Preview

Australian Aboriginal Culture - Essay

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1084 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Australian Aboriginal Culture - Essay
Introduction
Aboriginals or indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. Aboriginals were nomadic people who came to Australia about 40,000 – 60,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Religion is a great part of Aboriginal culture. The essay answers these questions: What do Aboriginals belief? What is a Kinship system? What is Dreaming and Dreamtime? What rituals does Aboriginals have?

Religion
The Aborigines have a complex belief in creation, spirits and culture that gives a definite distinctiveness from any other religion in the world. Thousands of years ago, Australian Aboriginal people were living in accordance with their dreamtime beliefs- today, a majority of the Aboriginal community profess allegiance to Christianity, and only 3% still adhere to traditional beliefs. These beliefs have provided the Aboriginal people with guidance and perspective on all aspects of life. There were many variants to these beliefs and practises throughout the many Aboriginal tribal areas, but all Aboriginal people have developed an intimate relationship between themselves and their environment. They see themselves as spiritually bound to the natural world.

The Dreamtime The Dreamtime specifically refers to the period of time when the creators made the territory of a tribe and all it contained. It was a period when patterns of living were established and laws were laid down for human beings to follow. The Dreamtime is linked with many aspects of Aboriginal practise, including rituals, storytelling and Aboriginal lore.
Artwork
Traditional Aboriginal art was inspired by religious ceremonies or rituals. Modern Aboriginal art is a vital part of the world's oldest continuous cultural tradition. It is also one of the most brilliant and exciting areas of modern art. It is based on animals or patterns. All the designs, painted or drawn, have a story behind them. Many of the Dreamtime stories are told using artwork because there were so many different aboriginal



References: http://www.indigenousaustralia.info http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginaali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Dreaming describes an enormous variety of spiritual beliefs and not a single unified systems; it refers to all that is known and understood by aboriginal. It is central spiritual concept, determines not only beliefs and values and religions with people and the environment…

    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Culture is very important to the Aboriginals and they are connected to the land. They believe their land has spiritual, religious and social significance. Each group of Aborigines has different traditions and beliefs in relation to…

    • 1625 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Toumai Human History

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Dreamtime- was a definition of the tribe’s origin which was filled with stories, values, costums and laws.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aboriginals are indigenous Australians and their ancestors were the earliest humans who occupied Australia. They lived in Australia before British colonization. (Morten Rasmussen et al., 2011) They have the oldest ongoing culture in the world and they could adapt and change with the environment. World’s first usage of stones was invented by Aborigines. They have rich cultural heritage such as beautiful paintings and rock arts. (ACME, 2015) However, the situation of Aboriginals dropped since colonists arrived and got even worse from 1910.…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    HUMA DB

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous people of Australia practiced their own traditions, had their own social and economic system. Indigenous people are the holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs. One indigenous group of people is the Aborigines. Aborigines are Australia’s indigenous people that migrated from somewhere in Asia 30,000 years ago (Siasoco, 2007). The Aborigines’ strong spiritual beliefs tie them to the land (Siasoco, 2007).The aboriginal culture is full of storytelling and art. But like other indigenous people they also possess a difficult colonial history. Aborigines called the beginning of the world the “Dreaming” and/or “Dreamtime” (Siasoco, 2007). According to the aboriginal people in the Dreamtime, their ancestors rose from below the earth to form various parts of nature including animal species, bodies of water and the sky (Siasoco, 2007).…

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    produce a pamplet that was to be used by migrant workers to study for the Australian citizenship…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    -Obligations to the land and peopleAboriginal spirituality is determined by the kinship because kinship is the fabric of traditional aborigional society. In this extended family everybody is related through the complex web of the dreaming.Tribes are made up of clans decended from a spirit ancestor denoted by a totem. The natural totem is from the clans region. It unifies the clan under the leadership of the spirit ancestor, creating a dreaming kinship with other clans bearing the same totem.Individuals have their own totem as traditional aboriginal society believes that procreation was a dreaming event. This creates…

    • 1918 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The indigenous population of Australia has been marginalised and oppressed since the very first days of colonisation by the introduced western society. This foreign culture brought with it many drastically different ways of thinking, most of which being polar opposites of the pre-existing indigenous knowledge systems that were held by Australia and its people before the first invasions. These introduced ways of thinking brought by white settlers have been widely held as superior over traditional aboriginal knowledge systems due to the sheer differences in culture and ways of knowing held by each society. Whilst looking at some of these major ways of knowing, being memory, faith and language, we will see that a western way of thinking is not…

    • 155 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Aboriginal spirituality is determined by the Dreaming since it is a concept which underpins all beliefs and practices in the Aboriginal communities. The Dreaming is communicated through story, song, art, dance and rituals which show the enormous diverse nature of Aboriginal spirituality. The telling and learning of the Dreaming stories is a life-long process where it taught them lessons about life and how things came to be. For example, The Rainbow Serpent is a Dreaming story which explained them how the earth’s landscape became the way it is. In reference to the source, this photograph is of male…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    - Assimilation - The policy of trying to make people change their culture or way of life and adapt to a new culture.…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many Indigenous Australians that have made a significant impact on Australian society. These people stood up for their rights and made their voices heard. Every action they made was because of the strong belief they had for their rights, culture and people.…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The consequences of dispossession for aboriginal spirituality have been enormously and overwhelming detrimental. Two centuries of dispossession impacted greatly on Aboriginal Spirituality most significantly the separation from land led to a loss of identity and thus the dreaming and it’s rituals that follow. The dreaming is inextricably connected to the land and thus the forceful removal from their land means that Aboriginals lost much more than a place to call home. For Aboriginals the land is their mother their sole purpose in life is to love and protect the land and one day return home to the grasp of their mother country. The dispossession from the land resulted in a continuing burden for aboriginal as they were no longer able to fulfil…

    • 239 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    aboriginal spirituality

    • 505 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The statement, ‘Aboriginal spirituality is as diverse and complex as the people themselves’, relates Aboriginal people to their culture and beliefs.…

    • 505 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aboriginal languages provide long-lasting direct and powerful means of understanding the legacy of knowledge surrounding all aspects of Aboriginal life. Through sharing a language Aboriginal people have created a shared belief of how the world works. The sharing of these common ideals has created a collective and interconnected cognitive experience that links both the generations of the past and the generations of the future. In my research, I have found that Aboriginal knowledge extends beyond the awareness of the immediate sensible world of perception, memory, imagination, and feeling. Aboriginal people not only concern themselves with the present, but the past and future play equal roles in their lives. Eli Taylor, an elder from the Sioux Valley First Nations, eloquently explains the importance of maintaining Aboriginal languages and knowledge:…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Aboriginals have always had a strong link between them and the land with the belief of the Dreamtime and the art, symbols, rituals and totems that came with it. After the white settlement, the way in which aboriginals lived their everyday life took a dramatic turn. It had affected their culture for many generations with a disconnection with the land to them.…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics