Aboriginal Australia

Since 1788 this continent has become “home” for many thousands of peoples from all the corners and cultures of the world, we truly define what it means to be ‘multicultural’.

However, cultural diversity is not new to this country. For some forty thousand years before European and British occupation, Aboriginal peoples’ lifeways and histories were embedded in the land. Australia has two Indigenous peoples — Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. Historically and to this day, Aboriginal people have lived on mainland Australia, Tasmania and many of the continent’s offshore islands. Torres Strait Islanders come from the islands of the Torres Strait between the tip of Cape York in Queensland and Papua New Guinea. Since World War II many Torres Strait Islanders have moved to the mainland, principally for economic reasons.1.

Ethnically and culturally Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders are distinct peoples. Until the modern era, however, the people of the Torres Strait were, like Aboriginal people, subject to restrictive legislation that denied them their citizenship rights. 

This continent has a human history estimated at between 50,000 to 150,000 years old. Aboriginal people are representatives of the longest surviving cultures in the World. Aboriginal Australia was a pattern of localities covering the entire continent. Groups hunted and gathered over areas defined by custom. Particular groups owned particular pieces of land. The land was not just a source of sustenance, but also materialisation of the journeys of the creative Ancestors. It was the basis of spiritual life and, in its own way, a religious text. Systems of land tenure were intimately bound up with spiritual attachment and notions of custodianship. The Mutitjulu women of the Uluru (Ayres Rock) region explain the strength of this connection by saying “Bonds between Anangu (the people) and land can never be broke while a person lives, regardless of the clothes that Anangu wear, the processed foods they eat or the motor cars they own. The link between the time of the Tjukurpa (the Dreaming) and daily life remains even at death, for it is then that Anangu become part of the Tjukurpa itself, part of their own creation.2.

Some 200–250 different Australian languages were spoken and even more dialects. Though all groups lived by hunting and gathering and had a land-based spirituality, details such as kinship systems, art forms and technologies differed as would be expected in a continent with environments ranging from dense rainforests to deserts. 

Events of history and occupation including the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families (the Stolen Generations)  have meant that to a great extent many of cultural ways have been negatively affected, but Aboriginal people’s identity remains strong. We do not all look the same, we are not all dark skinned, and the majority of us live within metropolitan areas, and for many the connection to the Dreaming is still strong. Through it’s Reconciliation Statement, the University of Adelaide acknowledges the Kaurna People of the Adelaide Plains, and their ancestors: this is their land. This is the land of Aboriginal history, which is shared by all those who make their home here.

Jenni Caruso, Coordinator Yaitya Purruna – Indigenous Health Unit, Dept Gen Practice, University Of Adelaide.

1. Face the Facts – ATSIC, 1999
2. Reprinted in part  from the leaflet titled “Tjukurpa” with permission from the Mutitjulu Community in Aboriginal Land Rights - 1998