Australian effect on the aboriginal life styles

1. Australian effect on the aboriginal life styles By: Nour Ahmed 8B

2. Before Colonization • The Aboriginal people had a culture, before the Europeans came and took that away. They were closely attached to their land and had traditions that revolved around their beliefs. Their traditions, characteristics of culture, housing, language, clothing, and practically their identity was lost/taken away.

3. Before Colonization • Before the colonization of the Europeans the Aboriginals had special traditions and beliefs such as ceremonies for kinds of events such as wet season, and death. Another tradition of theirs was the sons of the family walking around Australia for a year to prove him a man, and totems.

4. What happened to their culture and religion? • The totems were such things as animals that were supposedly a lucky token of a person that ever has of their own. They couldn’t hurt their totems in any ways like hunting them or such things. In Rabbit Proof Fence, when Molly was going to give up on finding her mother, she saw her totem fly through the air, it was a bird. That gave her motivation to keep going, which is what she did. After the Europeans had taken over, these traditions were lost and all the Aboriginals and the half casts as well, were forced to do was to go to Church and perform beliefs of Christianity.

5. What happened to the places they lived in? • As well as their traditions/beliefs being lost, their way of living was changed. • Before the colonization they were living in small huts, an example of these small huts was the red fern housing, “The Block” which was in the middle of the city and got torn down.

6. What did Europeans change in Aboriginals? • They also used to hunt their food as a job, since the food was limited. But after the colonization they lost these jobs because the Europeans didn’t need hunters, and unless they wanted them as individuals to work for them. Other than in that case, they were not needed.

7. After Colonization • Today, Aboriginal people are treated fairly, after the sorry walk that the president of Australia held to apologize for the discrimination of the Aboriginal people before. More than 100,000 people participated in this event. Now they live in sub-standard houses and have equal jobs to others, but they are more likely to die in jail than others. They also are more likely to have health problems and catch diseases than other Australians.

8. Who benefited from this? • The Aboriginals and Australians benefitted from each other. The Australians learned about the Aboriginal traditions and now all schools in Australia have to be teaching Aboriginal studies as a law. The Australians also used the traditions of the Aboriginals as a performance in the Olympics in 2006 of dancing.

9. My Opinion • I think that what the Europeans did was wrong because what they did was cruel. They didn’t have the right to separate the Aboriginals from their land or families. That’s one of the most harmful thing a person can do to someone. I also think that they had no right to force them in being Christian and going to church. In addition to that I think that they shouldn’t have made them go to a place like Moore River in Rabbit Proof Fence because it was too hard to them to survive. They would be forced to sleep at a certain time, wake up at a certain time, and all the time they were awake they were working for the Devil. They weren’t allowed to leave and if they tried escaping and got caught they would be severely punished, with punishments such as making them look like a man, being smacked and whipped, etc. Though, in the Europeans defense, they didn’t think what they were doing was wrong even though it was. But overall what they did was harmful, disrespectful, disgusting, and most importantly cruel.