Aboriginal Culture

Like other imposing landscapes in: the Western United States; Nepal; or Tajikistan; for example, one's personal insignificance, in both time and space, is palpable.

Little wonder that people have been overawed since our distant ancestral cousins first arrived here. Thus, the first human inhabitants, as they did everywhere, developed myths and lore that underscored their relationships to their environment. These beliefs and practices can be described in religious terms as animism a belief in spirits within the landscape often encompassing the spirits of the dead.

At a more pragmatic level these customs incorporate evolved knowledge and practice essential to human survival in this harsh environment. Among these are the 'song lines' that facilitate intergenerational remembrance of places to hunt, to find food and water and places to avoid. There is genetic evidence that over the millennia people of this region adapted to the harsh environment.

A 2016 study identified unique morphological and physiological adaptations, in Aboriginal Australians living in the desert areas enabling desert groups to withstand sub-zero night temperatures without showing the increase in metabolic rates observed in Europeans under the same conditions. This is an example of gene–culture coevolution, the sociobiological observation that because of the importance of culture and complex social organization to human evolutionary success, genetic and cultural development go hand in hand. In this case it appears that both genes and culture have simultaneously adapted to survival in a very harsh environment (see Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality - Transactions of the Royal Society of London; and  When did people arrive in Australia? - 2017 Addendum - on this website). Thus, interfering with either the culture or the genes could be expected to have an adverse effect on survivability, should people wish to continue to live here, as their ancestors did for thousands of years, before external interference.

At one time these pre-Christian 'heathen' beliefs were considered by Christian Europeans to be anathema and their continued practice by 'the heathen' to deny the 'savages' entry to the putative 'Kingdom of God'. Missionaries gathered financial support from fellow believers and came here to convert the people; and thus, to save their imagined: 'immortal souls'.

Today this is seen by many Australians to be a form of cultural genocide and Aboriginal beliefs are now, generally, respected here as might be those equally valued, but perhaps less practical, beliefs practiced by the inhabitants of Vatican City.

Actually, the missionaries here were predominantly Lutheran so rosary beads; images of the Saints and the Virgin; and Gregorian chants; didn't supplant the Aboriginal equivalents that now bring an income; and sometimes fame; to indigenous artists and performers.

At the old Hermannsburg Mission the clash of cultures is most evident in a rather schizophrenic museum: at one moment glorifying the men and women of God who sacrificed so much in the pursuit of their mission; while at the same time not shying away from the great harm that they, perhaps inadvertently, did.

But then they were not alone in this destruction of an ancient culture. European fossickers and drovers like Clancy came here without female companionship and the inevitable mixed-race babies resulted. Well-meaning religious charities provided education. Then in 1905 the State, Territory and Federal Governments, reacting to stories of 'half-cast' children being killed by tribal elders, decided that these children required special protection. So, they were removed from their mothers, sometimes by force, and sent places like Hermannsburg Mission to be taught English and how to be a stockman or kitchen maid. Some were put out for adoption and encouraged to mingle in a belief that aboriginality would soon be 'bred-out' in 'White Australia', through a policy of assimilation.

In my State, NSW, this practice was discussed as a positive good in Social Studies at Thornleigh Primary School and it continued until 1967 (see: The Stolen Generations: The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969). I was by then an adult and a voter. I didn't know nor had I met a single person identifying as Aboriginal, although, thinking back, some of the children I played with at that very Primary School could probably have claimed Aboriginality. So I have to confess to harbouring some ambiguity as to the merits of the policy and thus, perhaps, to shared culpability for the harmful outcomes.

In 1997 the 'Bringing Them Home' report highlighted the harms suffered by the 'Stolen Generation' and recommended Australian parliaments offer an official apology. Many politicians resisted but on 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave the, long awaited, apology.

One outcome of the resulting blending of genes and culture is that Aboriginality is no longer based on racial characteristics such as skin hair or eye colour or the shape of one's face or stature. Many Aboriginal Australians resemble Europeans. There is no accepted genetic test. Aboriginal people define Aboriginality not by skin colour but by relationships. Light-skinned Aboriginal people often face challenges on their Aboriginal identity because of stereotyping (see: Aboriginal Identity: Who is 'Aboriginal'?).

At the Uluru (Yulara) Resort almost all the staff appear to be Aboriginal and, with the small exceptions, that one would find in any large business, they were professional, competent and pleasant to deal with.

For more on this subject go to:  When did people arrive in Australia?- The oldest Culture on Earth - on this website.