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Zusammenfassung

The history of Aborigines - Overview

1.506 / ~9 sternsternsternstern_0.2stern_0.3 Josefine T. . 2018
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Zusammenfassung
Geschichte / Historik

Realschule Karlsruhe

1,0 Wessbecher, 2017

Josefine T. ©
3.50

0.05 Mb
sternsternsternstern_0.2stern_0.3
ID# 78009







Content:

  1. Preface

  2. Overview and Cultural Context

  • Introduction

  • Ancestry

  • Arrival of the white settlers

  • Situation today

  • Way of living

  • Aboriginal religion

  • Aboriginal art

  • Aboriginal music

  1. Timeline

  2. The Stolen Generations

  • Quick overview about the “Stolen Generations”

  • Definition of “Stolen Generations”

  • Why were Aboriginal children stolen?

  • Which children were taken away?

  • What happened to the stolen children?

  • How many children were stolen?

  • When were the children stolen?

  • What were the effects on the stolen children?

  • The situation today

  • ´Not stolen, but rescued´?


Preface

In this textI will first give you an introduction of the Aboriginal history and a cultural overview. Mostly I will concentrate on the modern historical relationship with the white immigrants and the so called “Lost Generations”.


The History of Aborigines


Overview and Cultural Context


Introduction

One of the biggest problems about the culture of the Aborigines is that their culture is often not accepted or misunderstood. When the settlers claimed Australia, they tried to erase the culture of the Aborigines. As the result the amount of Aborigines sank to an extremely low number.

Thankfully the situation today changed in favour of the Aborigines.


Ancestry

Scientists can prove that humans already lived on the Australian continent 50,000 years ago, though it isn’t sure wherefrom they originally came. A common theory is that they are descend from the Asian continent. They could have travelled along the land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

This could have been possible at this time, because Papua New Guinea and Australia were only separated by about 100 kilometres.


Arrival of the white settlers

Because of the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip with the First Fleet into the bay of Sydney in 1788, the population increased to 300,000 people. Since then the aborigines were tried to be extinguished, they were kept away from their water holes, shot and their traditions and habits were forbidden.

The wiping out of the Aborigines in Tasmania ended 1876 with the death of the last Aborigines there.


Situation today

Even today the discrimination of the Aborigines is noticeable. Many Natives are addicted to alcohol or drugs and are on a low social level. Luckily Australia is working on a society in which the Aborigines and their traditions are respected as any other group. They also try to regulate the communication between the Whites and the Aborigines.

Nowadays the aborigines even have their own flag. It’s coloured in black, red and yellow. Black stands for skin, red for the colour of earth and yellow symbolizes the sun.


Way of living

The Aborigines´ whole life is focused on nature. In contrast to other cultures or religions the Aborigines see themselves as a part of the nature. They focus to only take what they need to survive from the nature. In the Aboriginal religion mythologic ancestors are also a part of the family.

Their clans are small groups. These clans met regularly for meetings, marriages, important events and for the time of strong rainfall.

To hunt animals or fight they used lances or a piece of wood called boomerang.


Aboriginal Religion

The Dreamtime is a world of legends, the world without time and space, also inhabited by ancestors and mystic creatures like the rainbow snake. The Aboriginal Genesis says that the rainbow snake lives in a river. It is a fertility spirit, male and female at the same time and it acts as a destroyer as well as a creator.


Aboriginal Art

A lot of Aboriginal paintings are in the X-raying's style. At the X-raying's style, you can see the form of the organs from the painting, as an example something like an animal.


Aboriginal Music

The typical musical instrument for Aborigines is the wind instrument, the Digeridoo. It is of a thick hollow trunk from the eucalyptus tree and the mouthpiece made of beeswax.


Timeline


120.000 BC: Aborigines were already living in Australia.

1588-1906 AD: Aborigines in Northern Territory are in contact with traders from Indonesia

1770: Captain Cook claims Australia for the British King

1788: Captain Phillip’s First Fleet arrives, white invasion. The Aboriginal population is about one million

1804: Whites can shoot Aborigines

1824-1929: The killing of Aborigines continues. The Aboriginal population in 1929 about 30.000

1909 Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (1909 - 1969), meant to assimilate the Aboriginal people

1912: Laws introduce social benefits except for Aborigines

1938: An Aboriginal conference in Sydney against discrimination

1953-’57: British nuclear bomb tests at South Australia leave many Aborigines with radiation sickness

1962: Aborigines are given the right to vote

1967: Changes in the law bring equal rights for Aborigines and an official end to discrimination

1998: First National Sorry Day. People of Australian apologize to Aborigines at this day.

2000: Aboriginal people are still highly disadvantaged in all areas of life.


The Stolen Generations


Quick Overview about The Stolen Generations

Many Aboriginal people are still searching for their parents and siblings.

Between the 1890s and 1970s many aboriginal families were forced to give away their children.

The children were taken to missions, girls and boys homes and foster families. At the age of 18 the girls and boys were unhanded into white society. Many of these children who are now grown up are still looking for their families.

They all were and still are traumatized from their childhood for their lifetime.


Definition of ‘Stolen Generations’

The children of Aboriginal families which were stolen and often have never seen their parents, siblings or relatives again are called “Stolen Generations”, we use the plural because so many generations and not only one were affected.


Why were Aboriginal children stolen?

In the 20th century the plan of the assimilation policy was to eradicate the aborigines.

The whites were taking away the aboriginal children to erase their culture and the aborigines as a race. So the Aborigines didn’t have children to teach their ancient knowledge, their language, religion and traditions.


Which children were taken away?

Half-caste” Aboriginal children, so half-blood aboriginal children, were more likely to be taken away from their families because it was thought these children could be brought into white society more easily.


What happened to the stolen children?

The theft of the children is even more shocking when you know that the mothers of the babies that were stolen couldn’t even see them because the nurses covered them with a blanket. Because of that they were called “Blanket babies”. It was also taken care of that they wouldn’t have any contact with the aboriginal culture.

The girls and boys were raised by foster parents or missions. The boys were raised to be stockmen and the girls to domestic servants.

For a long time it was normal that re-educated aboriginal girls would marry white boys. The daughters of these marriages would marry again white boys and this process would keep going on to make the western genes more dominant and make the skin paler.


How many children were stolen?

How many children were stolen is not easy to say, because the records are unreliable and the data distorted. You can estimate that 10% of adult Aboriginal people born 1970 or earlier have been removed from their families.


When were the children stolen?

From the end of the 19th century till the 1970s children were taken away from their parents.

Even after this policy changed, some of the schools and missions who held the Stolen Generations did not close until the early 1980s.


Many people from the Stolen Generations have social and personal problems, for example mental illness, violence, alcoholism. A lot of them depend on welfare.

Parents stolen as kids are passing on this trauma to their own children.


The situation today

Shockingly even more children are being taken nowadays than during the Stolen Generations period. There are still many aboriginal children being taken away from their families, though the superficial reasons have changed. Instead of ideological racist background, it is supposed to happen because their parents can’t take care of them properly because they have a lot of problems themselves.


Not stolen, but rescued’

They say that there is no proof of deliberately stealing them.

Supporters claim that Aboriginal children were not stolen but ‘rescued’ from a family and community environment that was “rife with rape, incest, drug and/or alcohol abuse and insanitary living conditions” *The Aboriginal children were ‘given a chance’.

People who feel that they or their ancestors had no part in what happened, and so shared no responsibility for the pain, refuse to apologise to the Stolen Generations, because an apology leads to compensation claims.


*'Stolen Generation compensation', The Courier Mail, 13/2/2008, p.31.


Sources:

Text:

Burchard, Przemystaw: Australier Geschichte Konflikte Bräuche Sitten. Uranier-Verlag Leipzig 1990.



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