ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS: An Epic Ethnographic Biopic (By SimoTheFinlandized - 2021 CE)

================================ ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS: An Epic Ethnographic Biopic (By SimoTheFinlandized - 2021 CE) ================================ Indigenous Australians, also known as Aboriginal Australians, are the native people of Australia. Indigenous Australians used weapons like boomerangs, sticks and spears to kill animals for food and many more. It is unknown where they came from and how they appeared in Australia but it is estimated they have been habitants to their homeland for around 60,000 years ago or more. Aboriginal people also have their own type of art. Many Indigenous Australians suffered when Europeans from Britain and Ireland arrived in Australia. Disease and the loss of their hunting lands are two of the reasons. ================================ HISTORY: ================================ The first people of Australia were a semi-nomadic tribal hunter-gatherer people who came to the continent of Australia from southeast Asia. Scientists do not know exactly when they arrived, but it is believed to be at least 50,000 years ago. They travelled throughout the bush, hunting with spears and boomerangs (throwing sticks) for animals and searching for food such as plants, grubs, and insects. They had few possessions and made everything that they needed and wanted. This way of life does not change nor harm the fragile environment of Australia. The overall well-being of the land and its plants and animals are vital and sacred to the Aboriginal people. Aborigines also have a very unique way of telling their history. They use a vast oral-tradition of various songs, stories, and dances that are passed down orally and through elaborate art, music, and dance of varying kinds from generation to generation. When the British came to Australia in 1788, they called these native people “Aboriginals”, meaning 'people who had lived there since the earliest times'. Today their numbers are increasing (according to data from censuses). There are now about 650,000 Aborigines living in Australia. Most live in cities, but a few thousand still follow a traditional way of life. ================================ THE DREAMTIME: ================================ Aboriginal Australians fervently believe that they have a vast consortium of animal, plant, and human ancestors who created the world and everything in it. This process of the ongoing creation is called the Dreamtime. There are many sophisticated Aboriginal dances, songs, and stories about the Dreamtime, which is said to be "outside of time", "everywhen", or "all-at-once time", with countless generations of Aboriginal people having passed it all down to their children over the millennia. They also believe that when someone dies they get a new life as an animal, plant, or another person. ================================ ART: ================================ The art of the Indigenous Australians is mostly about dreamtime and is made as part of the ceremonies celebrating Dreamtime. Paintings of the people, spirits, and animals of Dreamtime cover sacred cliffs and rocks in tribal territories. Some of the pictures are made in red and yellow ochre and white clay - others have been carved into the rocks. Many are thousands of years old. ================================ URBAN LIFE: ================================ Most aboriginal Australian live in cities & towns. Some Aboriginal-Australians have greatly benefited from government-sponsored education-&-training and other types of aid programmes and now have highly-affluent careers as teachers, doctors and lawyers. Many other Aboriginal Australians, though, are rather very socioeconomically poor in both status and money, not to mention quite isolated from the mainstream white Australian society. They have lost touch with traditional Aboriginal-Australian tribal ways, and because they do not fit neatly into white Australian society, they cannot share in its benefits. ================================ BOOMERANGS: ================================ As well as the curved returning boomerang, Aboriginal Australians use a straight, non-returning boomerang as a weapon for fighting and for hunting animals such as kangaroos. ================================ LAND CLAIMS: ================================ When British people came to live in Australia, they decided that the land was empty: that nobody "owned" the land, in the way Europeans used that word. This was called "terra nullius", Latin words for "empty land". Under British law, all land belongs to the king, who is then able to sell it to other people. In 1976, the Australian government agreed that Aboriginal people have rights to the land where their tribes were originally located and gained the right to use the land. On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia said that the idea of "terra nullius" was wrong, and the government brought in new laws to set up Native Title. If Aborigines can prove they have always used particular land, it has not been sold, or changed by government acts, then the land could be claimed as Aboriginal-Australian land. ================================