Indigenous Australian Culture

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Indigenous Australian Culture

• Leah Burns
• N13 2.16
• Ph 37353649
• Leah.Burns_at_griffith.edu.au

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Outline

• Lecture on Indigenous Australians
• Who they are
• What is culture?
• History
• Key Issues
• Lunch with Gumurrii Student Support Unit
• Sausage sizzle

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Readings

• Broome, R. 2001 Aboriginal Australians Black
  responses to white dominance 1788-2001. 3rd
  Edition. Crows Nest Allen and Unwin. Chapter 1.
• First Australians. SBS series.
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vE5SCo2xDO6s

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Not Homogenous
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Who is an Indigenous person?

• Descendant of original inhabitants
• Identifies as indigenous person
• Is accepted by the community as such

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What is Culture?

• A blue print for the way we live
• The sum total of knowledge, attitudes and
  habitual behaviour patterns shared and
  transmitted by the members of a particular
  society

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History

• 2000 generations
• Here at least 50 000 years (120 000?)

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Lived in Diverse Ecologies
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Hunter-Gatherer Lifestyle

• Nomadic
• Simple technology
• Intimate knowledge of the environment
• E.g. use of fire

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Population

• Population
• low density
• thought to be stationary
• 300000, living in 500 tribes

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Organisation

• Bands
• Kinship
• Egalitarian
• no specialisation of labour
• Reciprocity and sharing
• no surplus

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Religion

• The Dreaming
• The Dreamtime
• Sacred sites
• Totemism
• Beliefs and practices in which relations are
  postulated between people or groups of people and
  natural species, objects or phenomena (Horton
  19941093).

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Some Key Dates

• 1788 Settlement
• (or invasion)
• 1967 Referendum
• 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy
• 1976 Northern Territory Land Rights Act
• 1985 Uluru Co-management
• 1993 Native Title Act

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Native Title
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Land Issues
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• ABORIGINAL
• Birth
• Descent from owners
• Birth in a place
• Knowledge
• Responsibility

• EUROPEAN
• Cultivation
• Adding value
• Exclusion
• Alienability

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Some Key Issues

• Stolen Generation
• Land Rights
• Health

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Population
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2010
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Aborigines and the Law
Aborigines 20 times more likely to be picked up
by police 10 to 20 times more likely to be
goaled, often for relatively trivial offences 20
times more likely to die in custody Explanations s
ocial dislocation abuse of discretionary powers
of police institutional discrimination Remedies re
duce numbers in custody (decriminalisation
drunkenness, modified police practice) reduce
risk of death (supervision, monitoring, improved
accommodation) eradicating underlying causes
(economic, educational, land, health etc.)
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The Intervention
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The Nature of the Intervention

• Justified by child abuse rates
• (13.7 per 1000, same as Qld non-indigenous)
• Quarantining 50 of welfare payments
• Cancellation of CDEP schemes
• Cancellation of permit system
• Suspension of Racial Discrimination Act
• No consultation with communities

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The Apology
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Multi-choice Questions

• 1. Since the arrival of Europeans, the population
  of Indigenous Australians
• a. has steadily increased
• has steadily decreased
• decreased at first, but is now thought to be
  about the same as it was when Europeans arrived
• d. increased at first, but is now lower than it
  was thought to be when Europeans arrived
• A national referendum, at which 89 of all
  Australians agreed that Aborigines should be
  included as citizens and allowed to vote, was
  held in
• a. 1958
• b. 1967
• c. 1972
• d. 1976
• Aboriginal culture was undermined by
• a. The introduction of diseases to which
  Indigenous Australians were not immune
• b. A reduction in population numbers due to
  fighting with Europeans
• c. Indigenous children being taken from their
  parents, to be brought up as Europeans in
  missions
• d. All of the above

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References

• Broome, R. 2001 Aboriginal Australians Black
  responses to white dominance 1788-2001. 3rd
  Edition. Crows Nest Allen and Unwin.
• Horton, D. (ed) 1994 The Encyclopaedia of
  Aboriginal Australia. Canberra Aboriginal
  Studies Press.
• Bringing Them Home report 1997
• Videos available in the Griffith Library
• SBS. 2008 First Australians.
• Mabo Life of an Island Man
• Brisbane Dreaming An Aboriginal History of
  Brisbane
• Our History Colonists Arrive
• After Mabo
• Frontier
• Stone Country