Australian History : Australia From A Long Time Before The Europeans

Respect for Aboriginal culture and traditions which is part of the Aboriginal reconciliation and integration movement in Australia is highlighted many times throughout Crow Country and illustrates the best and worst of Australians. The way different characters show respect towards aboriginal culture and feelings contrasts two different attitudes. Today, opinions about aboriginal life and culture are shared through politics, social media and protests. Kate Constable’s book portrays extreme behaviour with racism and provides the reader with a perspective on just how cruel people can be. We have a very superficial understanding about aboriginal culture and this novel encourages readers to explore aboriginal culture and beliefs.

Unwritten #9” is a work by contemporary artist, Vernon Ah Kee that focuses on the racial discrimination of indigenous Australians. Apparent in his works are themes such as racism, identity and culture that references the artist’s own backgrounds and experiences. Ah Kee draws on his own experiences of being and aboriginal Australian in the contemporary life in Australia.

The piece is classified as Aboriginal Australian literature. It was published in the 1960’s. The purpose of the text is to give hope in a new beginning after the events involving the racial tension between the Aboriginals and the white settlers. The poem is directed to the Aboriginal people of Australia who suffered from these events

Gilbert’s poem portrays many Aboriginals plight’s within Australia and conveys notions of despair, anguish and anger for his fellow Aboriginal comrades. Again, Gilbert uses strong visual imagery in “the anguished death you spread” which helps convey the persona’s feeling of horror and anger at the Europeans. This is further emphasised through the poet’s vehement and repetitive use of second person pronouns in “you” which conveys a sense of blame and accumulates into an accusatory tone and generates a strong sense of detachment between the author and the European settlers. Furthermore enjambment enhances the accusatory tone in “you pollute all the rivers and litter every road” because the lack of punctuation and pauses makes the lines sharp and quick, creating a sense of anger in the author. In addition the author’s use of metaphors in “humanity locked in chains” creates a sense of struggle and inability to escape the oppression the Aboriginals are in, whereby the word “chain” is symbolic for trapped and lack of freedom. Kevin Gilbert’s emotional poem brings light to the pain and suffering Aboriginals are going through, which is a stark contrast to the image of Australia, being a free and accepting

The notion of the contemporary indigenous identity and the impact of these notions are both explored in texts that have been studied. Ivan Sen’s 2002 film ‘Beneath Clouds’ focuses on the stereotypical behaviours of Indigenous Australians highlighting Lina and Vaughn’s journey. This also signifies the status and place of the Australian identity today. Through the use of visual techniques and stereotypes the ideas that the Indigenous are uneducated, involved in crime and the stereotypical portrayal of white people are all explored. Similarly the notion of urban and rural life is represented in Kennith Slessor’s ‘William Street’ and ‘Country Towns’.

Australia in the early 1900s has developed a reputation as a ‘working man’s paradise’ for its greater opportunity to success and an egalitarian society. However not all workers proved this to be true. In order to determine this statement, Issues to be discussed include firstly the hours of work for different genders, secondly the working conditions and finally the dispute for the right to fair treatment to women and Aboriginal natives throughout the 19th century.

The Apology Day Breakfast, and, Heart’s Core Lament are two powerful indigenous poems which use poetic techniques and devices to portray theme, times, places and identities. These poems both address the stolen generation and the impact that white colonisation has had on the Australian indigenous community. However, Natalie Harkin’s, Heart’s Core Lament has more impact through using graphic imagery to connect the poem to historical

‘Australia’ also showed how the government controlled how children of Aboriginal descent were brought up with language used such as “The mixed raced children must be dislocated from their primitive full blooded Aborigine, how else are we to breed the black out of them”. This presented again the reason as to why the Aboriginal children were taken away from their own cultures to be raised in something completely different.

Just as the oppression and degradation inflicted on African-Americans and other minority groups in America became the impetus for blistering expressions of artistic protest, from poets and playwrights alike, the Aboriginal population of Australia has also discovered its collective voice among its own creative community. As an actor, director, and playwright, John Harding has managed to capture the centuries of brutality and isolation forced upon his culture through his searing works of drama, and his 2002 production Enuff ranks as one of his most resonant works of art. Despite existing within a particularly isolated niche of Australian literature, Harding's intensely incisive Enuff has managed to captivate critical reviewers by virtue of the subtle approach to a searing contemporary issue: racial prejudice and institutionalized bigotry. By depicting a fictionalized scenario in which Australia's minority groups, predominately aboriginal and indigenous cultures along with people of African descent, make the revolutionary choice to take up arms against an oppressive government, Harding compels any audience member viewing Enuff to consider his or her own complicity in the continued societal subjugation of indigenous people. By examining the responses published by widely read literary critics, it is possible to gain a greater comprehension of the multilayered masterpiece that is John Harding's Enuff.

The ‘colonisation' of Australia by Europeans has caused a lot of problem for the local Aborigines. It drastically reduced their population, damaged ancient family ties, and removed thousands of Aboriginal people from the land they had lived on for centuries. In many cases, the loss of land can mean more than just physical displacement. Because land is so much connected to history and spirituality, the loss of it can lead to a loss of identity. This paper will examine the works of Tim Rowse and Jeremy Beckett as well as other symbols of identity that are available to modern Aborigines in post colonial Australia.

Noel Pearson’s speech ‘an Australian history for us all’ discusses his approach to trying to solve some of the most systemic problems facing Australian Aboriginals today. The speakers are successful in understanding the ideas and values of the speech. Through the uses of various language techniques and context, Pearson’s speech details the struggles of the relationship between the first European settlers and Aboriginal Australians.

The construction of Aboriginality in Australia has been achieved through a variety of processes, in various places and at various levels of society, giving rise to a complex interaction between the constructions. At the local level, the most striking line of tension may seem to lie between what Aboriginal people say about themselves and what others say about them. But crosscutting this is another field of tension between the ideas of Aboriginality (and non-Aboriginality) that people of all kinds construct and reproduce for themselves, and the constructions produced at the national level by the state in its various manifestations, the mass media, science, the arts and so on (Beckett, 1988).

This week we will be talking about an aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal, also known as Kath walker, who lived from 1920 until 1993. Oodgeroo came from the Noonuccal tribe in Queensland. Once she had completed primary school she left because she believed that even if she stayed in school there wasn't the slightest possibility of getting a better.

The Australian government degrades the Aboriginal culture and makes life difficult for them. Over the course of Davidson’s trek, she discovered the culturally constructed racist policies implemented by the government and how they affect the Aboriginals. According to the account of Davidson, “[government policies] ensure that Aboriginal lands go once again into the hands of the whites...that a cheap labour source is made available by removing all trace of black ethics and culture, leaving the white races pure”(49). The destruction of Aboriginal land as observed by Davidson, “once dispossessed of this land, ceremonial life deteriorates, people lose their strength, meaning, essence and identity”(171). Not only did the Australian government take land away from the Aboriginals in the physical sense, but they stripped them of their identity. In her travels, Davidson discovered, “no white person can fully enter Aboriginal reality and the more you learn, the more you’re aware of the vast gap of knowledge and understanding”(167). Although Davidson took the initiative to better understand the culture of the Aboriginals, she could never be considered one of the Aboriginals. On her journey, Davidson discovered there was no need for such racism and discrimination, and the Aboriginal people are not inferior to the white Australians. The Aboriginal people

Australian Aborigines are thought to have the longest continuous cultural history in the world. Yet, within a hundred years, the near extinction of the Aboriginal culture almost occurred. This single event, the invasion of the Australian continent by European settlers, changed the lifestyle, the culture, and the fate of Australian Aborigines. Their entire lives were essentially taken away and they were forced into a white, European world where the lifestyle change could not have been any different. Aborigines in Australia today are struggling to deal with a past in which they lost touch with their culture and now are trying to regain some of that cultural identity.