The Aboriginal group of people in Australia is considered to be the earliest settlers of the land. They are also believed to be the first migrants from the African continent in over 60000 years ago. Statistics indicate that the group who are the original settlers of the Australian sub continent make up 2.5 % of the current populations. (Dockery, 2010). The group of people who identify themselves as the aboriginal range from dark skinned, blue –eyed people, broad –nosed to broad haired people in the Australian subcontinent. The above characteristics, however, put the light skinned to question if they are true aboriginal. To include the different colors, the aboriginal group is then defined by relationships rather than bythe color (Grieves, 2014).
The group identity is more tied to the origin which they claim to be in Africa and the shared cultural practices. The Aboriginal group a diverse and dynamic culture that organized them into different families which belong to a clan or horde (Crey, 2016). The group had diversities in languages. All this, however, has been alienated by the arrival of the British colonizers. The colonization of the Australian continent was first preceded by the arrival of missionaries who changed the belief systems of the group. The British colonizers then took over land from the Aboriginal people who were mostly hunters and gathers.
When the land was taken over by the British settlers the Aboriginal gravitated towards the white settlers to exchange labor for food and other goods. To counter the population’s resistance the settlers distributed poisonous flour to introduce decreases like muscles and influenza to weaken the resistance ("The health of indigenous peoples," 2010). All these factors affected the population negatively alienating the original culture in favor of the Western cultures that is currently predominant in the Australian subcontinent (Davidson, 2010).
References
Crey, K. (2016). Aboriginal Identity & Terminology. Indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca. Retrieved2 May 2016, from http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/identity/aboriginal-identity- terminology.html
Davidson, I. (2010). The Colonization of Australia and Its Adjacent Islands and the Evolution of Modern Cognition. Current Anthropology, 51(S1), S177-S189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/650694
Dockery, A. (2010). Culture and Wellbeing: The Case of Indigenous Australians. Soc Indic Res, 99(2), 315-332. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9582-y
Grieves, V. (2014). Culture, not color, is the heart of Aboriginal identity. The Conversation. Retrieved 2 May 2016, from http://theconversation.com/culture-not-colour-is-the-heart- of-aboriginal-identity-30102.
The health of indigenous peoples. (2010). Australian Journal of Public Health, 15(4), 313-350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-6405.1991.tb00354.x
.
