Aboriginal Australians

[Beachwaves127]

I’ve tried learning a bit more about the Aboriginal Australians but I’ve found google quite limited. Wondered if anyone knew the history or had real life experience from Aus.

Particularly keen to understand if Aboriginal Australians live in Aus society, or if many still live in their own society (in the outback?)

My knowledge is limited so I will apologise in advance if any of the above is incorrect.

I like expanding my knowledge so there is no particular reason why I am asking these questions, other than I’ve realised my knowledge is virtually nil

tbank you, sounds like an interesting watch.

also @OakleyStreetisnotinChelsea thanks for the book recommendation, i will take a look

Haha I am probably guilty of saving something like this in the past! The size makes my head hurt!

I’ve travelled in remote communities, (in Northern Territory) and it’s really awful. A lot have problems with alcohol. There is many dry communities now but I’m not sure how much that has helped. Kids are disadvantaged because of domestic violence caused by alcohol abuse, which leads to higher rates of incarceration ect.

i agree with what @Ozgirl75 is saying about the white First Nations - they seem to be the ones who benefit the most from the close the gap stuff. It’s almost swung the other way now, I have a family friend who had 2 children with a white First Nations man. (She herself isn’t). They are not together, and he doesn’t see the kids at all. Not even sure where he is. She lives with her parents in an affluent part of Sydney. Yet because her kids are indigenous, she gets extra funding for school supplies, uniforms, free allied health care, special days out for the (like to football matches where they meet the players and get jerseys). They haven’t suffered any disadvantage like the poor kids in remote communities.

I think that it’s easier for the government to spend the funding in the cities, and seem like they are doing something, because improving outcomes in the outback is much more challenging.

If you can access it the documentary by Racheal Perkins The Australian Wars is really good and worth a watch. Or delve into the collection website on The National Museum of Australia which has a huge collection.
You could subscribe to Koori Mail which is own by 100% Aboriginal owned.
For what it's worth my SIL prefers the term black as do lots of Aboriginal people I know. Other prefer Koori or Noongar. Australia is home to between 300-500 distinct language groups each with their own law, customs, culture and connection to country. So it's hard to generalise or make clear direction on language usage.

I see what you mean in your example about the benefits not reaching the right people. It sounds a very different world in the remote areas compared to the cities.

Oh and actually the recent book by We come with this place Debra Dank is bloody fantastic. It's a memoir but like a meditation and a ceremony and and education and it rips your heart out and soothes your wounds. It's mainly about top end and FNQ . Then if you like a love story Sixty-Seven Days by Yvonne Weldon is set in Sydney and rural NSW and is more of a love story but also speaks to the connection to country and culture.

God yes it was gripping! I read a long article on it in The Australian a year or so ago and then watched with fascination. What a different world, so utterly different from anything I know.
Mind you - my Aunt and Uncle live in rural Qld on a farm and their local community isn’t like this at all, they’re brilliant. When my uncle was very sick they all rallied round. It isn’t a bunch of weirdos at all!

This thread has reminded me of my first trip to Aus, on my typical gap year in 2002. I don't have an up to date frame of reference, so this is no comment on what it is like now, but back then, I was absolutely shocked at the endemic, 'acceptable' racism against indigenous people from the European Australians. I had never ever been around openly, proudly racist people before. I know there were and are racists in UK, but I'd never seen it talked about so blatantly and matter of fact but otherwise nice-seeming people. I remember a group of 20 somethings telling me very seriously about how all 'aboriginals' were alcoholics and how this was all because of their DNA and how I need to stay away from them because they were dangerous. And talking about them in such derogatory, dehumanising language. Like they were a different species. I couldn't believe it. It would have been absolutely shocking to speak in this way about anyone in the UK and most certainly wouldn't have been done just in casual conversation with polite strangers.

Bill Bryson is a good place to start. His barely concealed anger is good to read.

Too Much Lip by Melissa Lukashenko is an amazing and confronting novel. You may be interested to read about the current Treaty Process - google Victoria Treaty. Look at speeches by Lynda Burney, Patrick Dodson, Tanya Hosch, Stan Grant to see a range of powerful and articulate First Nations voices.
OP I think you referred to Australia as 'new'. Aboriginal culture is the oldest continuous culture on the planet.

Don't start with Bill Bryson
He is good but is essentially a white tourist in Australia. Start by reading some First Nations writers.

i agree @Neodymium about how hard it is to effect change in rural communities, friedns and family have taught in some of them, and the alcoholism, fasd and healthcare, and the sexual assault including child sexual assault is so endemic. It’s very challenging. It’s such a shame the voice referendum didn’t get up, it got a cost of living protest vote like Brexit did 😔
here’s another link for the don’t say aboriginal crowd. There are plenty plenty more of aboriginal peoples linked associations etc. https://ddacl.org.au/

It’s horrific but also, you overestimate your fellow Brits I’m afraid.

@RebeccaCloud9 im not saying that you didn’t experience people being racist, but sadly it is true that there is much higher rates of alcohol abuse in First Nations people here than in the general population. Hence why lots of communities are dry. I don’t know if it is genetic though. But up until white settlers came here, the FNP were still hunter/gatherers and had no experience with alcohol. As opposed to the Europeans who have been drinking alcohol for millennia. I don’t know if there is some other social reason, perhaps generational trauma. Some of the stories of the stolen generation are heartbreaking and have left deep wounds and divided communities which may be the cause. It seems the ones who suffer the most are the neglected children, and the women who suffer domestic violence.

it is also difficult to get services in the communities. They are very remote, hot and dry, so getting teachers/police/medical staff to go there to work is a challenge. Even people who do go to do remote service only stay 2 years. So the schools have constant rotation of teachers. It would be good if members of the community could become qualified as teachers / health workers which is where the funding should focus. But it seems like the funding gets used up in the cities.

And the teachers who do go often need mental health support of their own in the years following to cope with what they’ve seen.

@StartupRepair "Don't start with Bill Bryson
He is good but is essentially a white tourist in Australia. Start by reading some First Nations writers."

I agree about white tourism. I suggested him as a starting point because he presents the facts clearly, comprehensibly and undeniably and provides a clear timeline to build on. For many newcomers the initial horror-which he presents well- is how recently so many acts of genocide and cultural annihilation took place and how normalised they were. As I said on the other thread, my own mother grew up around people who had gone "abo hunting" and saw nothing wrong with it.

Yes @CurlewKate agree he is a good and clear writer. I have taken the message to heart that wherever possible white people should hear directly from First Nations people and create space for them to be heard.

@CurlewKate yeh my dad was listening to atwo way radio outback once and heard someone (assuming a truck driver) laughing and saying ‘I ran over a black fella once’.

sadly there is a lot that do get run over as if they get drunk they lay on the warm road and pass out. There is actually television ads in the territory advising people to go out in bright colours because dark colours are hard to see.

we also didn’t learn anything about our treatment of them at school. Just learned about captain cook and all that. Nothing about what they did. They didn’t see them as people they treated them like animals, and were so cruel. So much of their culture and history was lost.

Also Bryson's book was published in 2000. While the history hasn't changed there is a new generation of Aboriginal leaders since then.

Yes. I think non-Austrralians find it weird that aboriginal people can easily be white as a pale Englishman with red hair to boot. It is a very complicated issue.

Some of the 'mixing' was forced e.g. through rape, forced adoption. Deliberate ethnic cleansing in many instances, particularly in Tasmania. So it's understandable that the concept of not being 'full blood' or similar is incredibly offensive.

Are indigenous languages taught in schools in Australia ?
I know New Zealand schools have taught Maori since the mid 80s.