Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Continuing Effect of Dispossession on Aboriginal Spiritualties

Good Essays
395 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Continuing Effect of Dispossession on Aboriginal Spiritualties
Discuss the continuing effect of dispossession on aboriginal spiritualties in relation to: * separation from the land * separation from kinship groups * the Stolen Generations Dispossession is the process of the removal of a person or group from land, through the process of law. This dispossession has had a continuing damaging effect through a loss of spiritualties.
Separation from the land meant that cultural practices and ceremonies associated with the land could not be carried out. With restricted access to sacred sites and much tribal lore was lost, it ultimately meant that aboriginal people were unable to draw effectively on the spiritual power of the dreaming and their ancestor spirits.
Dispossession broke up the kinship groups and so disturbed the religious and cultural beliefs and practices around which their lives had been centered. With Kinship being based around culture, rituals and hierarchy all are which embedded into Aboriginal spirituality, their rich oral tradition had been diminished. Ultimately this continuing effect on their spirituality through the separation from kinship groups led to the demise and uniqueness of Aboriginal beliefs. They were forced to subscribe to European values.
The underlying aim of this policy was the idea that the Aboriginal race could be bred out of existence and so by separating children from their families and traditional background, it was hoped that they would adopt European culture and behavior. The children taken away lost their language, spirituality and self-esteem and most importantly loss of cultural affiliation. Since they were denied any traditional knowledge Stolen Generations cannot take a role in the cultural and spiritual life of their Aboriginal communities. “I don’t know nothing about my culture. I don’t know nothing about the land and the language,” says Cynthia Sariago after her mothers passing. “It’s hard going back to your home country because you’re not really accepted by your mother’s traditional people. Ultimately to deny Indigenous Australians access to their land is to cut their ties with the Dreaming as the Dreaming is inextricably connected to the land.

Although the impact of dispossession for Aboriginal people has been enormous and overwhelmingly detrimental and can never be changed in history again, a considerable amount of effort has been made by the Australian government and catholic churches to repair the great damage done through Christian acknowledgement and the Kevin Rudd official apology speech to say sorry for the stolen generations.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The long challenge of indigenous people has been overcome by not only their feeling of dispossession of their land but also that dispossession of being emotionally hurt through that of indigenous culture and family. Passage one Red Indian Heritage is my reading of a plea by Chief Seattle to keep his peoples land and this their way of life; it informs my reading of Garry Foley’s article White Myths Damage Our Souls which was writing over one hundred years after Seattle’s. Both texts explore similar ideas of dispossession within indigenous people. Foley’s article informs the reader of that forced assimilation of Koori people in Australia has cost them their Aboriginality which is also something Chief Seattle mentioned in his speech as to what…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    They placed children under the care of Europeans because they thought this would mean “advancing” the aboriginal children. However, many Aborigines are still searching for their children, mothers and other family members. Through this forced separation many aboriginal people have struggled in life, experienced low-self esteem, feeling of worthlessness, social dysfunction, high rates of unemployment and ongoing health issues. This loss if identity can result in depression and other mental illness (Creative Spirit…

    • 1625 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The children were taken from their parents and sent to mission schools and foster homes. Here they were told to forget their heritage and everything they knew and were taught the english language and were forced to adapt to the white ways of life. An example of this was a 17 year old girl by the name Lorna Cubillo. She was one of the 100,000 aboriginal children removed from their families. She was taken away from her family to a foster home, she was later sexualy abused and never saw her family again.…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the early 20th century it was believed that Aboriginals we unable to care for themselves or make effective decisions as they were considered uncivilised by the Australian public. The protection policy was implemented; therefore the government would control every aspect of an Aboriginal’s life. The Aborigines Protection Act was passed in 1909 to control and restrict the movement of Aborigines across reserves, the money distribution and removing children from their families to ‘educate’ them. The removal of Aboriginal children from their families was known as The Stolen Generation. It was a system used to strip the Aboriginal culture from a child from a young age to bring them up into a civilised, white culture. The Stolen Generation continued through from 1869 to 1969 and in some places, even through till the 70’s. This destroyed many Aboriginal families, some children never saw their parents again and they were taken to reserves or white foster families which only a handful of children received a kind upbringing. This was considered the cruelest act towards Indigenous Australians which time still hasn’t entirely healed.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Aboriginies Timeline

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages

    1934: Under the Aboriginal Act, Aboriginal people could always apply to a ‘cease to be Aboriginal’, meaning after doing so they would have equivalent rights with whites. Policy of removing children from their families to aid assimilation which was brought about in 1937 became known as “The Stolen Generation”. Aboriginals were forced to give up on their values and cultures.…

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The government and churches around Australia had an ignorant and uneducated view about the native aboriginals and how they chose to live. They thought that aboriginal families lived poor and…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Stolen Generation describes the period of time in which the many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families in order to discontinue the passing down of their culture, language and identity. These young children were sent to institutions or adopted by non-Indigenous families and received little to no form of education in comparison to the level of schooling offered to the white Australian children. Life was immeasurably harsh for the Aboriginal children as they were growing up within a society which taught them to believe their culture was nothing more than rubbish and were encouraged to deny their own heritage. This disabled their ability to flourish and explore their potential in the world due to their racial discrimination which vastly limited their future pathways as they…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Indigenous Australians are a prominently disadvantaged group that are subject to extreme discrimination impacting on their life’s. The Stolen generation had severe negative impacts on the victims of the stolen generation and has continued to negatively affect future generations. Further negative implications have stemmed from this extreme action. And it is the cause of many issues of inequality today among Indigenous Australians. This essay will define the stolen generation, outline and discuss the negative impacts that have stemmed from it and then link the impacts of assimilation to theories such as functionalist theory, structural, etc.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Discuss the continuing effect of dispossession on aborigional spiritualities in relation to:-Seperation from the land-Seperation from kinship groups-The stolen generationsThe continuing effect of dispossession on aboriginal spititualities in relation to seperation from the land is one of immense stress to the spirituality. This began with the initial dispossession of european settlement and aborigional spiritualities remain, for the most part, a long way from recovering. The arrival of the europeans and the forced dispossession of aborigional people from the land meant access to sacred sites was denied. Seperated from their dreaming lands meant they had, in effect, lost their spirituality and totemic identity and became non-beings. The sistainig ceremonies could not be held.The continuing effect of dispossession on aboriginal spititualities in relation to…

    • 1918 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The continuing effect of dispossession on Aboriginal spirituality has caused a destruction of the kinship system. The separation from the land has had a devastating effect on the Aborigines because it has broken the ties of their spiritualities with the Dreaming since it is inextricably linked with the land. The separation from the land meant removing a sense of belonging to life and the separation from family removes the sense of belonging to oneself, which is also known as the Stolen Generations. Dispossession has caused a number of problems in Aboriginal society which includes lower life expectancy, higher rate of infant mortality, overrepresentation in prison, educational disadvantages, higher unemployment rates and higher drug and alcohol use. In reference to the statement above, “It never goes away”, implies that the trauma in which the land have been dispossess from them will never disappear from their memory and they will forever remember this unjust act which has greatly affected them. Also, the fact that they will continue to “carry these sorts of wounds ’til the day I die” suggests how they are constantly living in immense pain even though they are not hurt physically but they are hurt emotionally and mentally. Ultimately, the main causes to why these Aborigines are feeling very damaged is because of the dispossession of the land is incredibly vital for them as they have referred the land as their ‘mother’ land and that the dispossession has caused a detrimental impact on the Aboriginal…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This gave Aboriginal protectors responsibility privileges over Aboriginal people up to the age of sixteen or twenty-one. In all states and territories, policemen or other agents of the state, began to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent, from their mothers or families or communities into institutions. In these Australian states and territories, half-caste institutions, government or missionary, were established in the early decades of the twentieth-century for the treatment of these separated half-caste children. These children were separated permanently from family and they were taught to despise their Aboriginal inheritance. If they were brought up without the knowledge of that inheritance, they were sent to work as domestic servants or station hands in the hope that they would eventually merge into European society and marry out. If they were sent to foster homes, the knowledge of their Aboriginality was deprived. Many of the Aboriginal children that were sent away to either the institutions or foster homes experienced sexual abuse, as well as poor living conditions. It is viewed today that this was done, not as a social welfare measure, but as an attempt to break the cultural connection between the children of mixed descent and their Aboriginal families and cultures; to drag the children out of the world of the native settlements and camps and prepare them for a place in the lower branch of European…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful 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 Aboriginal people believe in myths but do not have faith in a creator. Instead, they believe in a spirit world, they say that after death there is another world beyond, they trust in ideas of reincarnation. The spirits are active in this world but they also live on in a world after death. The Aboriginals use rituals as a way of communicating between the two worlds. Communities or tribes gather to take part in dances, story telling, art making and other practices. They group for these rituals at sacred sites, these are places or areas that hold great significance for the Aborigines. These fascinating beliefs are very deep and complex views of how the cycle of life on our Earth occurs.…

    • 505 Words
    • 2 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
  • Good Essays

    Beginning in 1910 and ending in the 1970s, Australians Federal and State government agencies and church missions made a policy to forcibly take many aboriginal and Torres Strait children away from their families in an attempt to destroy the Aboriginal race and culture. There was an impact on the aboriginals with a particular policy the Australian Government had introduced, which was the policy of ‘Assimilation’. This policy was to encourage many Aboriginal people to give up their culture, language, tradition, knowledge and spirituality to basically become white Australians. Unfortunately this policy didn’t give the Aboriginals the same rights as white Australians, as a result of discrimination, aboriginals were moved to live in special housing…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays