolds 165). For years up to the 1960s, the aboriginal people were not given the right to vote or participate in federal activities. Current state laws did not cover the native Australians, and despite the fact that the British were gone, they were still confined to land reserves that they could only leave with special permits. Perhaps, some of the worst treatment was that their children were state-owned, and could be taken by the government at any time to be raised in institutions. The resistance to this new mistreatment was done in other forms. The 200 years that colonization had failed to eliminate indigenous aboriginal culture was brought to an end by a struggle to free the people (Harrison and Williamson 98). This was done through non-cooperation, sabotage, strikes and general defence against the ruling elite. This continued until the mid-1900s, where the Aboriginal people were finally granted right to normal and equal citizenship with the other people. This was done in 1967 by a referendum that gave the federal government powers to legislate on Aboriginal matters, give them a vote, citizenship and federal inclusion. This continued up to the 1990s, where the elected officials from the aboriginal people could represent them and set up institutions to promote the rights of the aboriginal people. The 21st century saw too much elimination of aborigines and other indigenous Australian people at the hands of both the British and their own people. References Burgmann, V. & Lee, J., 1988. A Most Valuable Acquisition: A People's History of Australia Since 1788, New York, Penguin Publishers. Donaldson, M., 2006. The End of Time? Aboriginal Temporality and the British Invasion of Australia, “Time and Society”, 5(2), p 187-207. Dudgeon, P. & Fielder, J., 2006. Third spaces within tertiary places: indigenous Australian studies, “Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology”, 16(5), p 396-409. Harrison, R. & Williamson, C., 2009. After Captain Cook: The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past in Australia, Sidney, Rowman Altamira. Jacob, T. K., 1991. In the Beginning: A Perspective on Traditional Aboriginal Societies, Sidney, Ministry of Education. Reynolds, H., 1999. Dispossession, Black Australians and White Invaders. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. Saunders, K. & Evans, R., 1992. Gender Relations in Australia. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Tindale, N., 2004. Aboriginal Tribes of Australia. Berkeley, University of California Press. Wentworth, A., 2000. Aspects of traditional Aboriginal Australia, Canberra, Wiley and Sons. Williams, N.M. & Jolly, L., 1992. From Time Immemorial? Gender Relations in Aboriginal Societies before "White Contact, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Read More