ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS: An Ethnographic Essay (By SimoTheFinlandized / Paul Palazzolo - Written In 2022 CE)

============================================================== ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS: An Ethnographic Essay (By SimoTheFinlandized / Paul Palazzolo - Written In 2022 CE) ============================================================== Indigenous Australians are the native peoples of Australia. They include the Aboriginal Australians as well as Torres Strait Islanders, and are often known together as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In the past, Indigenous Australians used weapons like boomerangs, digging sticks, and spears to kill animals and gather plants for food. They were organized into various semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer clans who traveled from one place to another for sustenance. It is unknown where they originally came from and how they appeared in Australia, but it is commonly estimated they have been living in their homeland for around 60,000 years or more. Aboriginal people also have their own distinctive type of art. Many Indigenous Australians suffered when Europeans from Britain and Ireland arrived in Australia. Disease and the loss of their traditional hunting-&-foraging lands are two of the primary reasons. =============================================================== HISTORY: =============================================================== The first people of Australia were nomadic people who came to Australia from southeast Asia. Scientists do not know exactly when they arrived, but it is at least 50,000 years ago. When the British came to Australia in 1788, they called these native people "aboriginals", meaning people who had lived there since the earliest times. There are now about 650,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia. ================================================================= THE DREAMTIME: ================================================================= Aboriginal Australians believe that they have animal, plant, and human ancestors who created the world and everything in it. This ongoing process of creation is called Dreamtime. There are many songs and stories about the Dreamtime, which generations of Aboriginal-Australian people have passed down to their children. ================================================================= ART: ================================================================= The modern-day art of the Aboriginal Australians is mostly based upon the age-old stories about the Dreamtime. Paintings of the people, spirits, plants 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, while others have been carved directly into the rocks. Many are thousands of years old. ================================================================= BOOMERANGS: ================================================================ As well as the curved returning boomerang, Aboriginal Australians have traditionally used a straight, non-returning boomerang as an expedient weapon for fighting and for hunting large 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". 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 Aboriginal people 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 land. ============================================================== SOURCES: ============================================================== Studies, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (12 July 2020). "Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people". aiatsis.gov.au. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Indigenous and European Contact in Australia". Britannica Kids. Retrieved 2021-06-07. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hesp, Patrick A. et al 1999. Aboriginal occupation on Rottnest Island, Western Australia, provisionally dated by aspartic acid racemisation assay of land snails to greater than 50 ka. Australian Archaeology, No 49 (1999) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Stone Pages Archaeo News: Australia colonized earlier than previously thought?". stonepages.com. 2003. Retrieved 28 March 2013. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Dreaming Online: Indigenous Australian Timeline". www.dreamtime.net.au. Archived from the original on 2009-02-06. Retrieved 2009-06-04. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Australia census: Five takeaways from a changing country". BBC News. 27 June 2017. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Australian Bureau of Statistics Archived 2010-04-29 at the Wayback Machine 2006 Census data --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "10 Facts About Aboriginal Art | Kate Owen Gallery". www.kateowengallery.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Terra Nullius". Aboriginal Victoria. Visit Victoria. Archived from the original on 2010-03-18. Retrieved 2010-01-11. ================================================================