Never Stop Learning: 2012

Kangaroos, Koalas, Echidnas, Oh My!

Australian Aboriginals

Environment

Australian Aboriginals are from Australia, which has many different climates, vegetation, and animals due to the large area. Australia has an unnaturally highly diversified animal and plant life including animals unique to Australia, such as the kangaroo, koala, and echidna. It is largely a desert, but also has tropical rain forests, and grasslands. Australia has very warm summers that can reach 122 degrees fahrenheit and cold winters well below 0. The average annual rainfall is less than sixteen inches annually with fifty percent of the country receiving less than twelve inches. Snow does occur, but rarely. The people living here had to adapt to these severe weathering conditions, including dust storms, blizzards, cyclones, drought, flooding, and brushfires.

Climactic Adaptations

Many adaptations were made to help the Australian Aboriginals cope with various aspects of their climate. When they were hot they would cover their bodies in sand or mud to cool down and only travel at night when temperatures were cooler and there would be less chance of dehydration. When they were cold they would sleep near fires, often creating brush fires or rolling into the fire burning themselves. They also made clothing out of animal fur and skin to help give them the natural edge that animals had. Overtime the Aboriginals grew shorter and more stocky to help them cope with the changing temperatures and be more efficient hunters.

Language

In the late eighteenth century there were an indeterminate number of languages for the Australian Aboriginals, estimated at between 350 and 750 languages corresponding with the 350 to 750 social groupings of the Aboriginals. Currently only fewer than 150 indigenous languages remain, of which many are highly endangered. These languages and dialects also correspond to about twenty seven language families, which include Nyulnyulan, Worrorran, Bunuban, Jarrakan, Mindi, Daly, Laragiya, Tiwi, Limilngan, Arnhem Land, Ngurmbur, Gunwinyguan, Enindhilyagwa, Garawa, Tangkic, and Pama-Nyungan. Only about ten percent of the surviving languages are being learned by children. Australian languages have been suggested to have a relationship with Pama-Nyungan and Trans-Guinea languages. The languages are unique in that they only contain three vowels and is almost entirely free of fricatives and where they do exist it is due to recent weakening of stops (or sounds that when made stop airflow and cannot be continuous sounds). There are corresponding written languages with letters and digraphs.

Gender Roles

The gender roles of the Australian Aboriginals were divided between men and women. The men had the aggressive role including the responsibility of capturing/hunting animals, fishing, and overall providing for the family. Women were the gatherers of the community collecting vegetables, seeds, fruits, and small animals. According to legend, if women crossed these hunting laws and attempted to hunt as men, they would be turned to termites by Tchooroo the Great Snake, whose task it was to uphold the law, just as he had done to the women of Jandu. It was certain that stepping outside one’s gender role who give them grave misfortune. Unfortunately, it seems punishment for these actions was limited to women, as the legend of the Wanambis shows. Even though the men in the story got fat and became too lazy to hunt as was their duty, they received no repercussions although the women did for refusing to share their game in response. Children learned at an early age how to mirror their gender roles, as they are taught from their whole tribes and have gender specific tasks and roles to fill even as children. The Australian Aboriginals have a rainbow serpent god that they call Ungud and he has been described as either transgendered or androgynous. This God’s androgyny inspired some members of the culture to undergo sub-incision of the penis.

Subsistence

The Australian Aboriginals were a hunter gatherer community. Their food intake was very healthy and it included all of the vitamins and minerals known to be needed for humans today. They had extensive knowledge about plants and animals. Main foods varied drastically across the country in the various climates. Work varied based on sex as men were the general providers, hunters, fishermen, etc., while women gathered vegetables, plant life, berries, seeds, etc. They ate kangaroos, echidnas, frogs, snakes, birds, and plentiful marine life. They also ate many insects for fat because they used so much energy. Food was most commonly cooked on fire or in pits and wrapped in bark or leaves. They maintained drinking water in kangaroo skin water bags and created habitats for insects to keep them plentiful. You can see remnants of Aboriginal people’s eating habits in the shell middens left behind.

Economic System

There was trade all over the country throughout all the various tribes of the Australian Aboriginals. They traded food, stone tools, weapons, ceremonial items, and other goods in order to provide wider diversity of goods. It also provided an opportunity to be a part of everyone’s story and widen the Dreaming net, spreading the various stories and diverse aspects of thought. The currency before British invasion was simply rough barter and goods for goods. The first currency after was the police fund notes. There was no true specialization of labor because there was no food surplus, domesticable animal, or domesticable plant. Specialization is rare within hunter-gatherer societies such as the Aboriginals. Since there was simple trade, and the community as a whole had fairly the same obligations, and the community was taught to be selfless and communal, there was no real need for redistribution of wealth or goods.

Marriage

There is a polygamous marriage style in the Australian Aboriginals, with men often having multiple wives, but wives only having one husband. Male dominance is very strong and women are considered completely inferior and in terms of sex are either pure or whores, there is no in between. Marriage Partners are often determined for girls as young as infancy, or sometimes before the baby is even born. The marriage will be arranged in a fashion that there will be obligations or economic exchange between the parties families during the time it takes for the child to come of age to marry, such as the man having to provide food to his future mother-in-law. Girls were often married off as young as puberty, with the man typically thirty or older. Marriage was forbidden between close relatives and protected by the rule of exogamy. While marriage is signified by cohabitation and divorce is only signified by no longer residing together. Divorce was common practice and women were often married off to several husbands in quick succession. Homosexual relations do occur at least sexually, although in theory they are forbidden.

Kinship

Kinship was an important part of Australian Aboriginal society. The families lived in clans, communally and had up to seventy different words to give people relation wise titles. Each person in the family had different family responsibilities and duties to pull together and create a harmonious environment. Inheritance laws followed descent lines. The husband possessed the most control in a family although he did have to uphold responsibilities to the rest of his family. He held the power to punish his wife and kids physically for anything he saw fit. Although he did have rules, such as not speaking to his mother in law, or providing for his family, it seems the men faced no real repercussions for not following these laws and responsibilities.

Social Organization

The social organization in terms of the Australian Aboriginals was focused on the family. The people lived communally and had up to seventy terms for different types of family members and “adopted” family members. It allowed for people to define themselves in terms of other people and their relationships to them. The benefit to this type of social structure is that relationships, obligations, and expected behaviors are easily identifiable and expected. For example, one is not allowed to talk to one’s mother-in-law under any circumstances and they can only communicate via a third party with zero direct communication. The social structure besides being stratified in terms of family, is also divided in terms of moieties, totemic groups and clans.

Political Organization

The community was a tribal one, and had tribal laws that were not to be broken for fear of the wrath from one of many deities. There were tribal leaders to uphold laws, but majorly the society kept up their laws within themselves and maintained their social norms to keep their society working properly. Until the invasion from Europe, this is how the Australian Aboriginals carried on. Upon invasion, the Aboriginals voice and representation were squandered through violence, disease and child abduction. White people did not understand nor care to understand the Aboriginal way of life and so treated it with violence and anger and opted to shut it down.

Role of Violence

Violence is so much a part of the Aboriginal life that in some areas the murder rate is ten times the national average. An Australian Aboriginal is seven times more likely to be murdered and ten times more likely to be jailed. Violence is built in to their social customs and norms. Men are repeatedly violent to the women in their society and physically punish them for any wrongdoing or even suspected wrongdoing. In fact when a women goes out of the house, it is commonplace to beat her upon return just in case she did anything wrong while she was gone. On top of this domestic violence toward women, there is extreme and perverse child physical abuse and sexual abuse use as a show of dominance, a scare tactic, a manipulation tactic, and even just to satisfy perverse pleasures. Children, both boys and girls, are often raped, beat, and even murdered.

Religion

Despite the differences between the several settlements of the Australian Aboriginals, they have common religious beliefs. They trace their origins back to Dreamtime, which is their believed Creation. This religion is also commonly referred to as “Dreamtime” or “The Dreaming.” The religion is an animist one and covers many topics of Creation such as sacred places, animals, law, customs, plants, lands, and people. They believe that life is eternal as before and after earthly life, one continues to exist in the Dreaming. They believe that the Totemic Spirit Beings began the world and in accordance with their desires, the place a high value on maintaining biological diversity of the indigenous environment. The God who created Dreamtime is Altjira, although he has several names dependent on which of the Aboriginal languages is being spoken, such as Alchera, Alcheringa, Mura-mura, and Tjukurpa. Then after the Creation of Dreamtime, several Spirit Being Gods began to control and oversee it. There are too many of these to name, but they are either animals or animal-people (chimera), such as the black headed python (Waujapi) or the crocodile man (Ginga). The idea of Australian Aboriginals creation seems very similar to Christianity in that their “Creation Gods” created their world and all in it including themselves. Their Creation story also includes several different and sometimes contradictory tales and myths usually with some moral base or teaching lesson. Due to the numerous spiritual beings, the religion could be classified as polytheistic. They have many shrines or natural occurrences that they believed to be created by one or more of their deities. Ceremonies play an important life in the religious aspect of Aboriginal life. The ceremonies incorporate singing, dancing, chanting, and other ritual actions that are performed for the Gods in exchange for plentiful crops and rain. Besides these ceremonies for food, the most important rituals of the Australian Aboriginals are those performed for the passing of an adolescent into adulthood and those for funerals and burials. During the former there are nightly bonfires with story telling connecting to all of the deities, and sometimes these rituals continue for weeks. The initiates wear ceremonial clothing, make up and body adornments while learning the sacred secrets of their culture. During funeral practices, attendees paint their bodies white and cut themselves to show remorse for the loss of life and then perform a series of rituals, songs, and dances to ensure that the person’s spirit leaves the area and returns to it’s birth place. The religion is very important to the culture because it provides the people with all of the social rules and proper ways of living daily life.

Art

Australian Aboriginal art was commonly expressed in a number of mediums, but mostly rock paintings using organic painting materials that give us detailed information about social activities, material culture, religion, myth, environmental changes and the economy. Some other forms of art included bark painting, rock engraving, carvings, sculptures, and stone arrangements. Music was used in many ceremonies and rituals such as funeral processes and coming of age ceremonies. The main traditional instruments are a didgeridoo which is a type of aerophone usually made from eucalyptus with a beeswax mouthpiece. They also used clap-sticks ( a type of percussion designed to hit two sticks together). Songlines about family and cultural history as it relates to Dreamlines are commonly known and sung. They are used as a way to pass historical stories, myths, and informations onto younger generations. Performance Art consists mainly of tribal dancing, which is also a largely ceremonial event. They dance to their traditional music and through interpretive style dance often act out aspects of the Dreamtime.

Conclusion/Cultural Change

Australian Aboriginals has been severely affected by the European white invasion in a number of negative ways. The Europeans, upon invasion, brought with them a host of diseases for which the indigenous people had developed no immunity. After a near wipeout of the population as a whole, the community endured immeasurable violence and discriminatory behaviors toward them. Due to being overrun by Europeans, much of the community’s traditions, culture, and language have been nearly obliterated. Widespread murder, rape, assault, kidnappings, etc began more commonplace. Combined with horrible living conditions, and behaviors committed by Europeans that were also adapted by the Aboriginals themselves, the death rate and suicide rates have skyrocketed, while life expectancy is greatly lowered. As little as ten years ago, statistics show that the murder rate is ten times higher then average in Australia and women are up to ten times more likely to get raped. If the Australian Aboriginals can’t find a way to get their influence and culture back, they will soon lose their unique traits, cultural traditions and languages, in as early as the next hundred years.