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Aboriginal history and heritage

Dharug people in C18th Sydney

"Their laws, especially with regard to marriage, are complex and wonderful. Their corroborees, or festival dances, are very wonderful. Their sagacity, especially on the tracking of men or cattle, is very wonderful. The skill with which they use the small appliances of life which they possess is very wonderful. But for years, probably for many centuries, they have made no progress, and the coming of the white man among them has had no tendency to civilise - only a tendency to exterminate them.” Anthony Trollope 'Australia'

Dharug people today

With evidence of occupation over 60,000 years, the Aboriginal and Islander peoples of Australia may be the world’s oldest people in the world’s oldest land. But their place in Australia’s history is only now being properly acknowledged and recorded.

By 1788 around 500 Aboriginal tribes or nations occupied the Australian landmass, with efficient and sustainable systems for living off the land. They achieved a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, moving seasonally between camps as food supplies dictated. Fire was used methodically to burn old growth and encourage new. Being mobile, possessions were minimal. They had complex religious beliefs, sophisticated social relationships and trading links across the continent.

In 1788 the first European settlement - Britain’s latest penal colony - was established at what is now Sydney. The effects were catastrophic. With the convicts, soldiers and settlers came diseases to which Aboriginal people had no resistance - typhoid, flu, smallpox and venereal disease.

The next hundred years saw Aboriginal people forced out of their country, dispossessed of habitable land, shot, poisoned and massacred as successive waves of British settlers sought land for building, agriculture, grazing and mining. Rape and abduction of Aboriginal women and girls were common.

Some tribes at first welcomed or tolerated the newcomers, but as it became clear that the British intended to stay, conflict escalated. Aboriginal groups mounted effective guerrilla campaigns but were eventually overwhelmed by the new repeater rifle, horsepower and the armed might of colonial governments.

Removed from their land, deprived of their traditional bush food and devastated by disease, malnutrition, poverty, alcoholism, violence and despair, most Aboriginal people existed on town fringes and pastoral properties or were herded onto reserves and missions. When through hard work they made these reserves into productive agricultural holdings, that land too was seized.

Little changed with Britain’s transfer of power to a Federal Australia in 1900/1901 under the new Federal Constitution. Until the 1960s Aboriginal people did not have effective citizenship and could not vote. They were rigidly controlled by State laws. Many were confined to reserves which they could not leave without a permit. The State was guardian of all Aboriginal children and many were taken by force from their families to be raised (and abused) in institutions. Aboriginal people fought in 2 World Wars and were essential to the development of pastoral Australia, but were discriminated against in education, health, jobs, pay and in buses, cinemas and swimming pools.

But 200 years of attempts to obliterate Aboriginal identity and culture failed. Aboriginal people resisted through non co-operation, sabotage, protests, strikes, mutual help and increased political activism. Finally in the middle of this century Aboriginal and Islander people got the vote, citizenship, equal wages and inclusion in the national census.

W harfies (dock workers) supporting equal wages, May Day march, Sydney 1965

Poster from 1967 referendum campaign

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically pours a handful of sand through Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari's hands at the handback of the Gurindj's traditional lands in 1975

Following a 1967 referendum, the Federal (Canberra) Government gained powers to legislate on Aboriginal matters. Legislation opposing racial discrimination was passed in 1975. In 1990 ATSIC was set up - elected Aboriginal and Islander Regional Councils and a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, with civil service staff and limited budgets for regional and national development programmes. Aboriginal-initiated health, housing and legal aid services were set up to supplement inadequate Government provision.

But at the beginning of the 21st century, the struggle against disadvantage and inequality continues - for recognition, land, self determination, jobs, adequate health, education, water and power services, and an end to the incarceration and deaths of too many Aboriginal people.

Further reading and links:

• see the information section for an extensive list of external links to articles and documents to read and links to organisations involved with Arts, history, culture.
  
  
  

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Some clippings that we would highlight include:

• Aboriginal cave paintings date back 4,000 years
  2 July 8, 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Associated Press - A chance discovery by a hiker has been hailed as one of the most significant finds of Aboriginal rock art in Australia's history - a cave containing more than 200 paintings, some believed to be 4,000 years old.
• Look back in anger
  4 January, 2003 - Faced with a government review, the National Museum of Australia may be forced to reinterpret its controversial portrayal of the nation's colonial history, writes Joyce Morgan. The federal Arts Minister, Richard Alston, made a curious qualification when he referred to the National Museum of Australia last month. He told Parliament the establishment of the museum had been a good outcome, "certainly in terms of the structure of the building".
• Landscapes in blood
  14 December, 2002 - The Aborigines of the Kimberley have turned to pictures to sway the debate about white massacres of their people. 'He ran and ran. The white men were chasing him on horseback and he hid in the water. A white man shot at him from up on the horse. The old man thought quickly and cut himself so that his blood came out in the water. The white man looked at it and said: 'All right. I hit him."'
• Truganini's spirit felt by visitor to her land
  14 February, 2002 - The wild landscape where Truganini once walked is playing its part in the campaign for British museums to send home the human remains in their collections.
• Admired by Macquarie, but ignored for a sailing cat
  11 May, 2002 - Funny mob, Australians. They make more fuss over a cat than a king. This weekend marks the 200th anniversary of Matthew Flinders signing up King Bungaree, last tribal chief of the Broken Bay Aborigines, to help in the first circumnavigation of the continent Flinders was to call Australia.
• Forgotten Aborigine team who changed cricket forever
  8 March, 2002 - Guardian (UK) - They were cricket's forgotten heroes - a team of Aborigines who came to England in 1868 viewed as little more than a joke, and ended up changing the face of cricket forever. Now a previously unseen archive of photographs, scorebooks and other memorabilia chronicling the first - and last - tour by native Australians has surfaced after languishing in an attic for more than 80 years.
• Aborigines offer alternative guide to their land
  11 July, 2001- The Independent (UK) - "There she goes," said Lino Thomas, peering through the drizzle at the mist-veiled mountain rising ahead. "Look at that grey cloak. She's wearing her possum skin again." Ms Thomas, an Aboriginal tour guide, was pointing to one of the earliest landmarks recorded by Captain Cook as he sailed up the coast of southern New South Wales. Cook called it Mount Dromedary, but the mountain already had a name: for thousands of years, Aborigines had known it as Gulaga.
• Pieces in the 'Puzzle' of Australia
  9 June, 2001 - International Herald Tribune - The brand new National Museum of Australia here has brought together, for the first time, the story of Aboriginals with the cultural history of the European settlement of Australia.
• Debate rages over "peaceful" white settlement
  16 April 2001 - Tony Jones speaks with Henry Reynolds and Keith Windschuttle. Henry Reynolds is one of Australia's most influential historians, who's responsible for some of the most comprehensive and original research, documenting the violence on Australia's frontier. He's written nine books and is presently a research professor at the University of Tasmania. Historian Keith Windschuttle's recent series in the conservative magazine 'Quadrant' attacked the work of Henry Reynolds and others. He's also the author of 'The Killing of History', how literary critics and social theories are murdering our past and he's the publisher of Macleay Press.
• Guilt surfaces at Australia's centenary
  31 December, 2000 - The Independent (UK) - When proud Australians paraded through Sydney 100 years ago tomorrow to hail the birth of their independent nation, there were no black faces among the marchers, or the hat-waving crowds. There were, for that matter, only two women in the procession.
• A Black Day in London
  8 July, 2000 - In the British Parliament, a Labour MP, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, tabled a motion calling on "the governments and peoples of Australia to mark the Centenary of Federation by committing themselves to redress discrimination and disadvantage" of Aborigines.
• Aboriginal and Islander history: An introduction
  
  

read about:

• Native Title
• Aboriginal Identity and Culture
• Australia's Human Rights record
• Reconciliation, Social Justice, the Constitution and a Treaty
• The Stolen Generations

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