Australian Aboriginal Groups
The Aboriginal groups of Australia have long endured a painful struggle to maintain their ways of life since the arrival of The First Fleet. The Aboriginal (a word meaning first) people of Australia may well be the world’s first people as tools discovered in South Wales in 1971 proved that humans appeared in Australia at least twelve thousand years before similar human artifacts have been found in Europe. It can then be estimated that before the First Fleet arrived in Australia there were 18, 500 generations of Aboriginal people. These people are believed to have evolved into a way of living that satisfied their basic needs and was in harmony with the environment.
Aborigines lived in clans and were able to subsist off an environment much changed from the Australia of today, with many large animals now extinct and areas rich in vegetable foods. Each clan belonged to the land they inhabited and moved within their clan in accordance with the area’s ability to provide enough resources for hunting and gathering. Aborigines were nomadic with some variations between the 500-600 distinct groups that once existed. For example, Aborigines that had settled near the ocean where the food source was plentiful were more or less stagnant. Trading between Aboriginal clans was common but few outside the continent were able to trade with them, as the land is an island. The lack of trading customs and crop seeds may be why the Europeans on arriving to Australia, found the Aborigines culture to be lacking.
Although many different languages were spoken within the many clans, there were many shared customs. The Aborigines placed an emphasis on creating art as an integral part of life, passing down tracking and hunting techniques that sustained them through the harsh desert terrain and a religion most closely tied to Animism It can be argued, that this way of life was one that sustained the Aboriginal clans for centuries and is worthy of the title of an established civilization. The new European colonizers did not agree.
The First Fleet of twelve ships sent from Great Britain to arrive in Australia in 1788 contained convicts and marines. These men are acknowledged as The Founders of Australia, with Captain James Cook being the leader. In Cathy Dunn and Marion McCreadie’s article, Australia’s First Fleet, the authors write:
Captain James Cook discovered the east coast of New Holland in 1770 and named it New South Wales. He sailed the whole of the coast and reported to the British government that he thought it would make a good place for a settlement. Britain did not recognize the country as being inhabited as the natives did not cultivate the land, and were, therefore, "uncivilized" (2006, Pg. 1).
Uncivilized or not, the country was inhabited by 300,000 Aboriginals and the two groups began to cohabitate.
Life was hard for the new settlers; a great deal of whom were prisoners sent to live on Cook’s penal colony. Many of these prisoners didn’t have farming skills and disliked the plants and fish the Aborigines subsisted on, opting instead to become totally reliant on foodstuffs sent from The East India Shipping Company. The Aborigine’s suffered from the settlers arriving as well, many of them brought diseases with them that quickly thinned out their numbers.
Instructions from Britain were to leave the Aborigines unharmed while the colonies were established. There was resistance to the colonization from the Aboriginal tribes, but the superior weapons used by the colonizers made them easy victors. The coastal land itself could not sustain the coupling and many Aborigines’ were pushed back farther towards Sydney, because of lack of food. As the colonies grew and the settlers also moved inland, the Aboriginals soon lost their watering holes and hunting grounds to their new neighbors. The opinion of the British colonizers was that their culture was a civilized and superior one. The Aboriginals did not cultivate their land or practice Christianity and thus were thought to be inferior beings that deserved to have their land taken over.
In Australia, the arrival of the First Fleet on January 26 is celebrated as Australia Day, but not all of Australia’s citizens celebrate the National Holiday. For many Aborigine’s and supporters of their plight, it is seen as a day of mourning and protests can be seen being held amidst celebrations. Another more recent celebration in 2010 commemorated the two hundred years that had passed from Governor Macquarie’s arrival in 1810. Macquarie was not as fascinated by the Aborigine’s as Governor Philip had been. Governor Philip had been interested in the traditions of the Aboriginal people by studying their ways and taking Aboriginal servants as his own. By contrast, Macquarie sought to change the Aborigine’s into a closer approximation of British citizens.
Macquarie was the first Governor to “give back” land to the Aboriginals. The land was given with tools, clothing and a convict to teach them farm skills. Although celebrated by some as a generous peace keeping gesture, ulterior motives may have been on his mind. In an article by Patricia Hale and Tanya Koneman titled, Rethinking Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal Policy, it was surmised that Macquarie’s reasons for creating Aboriginal farm settlements were “to remove half-naked Aboriginal people from enacting their laws in the streets of Sydney town”(2011, pg. 8). His settlements did not last long; the Aboriginals did not want to settle to farming the land. Koneman and Hale asked Dr. Shayne Williams, an educator and Dharawal descendent what he thought of celebrations held in Macquarie’s honor:
Williams doesn’t think celebration is possible as that ‘would be effectively asking Aboriginal people to celebrate their own decimation.’ Because that’s what these governors represent to us—the total extermination of our cultures, identity and ourselves’(2011, pg.14).
Macquarie had a hand in starting schools for Aboriginal children. The children at Macquarie’s schools were given food, clothing, shelter and a daily dose of scripture and English education. These students were being groomed to marry and work as domestic servants or farm laborers whom were offered a small parcel of land in Black town. Koneman et al. found that the experts they interviewed saw the schools as having little benefit for the Aboriginal children they taught. They site the intentions of the school as, “intentionally eradicating Aboriginal children’s traditional culture and learning, replacing these with British notions of ‘improvement’ and fast tracking to ‘civilization’”(2011, pg.4). Children did not always volunteer for the school, and even with bribes to their parents, they often escaped home. Koneman et al wrote that low attendance led Macquarie to change his policy:
In 1816, however, Macquarie authorized the taking of Aboriginal children as part of his military reprisal against all Aboriginal peoples of the colony. He instructed his officers to bring back 12 boys and 6 girls between four and six years for the Native Institution—but ‘only fine, healthy and good-looking children’. Two boys only were procured, both of whom absconded within six weeks”(2011, pg.5).
The Aborigine’s Protection Act in 1886 gave the board the power to decide who was an Aborigine. In a paper by David McCallum he defined the act:
The Act reversed the definition of ‘Aboriginal’ so that those people who were ‘part-Aboriginal’ became officially defined as ‘white’. It put in place regulations forbidding half-caste people access to the mission stations and their families. The Board attempted to enforce the merging of the Aborigines with the white population by simply declaring that all part- Aborigines under the age of thirty-four were now prohibited from the mission stations that had been reserved for the use of Aborigines (2008, pg.3).
Reasons given for the act vary from offering protection to half-caste children that were believed to be victims of mistreatment by their families or that the protection of half-castes was done under the assumption that the rest of the “blacker” race would soon die out anyway. McCallum asserts that this policy had lasting negative affects, “Current high levels of morbidity and mortality, and high rates of incarceration among Australian Aboriginal populations are related historically to the separation of Aboriginal people from family and community over 200 years”, (2008, pg.1). Policies of segregation and protection were in place until the 1940’s when the Welfare Board sought to implement policies of assimilation rather than segregation. This new board had two of 11 members of Aboriginal race. This was a turnaround for Australia, as non-aborigines had made all policies about Aborigines thus far.
The 1960’s marked an important time in Aboriginal activism. Battles were fought by Aborigine’s to attain their rights, land and equal treatment. An important event in 1965 was The Freedom Rides. Charlie Perkins, an indigenous University graduate lead the group through NSW protesting violent racism, welfare disparity and exclusion from public establishments. Many protests and walkouts followed their lead and in 1967 Indigenous Australians were awarded citizenship. Although this was a big victory, the spirit of Charlie Perkins continues to inspire Aboriginal activists to continue to fight for their rights up to present times and the protests taking place during Australia Day.
Some famous Indigenous Australians protest their colonization through art. Kath Walker was a poet that was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1970. That same year she read her poem “Dreamtime” on the steps of Parliament House Canberra. The beginning lines of which are:
Here, at the invaders talk-talk place,
We, who are the strangers now,
Come with sorrow in our hearts.
The Bora Ring, the Corroborees,
The sacred ceremonies,
Have all gone, all gone,
Turned to dust on the land,
That once was ours.
Kath Walker, who later changed her name to Oodgeroo Noonuccal, returned her membership to the Civil Service in protest against the 1988 Australian Bicentenary celebrations. Oodgeroo was the first published Aboriginal poet.
Current Aboriginal activism seeks amendments to the Australian Constitution and policy changes that will improve life for Australia’s Aboriginal populations. In a speech by the lawyer Noel Pearson in 2000, he claims that there is still much work to be done:
I have come to the view that there has been a significant change in the scale and nature of our problems over the past thirty years. Our social life has declined even as our material circumstances have improved greatly since we gained citizenship. I have also come to the view that we suffered a particular social deterioration once we became dependent on passive welfare (Pearson, 2000).
Pearson asserts that the welfare state was created out of a labor movement that fought for class equality and the fight should continue to get better options for underprivileged Aboriginal citizens that are wasting away on the Dole. Alcohol and drug dependence, disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal born inmates in correctional facilities and low literacy and poverty levels are some of the other problems afflicting Aboriginal populations.
The arrival of the First Fleet and subsequent colonization of Australia had a negative effect on Aboriginal populations. Effects of the policies of the Australian Government such as the thousands of children removed from their homes wreaked havoc on the Indigenous populations. Hope today remains in activists like Pearson that continue to fight for Aboriginal voices to be heard and listened to among all the “talk talk” of the white majority.
Works Cited
Campion, J. (2011, July 14). How aboriginal activism brought about change Australian Geographic, Retrieved from http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal
City of Sydney Council, Indigenous History of Sydney City. (2001). Government policy in relation to aboriginal people. Retrieved from website: http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani
Dunn, C., & McCreadie, M. (1998). Australia's first fleet. Retrieved from http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/ships/1stfleet.htm
Hale, P., & Koeneman, T. Office of Environment and Heritage, Heritage Council of New South Wales. (2010). Rethinking governor macqueries aboriginal policy. NSW: Government.
McCallum, D. (2008, August). Aboriginal child removal in Australia - past and present.
Noonuccal, O. (2005). Dreamtime. In Retrieved from
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8536839-Dreamtime-by Oodgeroo_Noonuccal__Kath_Walker_
Pearson, N. (2000, August). The light on the hill. Retrieved from http://australianpolitics.com/news/2000/00-08-12a.shtml
