Aboriginal Culture

Aboriginal Culture Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime. Reverence for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Language groupings and tribal divisions exhibit a range of individual cultures. Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolour landscapes. Aboriginal music has developed a number of unique instruments. Contemporary Australian aboriginal music is predominantly of the country music genre. Indigenous Australians did not develop a system of writing. * A Bora is an initiation ceremony in which young boys (Kippas) become men. * A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting for Australian Aboriginal people. * Fire-stick farming, identified by Australian archaeologist Rhys Jones in 1969, is the practice of regularly and systematically burning patches of vegetation used in Central to Northern Australia to facilitate hunting, to reduce the frequency of major bush-fires, and to change the composition of plant and animal species in an area. "Burning off", as it is often called, reduces the fuel-load for a potential major bush fire, while fertilising the ground and increasing the number of young plants, providing additional food for kangaroos and other fauna hunted for meat. It is regarded as good husbandry and "looking after the land" by Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory. * A smoking ceremony is a cleansing ritual performed on special occasions. * Tjurunga or churinga are objects of religious significance by Central Australian Aboriginal Arrernte (Aranda, Arundta) groups.
Walkabout refers to an unconfirmed but commonly held belief that Australian Aborigines would undergo a rite of passage journey during adolescence by living in the wilderness for six months.

DREAMTIME
The Dreamtime is a widely used, but not well understood, term describing key aspects of Aboriginal spiritual