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Task One
Traditional Aboriginal society is a closely knit and interdependent unit. Every member has responsibilities and roles and the lines of communication and social activity are established with an intricate set of laws based on gender and age. The strength of the society lay in the strength of family over individualism.
Male and female ancestral figures play a major role in the Dreaming and are used as a guide to the partnerships between men and women.
Aboriginal women share an interdependent relationship with the men playing a dominant role in child rearing and food gathering and sharing the roles of healers, law makers, performers, painters and custodians of traditional ways.
Traditionally the women are the principal food gatherers, collecting seed, vegetables, fruit, small insects and larvae while the men are responsible for hunting for protein based food. Women are also responsible for the caring of the young children. At around six years of age, the male children join the men to learn hunting while the young girls remain with the women to learn food gathering.
Foraging for food is based on the women's intimate knowledge of their country passed on in their Dreaming stories. The anthropologist T. G. H. Strehlow noted that the Warlpiri people knew 103 different species of flora and 138 species of fauna. Since women are the principal food gatherers many women artists paint stories associated with food gathering. Central Art has a comprehensive collection of women's paintings relating to food by Utopia Aboriginal Artists.
Both men and women have roles as traditional healers. Warlpiri women from Yuendumu as an example frequently perform Yawylyu ceremonies to improve the health of sick people, singing songs and painting designs on the sick person and using their extensive knowledge of plants as medicines. Gloria Petyarre's knowledge of traditional medicine is represented in her Bush Medicine series.
Ceremonies play a vital role in Aboriginal society and men and women have both segregated ceremonies and combined ceremonies. Women's ceremonies are concerned with 'women's business' generally around the subject of fertility and Central Art has a large collection of awelye (women's ceremony) paintings.
As a woman gets older she gains more power and prestige. Women as well as men are selected as elders to be custodians of the law and jointly make decisions for the welfare of the group. Naata Nungarrayi from Kintore, Kathleen Petyarre from Utopia and Eubena Nampitjin from Balgo are all respected law women in their respective communities.
The emergence of the contemporary art movement has given women new economic opportunities. Women's paintings reflect a great spirit, energy and integrity and are greatly sought after. Central Art offers a substantial collection of women's paintings that reflect their roles and responsibilities in their community.
http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/abr_culture/gender_roles.php
The division of labour between men and women in everyday life is implicit in many myths which clearly describe the food gathering activities of women while the men hunt larger animals. Many myths overlap in the areas they deal with. Thus, a myth about an ancestral hero may involve hunting lore, marriage customs, the role of men and women and their responsibilities to their kin, as well as taboos surrounding food. The actions of the Ancestral Being himself therefore sets the eternal pattern for Aboriginal society.
Men had the aggressive role, the responsibility of spearing and capturing animals, or of fishing and of providing the meat for the family. Women were expected to gather vegetable foods and fruits, grind seeds, cook damper and dig for roots. Of course if small, edible animals came past, they were not forbidden to capture them, though it was often the young children accompanying their mothers who pursued small lizards and marsupials.
What was the role of a male in the Australian Indigenous Culture?
What was the role of female in the Australian Indigenous Culture?
What was the role of children in the Australian Indigenous Culture?
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Task Two
Read Chapter Two and answer the questions below.
Chapter Two: Aspects of Traditional Aboriginal Australia
Early Occupation
Carbon-dated human remains provide evidence of at least 45,000 years of Aboriginal occupation of the Australian mainland3. There is evidence of more than 10,000 years of indigenous occupation of Australia’s Torres Strait Islands4.
Although estimates vary, it is probable that at least 300,000 (and possibly more than one million) Aboriginal people inhabited the Australian continent at the time of first British colonisation5. Aboriginal society was organised into hundreds of language groups of varying sizes, many containing sub-groups. Each language group was characterised by a common language, common territory and common cultural attributes. Most language groups were semi-nomadic, traversing defined areas of territory that varied in size from 500 sq km to 100,000 sq km6.
1.When did Aboriginals first arrive in Australia?
2.How are Aboriginal groups organised?
3.What is the name of the Indigenous tribe for our area?
Hint: look at the map on page 2
Semi-Nomadism (Hunter/Gather)
The socio-economic life of Indigenous Australians is semi- nomadism. Vegetables, grain, fruit, small animals and fish (where available) provide the mainstay of the diet. Kangaroos and other native game, often scarce or elusive, are highly valued food sources. Each language group possesses an intimate knowledge of its territory, the local flora and fauna and seasonal cycles.
In Australia, the semi-nomadic life requires physical and psychological adaptation to an often-harsh environment. In desert and semi-desert areas the capacity to travel long distances on foot, without becoming exhausted or overheated, is essential. In order to survive each person must be able to obtain food and water well before the need becomes acute. In hot or otherwise difficult physical conditions energy must be preserved between periods of hunting and food gathering.
Traditional semi-nomadic life on the Australian mainland requires very little in terms of dwellings or permanent purpose-built structures. Material possessions consist mostly of tools, weapons and implements for hunting and gathering. Within the group, women and men carry out traditional gender-specific roles. These relate to the obtaining and preparation of food, the conducting of ceremonies, child raising, teaching, medicine and the fashioning of ceremonial objects, tools, weapons and implements.
4.How did Indigenous Australians’ live their life? Explain. (Hint: the answer is in the title)
5.What does this lifestyle “require”?
6.What were their material possessions?
ABORIGINAL SPIRITUALITY
The Dreaming
The Dreaming began at the dawn of time, remains bound up in the present, and will endure forever.Dreaming stories tell of the creation by supernatural spirits of the world and everything within it. Those spirits, sometimes called Ancestral Beings, emerged at the dawn of creation from the pre-existing formless earth, from spirit homes in the sky or from other far-off places.
Some Ancestral Beings assumed forms and identities which combined features of humans with other species. Hence certain Dreaming stories refer to “kangaroo-man”, “serpent-woman”, “brolga-woman”, “shark-man” and so on.
The Dreaming stories describe the movement of the Ancestral Beings over the earth, hunting, gathering food, tool-making, singing, dancing and fighting. (“All the affairs of human life, good and evil, are included in the Dreaming stories”.) As they travelled, the Ancestral Beings created the physical features of the landscape, sea and sky. Their “Dreaming tracks” formed riverbeds and watercourses. The Ancestral Beings named the places to which they journeyed, the flora and fauna, and they created sacred rules of human social life and culture (the Law).
The Ancestral Beings eventually died, or returned to their spirit homes, or merged with the physical features which they had created. They passed onto human beings a system of existence which was complete in every respect. The Ancestral Beings entrusted custodianship of certain areas of land to particular language groups, which custodianship was conditional upon those groups following the Law.
In traditional belief the Ancestral Beings retain the power to intervene in the life of man. Thus, they remain a vital force in ensuring the continuity of human existence and in maintaining the fertility of the land and natural species.
The Dreaming stories are broadly similar throughout Australia, although regional variations reflect local landscape features, flora and fauna. Some “travelling Dreamings” cross the territory of many language groups. Where this occurs, different language groups have affiliations to, and responsibility for, different Dreaming sites located along the Dreaming tracks.
The essence of the Dreaming is that every part of the life force - the Ancestral Beings, the land, the sea, humans, fauna, flora and natural phenomena - is inextricably and eternally connected to every other part. Moreover, through the observance of ritual and ceremony, humans are able to enter into a direct relationship with the Dreaming
7.Explain the purpose of “Dreaming”
Totems
An important aspect of Aboriginal spirituality is the belief that every person has a totem. “Totemism” describes the relationship between an individual with a plant or animal species, or a condition or a situation:
“A totem is in the first place a thing; an entity, an event or a condition....Virtually anything perceivable can serve: plants and animals of all kinds – anything in the entire floral or faunal realms; wind, rains, storms, thunder, lightening, stars, sun, moon and clouds – anything of heaven; tools and weapons, food and cosmetics, fire and smoke, mist and spume, fresh water and salt – anything of earth; the human exuviae and genitals - almost anything of the human body..... Totemic significance goes far beyond utility. Sexual desire, cold weather, sweethearts, vomiting, runaway wives, mother’s milk and innumerable pests have all been recorded as totems.”
In traditional Aboriginal belief each person’s totem originates in the place where that person’s mother was impregnated with a “spirit child”. “Spirit children” are released in particular sacred places by the Ancestral Beings. Thus, for example, should a pregnant woman first become aware of her pregnancy when near the site of a goanna, her unborn child is immediately affiliated with the goanna totem.
Groups may also have a totem: a group totem is ancestral, traceable through a descent line in the language group. A totem serves as the symbol of, and companion or protector to, the relevant person or group. Where the totem has a physical form, harming it or killing it - sometimes even touching it - is prohibited. The totemic affiliation also provides a connection to the spiritual world. The performance of special rituals, often in secret, is essential to the preservation of the spirituality of the totem.
8.Explain in your own words Totenism.
Connection With Land
The close bonds between Aboriginal people and the physical and spiritual worlds are especially apparent in relation to land. Land is vested in each member of the language group as a sacred bequest from the Dreaming, and thereby provides the foundation for the group’s existence. Each group’s territory is physically, spiritually, economically and culturally essential for survival. Accordingly, connection to land is an integral part of the psyche of every person within the language group.
The territorial boundaries of each language group are created and validated through the Dreaming stories. Those boundaries, which are often defined by natural features (but which in some instances may be permeable) indicate primary responsibility for country. Members of the language group are responsible for the spiritual maintenance of the land through ceremonies and rituals.
The relationship of an individual or group with land is sacred and cannot be exchanged or lost. Thus
“It would be as correct to speak of the land possessing men as of men possessing land.”
Since the Dreaming stories relate only to one’s own territory, there is no reason to covet country which belongs to others. Accordingly, in early times, rights to land or custodianship of land was rarely challenged. Indeed, to leave one’s own territory meant moving away from its protection: other country might be regarded as being “full of danger and mystery”.
Just some facts to read:
Indigenous Australians saw themselves as caretakers of the land. The land would provide for them if they provided for the land. It was their home and their final resting place.
Children would play games to learn and develop practical skills needed for survival as adults.
Indigenous Australians generally worked 4-5hrs a day.
1000’s of years of knowledge was passed down through generations which allowed Indigenous Australian’s to continually care for the land.
Visual Art, Literature, Songs and Dancing
Aboriginal visual art, which may be created on rock facings and in caves, on wood, bark, and even on clay or sand. Broad traditional Aboriginal “art areas” exist across the Australian continent, although each language group has its own distinctive form of artistic expression.
Aboriginal visual art may be broadly described as a form of communication which is inseparable from its cultural and social setting.
Much Aboriginal visual art and carving has spiritual or symbolic meaning for the group: what others may care to make of it is immaterial.
Aboriginal literature includes stories, poetry, songs and chants. These may relate to everything connected with the traditional life: the Dreaming stories, magic, totems, hunting, fighting, epics or mourning. In some areas up to five hundred stories are known: in others there may only be a dozen or so. Sacred Dreaming stories are especially prized and the privilege of telling them may be strictly controlled.
Usually traditional songs are simple and short, with much repetition of key phrases. The songs are intended to assist the group in remembering details of the Dreaming stories. Songs are often accompanied by clapping sticks and didjeridus: other musical instruments include hand drums, rattles and gongs85.
Dreaming stories are also honoured through the performance art of dancing. Dances may be performed solo or by groups; they may be open or closed to audience participation. Sometimes, but not always, dances relate to sacred matters. Dance steps are often intricate and varied, rich in symbolism and significance.
Note: the word “corroboree” has passed into English as a word for all Aboriginal ceremonies involving singing and dancing. However, the term has been criticised as being too vague, lumping sacred and non-sacred together in an undifferentiated way.
9) What was the purpose of Indigenous art, songs, dances and stories?
Initiation into Adulthood
In traditional Aboriginal society childhood is short, albeit a time of great freedom. As children approach puberty they are required to undergo ritual initiation processes.
A girl is physically capable of fulfilling her traditional roles of food gatherer, sexual partner, bearer of children and carer of the elderly as soon as she reaches puberty. At that time she will be initiated into womanhood. After a relatively short time of seclusion from the group, during which she may be instructed in women’s business, appropriate initiation ceremonies are conducted for her. These include ritual acts of body-cleansing, body-painting and ornamentation, and perhaps body scarification.
A boy approaching puberty is introduced into manhood through a series of initiation processes. First, he is physically removed from his family to live for an extended period away from the group. The Law may forbid that his name be spoken by persons in the group during this period. Under the kinship rule his “uncles” have special obligations in relation to discipline and initiation processes. The boy is taught the rights and obligations of adult males, and some of the secrets of the sacred Law.
Male initiation rites include tests of worthiness and courage. Initiation ordeals may include tooth evulsion, circumcision, nose piercing, sleep deprivation, and/or the cutting of ceremonial markings upon skin. These tests are designed to instill qualities of obedience, discipline, self-reliance and cooperativeness. Upon satisfactory completion of the tests, complex and elaborate initiation ceremonies are held in the boy’s honour.
After the initiation ceremonies, young men are still regarded as novices. They are expected to sit in respectful silence at meetings held by the men. A young man gains in status by participating in further tests and ceremonies during subsequent years. As a man becomes entrusted with more secrets the sacred Law, so he grows in power and influence.
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Task Three
Read the following excerpts from http://anpsa.org.au/APOL3/sep96-1.html and answer the questions.
Questions:
What is fire stick farming?
What were the positives and negatives of this practice?
What is mega fauna?
Is it possible that Indigenous Australians are responsible for their extinction?
What is the mega fauna extinction theory?
How did Indigenous tools change over the years?
Do you think there may still be evidence of past Indigenous life throughout Australia?
Based on knowledge of the use of fire by traditional Aboriginal communities, who see burning the landscape as "cleaning up the country", and to a lesser extent was used by Aboriginal people primarily while they were hunting.
However, there were other beneficial consequences. Fire would recycle nutrients and promote new growth, which would subsequently attract herbivores. Many plants were favoured by regular low intensity burning. A burning pattern consisting of frequent, low intensity fires removes the woody understorey, and allows many of the grasses, orchids and lilies to flourish.
Some researchers like David Horton from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, suggest that "Aboriginal use of fire had little impact on the environment and ... the patterns of distribution of plants and animals which obtained 200 years ago would have been essentially the same whether or not Aborigines had previously been living here." (Horton, 1982). Horton probably underestimates the impact that Aboriginal people have had on Australian environment. Aboriginal burning generally took place at appropriate times of the year, and when weather conditions were right. This ensured that there was a low intensity burn, and therefore little danger of a crown fire developing. Traditional burning patterns maximised the species diversity in any particular area, because burning tended to leave a mosaic of vegetation which had been burned at different times.
This regular firing favoured not only fire-tolerant or fire-resistant plants, but also encouraged those animals that were favoured by more open country. On this basis, it is clear that Aboriginal burning, in many areas at least, did impact on the "natural" ecosystem, producing a range of vegetation associations which would maximise productivity in terms of the food requirements of the Aborigines.
Aboriginal burning has been blamed for a variety of environmental changes, not the least of which is the extinction of the Australian megafauna, a diverse range of large animals which populated Pleistocene Australia. Kershaw (1986), among others, has argued that Aboriginal burning may well have modified the vegetation to the extent that the food resources of the megafauna were diminished, and as a consequence the largely herbivorous megafauna became extinct.
Flannery (1990) believes that the megafauna were hunted to extinction by Aborigines soon after they arrived. He argues that with the rapid extinction of the megafauna, virtually all of which were herbivorous, a great deal of vegetation was left uneaten, increasing the standing crop of fuel. As a consequence, fires became larger and hotter than before, causing the reduction of fire-sensitive plants to the advantage of those which were fire-resistant or indeed fire-dependant. Flannery suggests that Aborigines then began to burn more frequently in order to maintain a high species diversity and to reduce the impact of high intensity fires on medium-sized animals and perhaps some plants. He argues that twentieth century Australian mammal extinctions are largely the result of the cessation of Aboriginal "firestick farming".
The stone technology which Aboriginal people had been using with little modification for over 40,000 years diversified and specialised in the last 5,000 years. Spear barbs and tips peaked about 2,000 years ago, and then completely disappeared from the archaeological record in southeastern Australia. They were replaced by technologies associated with the exploitation of smaller animals - shell fish hooks and bone points along the coast for fishing, axes for hunting possums across the woodlands, and adzes for sharpening digging sticks along the banks of the larger rivers where the yams were abundant. The intensive and regular use of fire was an essential component of this late Holocene shift in resource base (Kohen, 1986). The evidence suggests that Aboriginal burning may well have had an impact on Australian vegetation, but that by far the greatest impact has occurred over the last 5,000 years.
Questions:
What is fire stick farming?
What were the positives and negatives of this practice?
What is mega fauna?
Is it possible that Indigenous Australians are responsible for their extinction?
What is the mega fauna extinction theory?
How did Indigenous tools change over the years?
Do you think there may still be evidence of past Indigenous life throughout Australia?