Aborigines Society:
As every human society has ways of governing itself, Australian government started thousands of years ago following the settlement of the Aboriginal people in the continent. Unlike the other European settlers, Aboriginal people had very different ways of organizing and governing themselves. Despite of the various Aboriginal cultures in the throughout Australia, there are similar features shared among most Aboriginal cultures. Some of the common features of the Aboriginal societies revolve around family organization, trade, travel, home, art, and education. The Aboriginal people have occupied Australia for approximately 40,000 years even though very little is known regarding them for this duration of time. However, the Aboriginal people have experienced major changes in their culture, identity, and society since 1788 due to various factors.
History and Culture of the Aboriginal People:
Aboriginal people, identity, culture, and society has been characterized by two different aspects i.e. one showing great continuities through space and time as well as displaying great change through time and huge diversity across space on the other hand (Horton, 2009). In addition to being truth, both characteristics and aspects of the Aborigines have been the subject of caricatures of Aboriginal society by white. Moreover, the both characteristics have had a significant impact on the politics of Aboriginal Australia. This group of people has been in Australia for over 50,000 years making Australia to be considered as the home of the world's first people ("Aborigines," n.d.). Actually, the word aborigine is used to mean first or earliest known group of people in the world.
Since the Aboriginal people were still living through hunting and gathering, and using stone tools around 200 years ago, they were regarded to be similar to the Paleolithic people of Europe. The Aboriginal people were like fossils that remained unchanged for thousands of years whereas the Paleolithic people had eventually developed pottery, agriculture, and metals and wheels in their way to civilization. Consequently, the seemingly simple lifestyle of the Aborigines contributed to the emergence of two other misconceptions i.e. that these people were culturally uniform and that they had minimal attachment to the land.
In relation to their social organization, the Aborigines lived daily in family groups, met during ceremonies, and banded together as hordes ("Traditional Life," n.d.). Unlike European settlers, aboriginal families lived together in large groups and shared food and other resources with one another. In such family organization, these people shared other tasks like caring for children, hunting, making tools, and building shelters. The shelters of the Aboriginal people were built around campsites as they slept out of doors near small fires. In the entire year, Aboriginal people would move to locations where they could find what they needed, especially food since they did not live in one place. As soon as the resources in that location got low, the Aboriginal people could move to a different location.
Every Aboriginal culture would move around within a specific area of land that was their homeland as every group was strongly linked to its homeland country. As a result of this connection to their land, each group knew all its geographical features, plants, watercourses, and animals very well. Despite of living in their own lands, Aboriginal societies could sometimes travel further distances that enabled them to come into contact with other groups. Therefore, the Aborigines formed links with different cultures and communicate the news in the entire country.
The other characteristic of the Aboriginal people and cultures is their practice of many forms of art. These people painted weapons, rocks, their own bodies, and tools in addition to engraving pictures, symbols, and patterns into wood and rock ("Aboriginal Society," n.d.). In addition to having a rich tradition of stories, dance, song, and poetry, the Aborigines also created sculptures out of wax, wood, and rocks ("Introduction to Aboriginal Art," n.d.). Learning these forms of art was an important part of being an adult as the arts were connected to the law. Consequently, arts were part of the formal education of older children because learning them meant taking on responsibilities. On the contrary, younger children were taught basic practical skills like the process of gathering food because they had less responsibility.
There are three main aspects of the Aboriginal social structure i.e. physical or geographical, religious and tometic, and social structuring. The physical or geographical structuring of the Aboriginal society consisted of a tribe or language group of about 500 people with bands of approximately 20 people each. While the bands joined together daily for hunting and food gathering, every band is known as a horde consisting of several families. From a religious perspective, the Australian society is mainly divided...
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