Mohammad Haris Suhud
RECOGNIZING ABORIGINAL CULTURE;
Belief, Language, Social Life
The Aboriginal history from 60,000 years ago until Australia was first sighted by Europeans in 1606 is a complex and varied as the history of any other group of people on Earth. Saying that today’s population of Aboriginal Australians are members of the oldest surviving culture in the world by many tens of thousands of years is not synonymous with saying that their culture has not changed during this very long period of time, or event that it had not changed prior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century.
Since the arrival of the first Aboriginal people about 60,000 years ago, the Australian continent has undergone tremendous change. When they arrived, present-day Australia, Tasmania, the Torres Strait Islands, and the island of new Guinea were all connected. These lands formed the continent of Sahul, a landmass approximately the size of contemporary Europe west of the Ural Mountains. The continent contained a large number of unique plant and animal species due to its long period of isolation (about 38 million years) from other landmasses. Including an estimated 13 species of so-called megafauna. These were very large versions of contemporary kangaroos, wombats, and other marsupials; any other species of megafauna had died out prior to the continent’s inhabitation by humans. The climate was generally coller and drier than the region is today, with perglacial and even glacial regions in the Highlands of New Guinea and the Dividing Ranges of southeastern Australia. Nonetheless, Sahul 60,000 years ago encompassed the same wide variety of ecological niches as today’s separate landmasses. Tropical forest covered the northern lowlands, while temperate forest existed in the south and highlands of the north. The cento of the continent contained both deserts and savannahs, as it does today.
There is no absolute certainty about the direction from which the ancient migrating population arrived on Sahul, the viable hypothesis is that after spending thousands of years leaving Africa, passing through Middle East and India, and heading south through mainland Southeast Asia, which was then much larger than today, a small group of migrants sailed across about 35 miles of open sea to land somewhere in Sahul’s far north, or contemporary New Guinea.
Geneticists Alan Redd and Mark Stoneking, who studied mtDNA from present-day Aborigines in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley-Sandy Desert region, found them to be ten time closer to Indian than to New Guineans.
Many variations in appearance contribute to individuality but Australian Aborigines of unmixed ancestry are readily recognizable. Common features are exceptionally thin legs, a narrow face, broad noses depressed at the root and fairly wide at the nostrils, chocolate-brown skin, dark brown hair, an erect carriage, long, narrow head, retreating forehead and chin, pronounced brow ridges above deep-set, fairly large, brown eyes, large teeth but not especially thick lips and a projecting jaw.
The history of this population remains fairly vague after they began setting Sahul. We do not know whether communities fought war against each other or were so spread out on the vast continent as to be able to live peaceably. We do not know how soon their proto-Australian language or languages began dividing into the vast number of Australian and Papuan languages evident by the time of European contact in the 17th century. We do not know whether the Dreaming stories and their accompanying tiruals, which make up the backbone of Aboriginal religion even today, were imported with them, were developed during the period of migration, or were begun after settlement on the continent.
Belief
Australian Aborigines have the oldest living culture in the world. The way of life their ancestors developed in the ice age was ideally suited to the continent’s unpredictable climate and often harsh environment. It survived little-changed until disrupted by the impact of colonization.
Early ethnographers such as Collins believed that traditional Aborigines didn’t have a religion, although he described initiation ceremonies and mortuary rites involving belief in an afterlife. In the 1890s, Walter Baldwin Spencer, an evolutionary biologist, and Frank Gillen, an Arrernte-speaking postmaster in Alice Springs, began research in Central Australia. Aboriginal Australian is lacking religion but possessing a belief-system based on ‘magic’.
Aboriginal stories reveal a religious interpretation of the natural world focused on maintenance of fertility of humans and nature and the continuation of traditional society. Aborigines see traditional society as based on the spiritual. For example, there are several ingenious explanations for the moon’s waxing and waning. The luwalarai of New South Wales told how there was a fertile green valley in the sky, peopled by round, shining moons which came out one by one, only to fall victim to the sun who cuts off thin slivers each night that became twinkling stars. Many myths explain the sun’s setting and rising: the Wotjobaluk of northwest Vitoria said that ‘the sun was woman, who, when she went to dig for yams, left her little son in the west. Wandering round the edge of the earth, she came back over the other side. When she dies she continued to do this. Throughout Aboriginal mythology the moon appears to be male and sun female.
Ancestral Beings are the spirit powers who in the beginning emerged from the earth, sky or sea and journeyed across the land, creating its form and all living things. Some were able to transform themselves from human to animal form or animate to inanimate object and back again. Ancestral Beings interacted with human beings, gave birth to them, and gave them language and the ‘Law’—correct social and religious practices. They are believed to be the source of the conception spirits that initiate pregnancy, their inherent power being released through ritual and ceremonies to ensure health, growth and to maintain and increase food supplies.
Aboriginal rituals are as pragmatic ‘hunting magic’. In ‘increase ceremonies’ men mimed the actions of the action of their totemic species in order to maintain and increase its numbers. The propagating powers of Ancestral Beings were concentrated in sacred increase sites, where ceremonies took place. Aboriginal beliefs are therefore totemist and animist. Animists maintain all natural objects possess a spirit or soul. Prime examples are Inuit societies, where every beach peblle contains its individual soul, or the Ainu of Japan, who regard every animal and plant as a spirit being. Tribal Australians believe in the presence of spiritual life-essence in the world and the interrelatedness of all living things, beliefs that are now called ‘spirituality’.
Totemism is a relationship between an individual or group and an animal or plant or even such things as night, lust, itchiness or two women. Totems act as symbols in a belief system linking the human, natural and supernatural world. (The word ‘totem’ comes from a Native American language where it donates group membership; its literal meaning is ‘he/she/it is a relative of mine’) Tribal Australian see themselves as associated with particular living or inanimate things and may share their names with their totems. It is often forbidden to kill, harm or eat your totem. Clan totems were conferred during the creation period and are inherited, symbolizing the relationship of clan members to each other, their ancestors and to particular place.
Tribal Australian have a unique of the world that immortalized as the ‘Dreamtime’ or ‘Dreaming’—a literal translation of Arrernte ‘alcheringa’ or ‘altyerrenge’, ‘Alcheringa’ means the ‘Eternal’ or ‘Law’ but ‘Dreaming’ is also appropriate—just as dreams are real to dreamers, so the doings of Ancestral Being are real to believers. The dreaming is the era of eternal beings, who existed in the past and still exist today.
The Dreaming is a complex network of faith, knowledge and ritual that dominates all spiritual and practical aspects of Aboriginal life. The dreaming lays down the structures of society, rules for social behavior and ceremonies to maintain Dreaming comes from the land; it is a powerful living force that must be nurtured and maintained.
The concept of the Dreaming does not suppose the world was created out of nothing, but assumes a pre-existing substance, such as mud or a featureless plain. Ancestral Beings lay dormant below the surface but then emerged, assuming the bodily forms of various humans, animals, birds and plants. They were neither wholly animal nor wholly human but in some sense both. They were shape-changing beings of immense power, who travelled across the land and sea, performing great deeds of creation, and now lie quiet in focal points of the landscape.
Aboriginal people have oral tradition. Without written language, people relied on oral transmission to perpetuate culture. Generally, there are three forms of oral traditions—history, legends and myths—although they sometimes overlap. History is often based on genealogies, but Aboriginal Australians were remarkably ahistorical in outlook. Legends are semi-historical narratives about the deeds of past heroes, for example King Arthur, while myths are stories relating the doings of supernatural beings or explaining the characteristics of living creatures. One of the most widespread myths concerns the Rainbow Serpent—a powerful symbol of both the creative and destructive power of nature. The rainbow is thought of as a great snake of serpent, sometimes male and sometimes female. The Rainbow Serpent forms a link between earthly places such as waterfalls, where he manifests himself, and the sky above, to which he raises himself.
Languages
Many Aboriginal people believe that their ancestors have always been here. Archaeologist, however, think that there has been more than one influx of people. Until around 7,000 or 8,000 years ago Papua New Guinea was joined by a land bridge to Australia. We can safely assume that there would have been contact between the people of Australia and land to the north.
The Torres Straits Island still form an island link between Queensland and Papua New Guinea, the northernmost islands being in sight of the New Guinea coastline. This raises the question of whether the languages of Australia are related to those of New Guinea. In term of physical type and culture the people of the Torres Straits Islands are Papuan, but linguistically the island divide up into two quite distinct types, Miriam, a Papuan language, is spoken in the cast and Kala Lagaw Ya, clearly an Australian language, is spoke in the west. Kala Lagaw Ya shows some unusual features for an Australian language but it is clearly of the Australian type in terms of its grammar.
There is evidence of contact between Indonesia and northern Australia in relatively recent times. Towards the end of the seventeenth century trader from around what is today known as southern Sulawesi began to visit the shores of northern Australia to collect and process a much-prized commodity variously known as trepan. Some Aborigines seem to have travelled back to Indonesia with the boat crews, returning to Australia on later trading expeditions. This contact is demonstrated linguistically by a sizeable stock of words in some Aboriginal languages of northeast Arnhem land, such as rupiah ‘money’—distantly derived from ‘rupee’.
It is thought that around 250 distinct languages were spoken at first European contact in the late eighteenth century. Most of these languages would have had several dialects, so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds. This contradicts the still popular view that there is just one Aboriginal language, perhaps with a number of dialects.
It is difficult to be precise about the numbers of dialects and languages because the information available is often poor and terms like ‘dialect’ and ‘language’ can shade into each other. For the English language we can recognize dialect like Australian English, Canadian English, New Zealand English, and so on. The differences between these dialects may not be so great as to interfere with communication.
The 250 distinct Aboriginal languages divide into a number of different languages families. Each family comprises language related to each other in pronunciation, grammar and shared vocabulary, which probably derive from a common ancestral language. One of these language families covers almost 90 per cent of the continent and some words occur right across this vast region, for example, ‘mara’ ora ‘mala’ for ‘hand’ and pina’ for ‘ear’.
All Aboriginal languages have a rich vocabulary and complex grammar which contain up to 10,000 words, a similar number to spoken English. Special features are pronouns that distinguish not only ‘you’ singular and ‘you’ plural but also ‘you-two’, ‘you-many’, ‘we-two’, we-many-of-us’, ‘they-two’, and ‘they-many’.
The languages vary widely in vocabulary and grammatical structure but also generally resemble each other and usually employ a modest range of speech sounds of similar type. Words tend to be of two or more syllables and to end in vowel. The main stress is usually on the first syllable. Some consonants such as ‘s’ and ‘v’ are rarely used and ‘ng’ often occurs at the beginning of a word.
Soon after the arrival of the Europeans, Australian languages began to decline. A recent study of the language situation in Australia indicates that 160 languages are extinct, seventy are under threat and only twenty are likely to survive.
Contact between Aboriginal people and colonist first occurred at Botany Bay where, by 20 January 1788, the First Fleet was anchored. The colonists decide that Botany Bay lacked the resources necessary for a settlement. The investigated Port Jackson and chose Sydney Cove as the site for their base. The Aboriginal people of Sydney showed some interest in the newcomers and this encouraged Governor Arthur Phillip in his hopes that permanent communication could be established. His orders from the King of England were to open free communication with the indigenous people of Australia to convince them that although their country was to be colonized, they would be treated well and would live in harmony with the colonists. The establishment of common language, at least between the colonial administration and the local Aboriginal people, was thus a high priority for Philip.
Aboriginal people in the Sydney area visited the settlement and elementary communication began to develop. Phillip’s strategy involve the use of a short vocabulary of the Guugu Yumidhirr languages collected by Captain James Cook’s expedition in 1770 at the Endeavour River, northern Queensland. This language is completely different from the languages of the Sydney district and attempts to use the vocabulary were therefore singularly unsuccessful. One product of the experiment was that, for a while, Sydney Aboriginal people thought that the colonists’ word for all animal except dogs was the word derived from Guugu Yimishirr ‘kangaroo’. Conversely, the colonists thought they are in which they settled had little fauna because the Aboriginal called all animals ‘kangaroo’.
In spite of the seemingly amiable start cross-cultural relations, Aboriginal people very soon became offended by the presence of the colony. Phillip was unable to prevent colonists from stealing the possessions of Aboriginal people and physically attacking them, and the Aboriginal population retreated and refused to have anything to do with the settlement.
From the earliest days of European contact there was often an assumption that Aboriginal languages were less value than English and this view soon hardened into government policy, which was reinforced through education and employment practices. Aboriginal people were positively discouraged from speaking their ancestral languages and made to feel ashamed of using them in public. Eventually the link between generations of speakers was broken, so that young children and had little or no knowledge of ancestral languages and their grandparents were the only remaining speakers of languages that may have been passed on from generation to generation over hundreds of years.
Social Life
The smallest social unit was the family—man, his wife or wives and his children. Families were often self-contained, self-supporting units, and in harsh environments might forage alone. Most Aboriginal children grew up in an extended family, and a few such households camped and foraged together. A typical band comprised three to six households totaling about fifteen to fifty people, including three or even four generations. Often the men in one band were from different clans, because young husbands usually did bride service by going to live and hunt temporary in the band of their wife’s parents.
As they grew up, Aboriginal children learnt their family tree and how they should address and behave towards each relative. As well as biological relationships, there are ‘classificatory’ ones. Many Aboriginal children appear to have several mothers and fathers, because they also cll their maternal aunts ‘mother’ and paternal uncles ‘father’.
Aboriginal people realized the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy but believed a spiritual event had to be involved for conception to happen. Most thought a spirit child must enter the mother to give a baby life. Spirit babies were believed to live on the branches of certain trees so that women who walked underneath became mother. In the Kimberley, spirit children were supposed to live in waterholes and to enter a women’s womb after her husband had seen one in a dream. When a women became aware she was pregnant, she recalled the first signs of morning sickness and attributed conception to the totem of the place where that had occurred. When a birth was imminent, the mother and some other women left camp for a birthing place, generally a shady rock-shelter with a soft earth floor. There were special rituals to dispose of the afterbirth and to encourage lactation.
A girl at puberty went through certain rituals to mark her transition to womanhood, but because these were celebrated at the menarche, the timing of which was unpredictable, ceremonies were small in scale. Northern coastal tribes had the most elaborate rites, where a girl spent a few days away from camp with close female relation. Afterwards the girl may participate in women’s secret ceremonies relating to pregnancy, birth and lactation. During initiation some girls were purified by a smoking ceremony or ritual bathing. Boys were usually initiated at puberty, when the beard began to grow. The process involved lengthy separation from camp and the company of women. Senior men took boys off o seclusion in order to train and learn self-sufficiency.
Kinship laws were designed to avoid incest, and marriage partners were taken from outside the family group, although there were regions, such as the Mitchell River, Queensland, where first and second cousin marriages were preferred. Most Aboriginal regional communities were divided into two named, ritually distinct, intermarrying halves and some were further subdivided. The divisions made it clear to everyone who they could marry. A spouse was selected from a different kinship group, usually the other half of their society.
Polygamy still exists in Aboriginal society; about 40 per cent of marriages in some northern and central tribes still follow ‘customary law’ and polygamous tribal marriages still occur.
Traditional economy was cooperative. Much food was shard. Staple food was collected by a woman and distributed among her and her husband’s immediate family while large game brought back to camp by a hunter was divided among the whole foraging group—the same system as among Kalahari bushmen. Aboriginal Australia’s economic system was relatively simple, with remarkably uniform mode of production and division of labor across the continent. Digging was deemed to be women’s work, hence men’s reluctance to demean themselves by gardening in colonial times.
During the 1950s sand 1960s the concept of a multiracial society developed. Gradually the policy of assimilation was replaced by a policy of integration, whereby Aborigines could maintain a distinct cultural identity while pursuing equality of living standards and opportunity. Integration is still Australian Government policy, for it enables indigenous people to retain their identity in a pluralist society. Integration also provides a choice between Western urban society and the more traditional but less comfortable life in remote area communities.
Various new Aboriginal organization sought revival of separate cultural identity but also full equality, civil right and integration. In the 1950s most Aboriginal organizations were managed by whites but this gradually changed as Aboriginal leaders came under international influence.
REFERENCES
Flood, Josephine.(2006). The Original Australians; Story of The Aboriginal People. Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Walsh, Michael, & Yallop, Colin.(2007). Language and Culture In Aboriginal Australia. Camberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
West, Barbara A,, & Murphy, Frances T. (2010). A Brief History of Australia. New York: Facts On File, Inc.
0 Comments