Explain The Ways Indigenous Australians Engaged With Colonizing Society
1. How did Indigenous Australians engage with colonizing society?
In historical studies throughout the past few centuries, Aboriginal people have often been represented as passive and uninvolved in the early colonization of Australia. More thorough research, however, indicates that the opposite is true. That is, Indigenous Australians engaged with colonizing society much more actively than was previously assumed.
In the early years of settler exploration many Indigenous Australians provided colonizers with assistance and advice necessary for survival in Australia. In With the White People (1990) Henry Reynolds describes several ways in which Aboriginal people engaged with colonizing society, such as acting as ‘guides’. This includes individuals …show more content…
However, the ways in which Aboriginal peoples engaged with colonizing society cannot be understood in isolation, without taking into account the broader context. That is, resistance, often including violence, from Indigenous Australians did not occur immediately following invasion. Rather, such acts of violence occurred in response to unequal relations between settlers and Aboriginal peoples, which existed due to colonizer appropriation of Indigenous land, food, and property (Elder 2003, p. …show more content…
Rather, in the early years of colonial exploration, peaceful engagements existed between European and Aboriginal peoples. These peaceful engagements, which usually involved Aboriginal people willingly assisting settlers in tasks, such as finding water, and food, ceased in the later half of the nineteenth century (but were sometimes replaced with forced labor) (Reynolds 1990, pp. 12-13, 39). This was mainly due to the fact that, with the establishment of more permanent forms of settlement (such as buildings and farms), settlers no longer relied upon the assistance provided by Aboriginal people for survival (Reynolds 1990, p. 36). For example, unlike most European explorers, Robert Burke and William Wills refused assistance from Aboriginal people and so were unable to catch more than one fish in four months. Further, because they only had a small amount of rations brought with them to Australia to survive on, they ultimately contracted scurvy (Reynolds 1990, p. 33). It is in this sense, then, that peaceful engagements between Aboriginal and European peoples existed largely because settlers needed the assistance that Aboriginal people were willing to provide, under peaceful
In historical studies throughout the past few centuries, Aboriginal people have often been represented as passive and uninvolved in the early colonization of Australia. More thorough research, however, indicates that the opposite is true. That is, Indigenous Australians engaged with colonizing society much more actively than was previously assumed.
In the early years of settler exploration many Indigenous Australians provided colonizers with assistance and advice necessary for survival in Australia. In With the White People (1990) Henry Reynolds describes several ways in which Aboriginal people engaged with colonizing society, such as acting as ‘guides’. This includes individuals …show more content…
However, the ways in which Aboriginal peoples engaged with colonizing society cannot be understood in isolation, without taking into account the broader context. That is, resistance, often including violence, from Indigenous Australians did not occur immediately following invasion. Rather, such acts of violence occurred in response to unequal relations between settlers and Aboriginal peoples, which existed due to colonizer appropriation of Indigenous land, food, and property (Elder 2003, p. …show more content…
Rather, in the early years of colonial exploration, peaceful engagements existed between European and Aboriginal peoples. These peaceful engagements, which usually involved Aboriginal people willingly assisting settlers in tasks, such as finding water, and food, ceased in the later half of the nineteenth century (but were sometimes replaced with forced labor) (Reynolds 1990, pp. 12-13, 39). This was mainly due to the fact that, with the establishment of more permanent forms of settlement (such as buildings and farms), settlers no longer relied upon the assistance provided by Aboriginal people for survival (Reynolds 1990, p. 36). For example, unlike most European explorers, Robert Burke and William Wills refused assistance from Aboriginal people and so were unable to catch more than one fish in four months. Further, because they only had a small amount of rations brought with them to Australia to survive on, they ultimately contracted scurvy (Reynolds 1990, p. 33). It is in this sense, then, that peaceful engagements between Aboriginal and European peoples existed largely because settlers needed the assistance that Aboriginal people were willing to provide, under peaceful