The Difficulties Of Aboriginal People's Dreaming

The Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people are Australia’s first people. They’re the Indigenous and traditional owners of our beautiful land. However, until the last few decades, this hasn’t always been recognised. The Indigenous people of Australia have faced colonization, oppression, the Stolen Generation, and all kinds of disrespect to their cultural heritage.

It is a commonly known issue in Australia that as a minority group, the people of Indigenous Australian ethnicity have always been treated, or at least perceived, differently to those of non-Indigenous disposition. This can be applied to different contexts such as social, economic, education, or in relation to this essay – legal contexts. Generally, Indigenous Australians face issues such as less opportunity for formal education, less access to sufficient income, more health issues, and higher rates of imprisonment (Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service

Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.

After many years of European settlement in Australia, many Aboriginal people had been removed from their families and placed into schools with white Australians. This was due to the ‘protection policy’ laws that encouraged the removal of Indigenous children. Because fewer indigenous children were able to learn about their own culture, there was a slow decline in the culture of the indigenous people. As a result of this, there were continued tensions between the free settlers and Indigenous people as they had no roles in the government and couldn’t vote. This made them feel as if they were excluded from greater society and had long term negative impacts upon their sense of belonging to the new

For the last 200 years Indigenous people have been victims of discrimination, prejudice and disadvantage. Poor education, poor living conditions and general poverty are still overwhelming issues for a large percentage of our people and we remain ‘as a group, the most poverty stricken sector of the working class’ in Australia (Cuthoys 1983).

Archaeologists believe that aboriginals first came to Australia about 45, 000 years ago and were the only population of humans in Australia until the British invasion. There are about 500 different aboriginal groups each with their own language and territory and usually made up of several separate clans. The aboriginals of Australia are marginalised in today society. This marginalisation began right back during the British invasion where they were evicted from their own country, the stolen generation occurred and their health care, education, employment and housing was severely limited. Aboriginals generally live in poor conditions and choose unhealthy lifestyle choices

Understanding how the historical factors have influenced Indigenous Australians helps operationalise the sociological imagination. The history of Indigenous people is important as many of the disadvantages they endure today is connected to the past. A historical awareness influences individuals to understand how organisations and institutions impact the health and wellbeing of a minority (Germov, 2002).The existence of Indigenous Australians well begins before the European invasion and colonisation of Australia. Aboriginal people were the native land owners, as they have been in Australia for over 60,000 years, prior to the British settlement in 1788.3 (workingwithindigenousaustralians.info, 2017). Indigenous Australians have been living off

Long histories of colonisation and discrimination have resulted in marginalisation of Indigenous Australians and Torres Straight Islanders from dominant societies (GrantCraft, 2015). Indigenous Australians communities lost their culture and values through forced assimilation and lost

The Dreamtime is in relation to when all things came into being, when the mountains were formed and when the rivers were formed. The Dreaming is the stories and practices that stem from the dreamtime but they are continuous, they give you the rules of behaviour, social practices and they explain the history of the landscape. The Dreaming explores the past, the present and the future.

The Land in every aspect sustains aboriginal lives, spiritually, physically, socially and culturally. The concept of landscape as a second skin is central to every aboriginal art form, whether it is dance, music or painting.

To begin with, a clarification must be made. Although for the purposes of this assessment I will be using the term Indigenous Australians, it is not the most appropriate term to be using, as the technical definition of indigenous is ‘originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native’ (‘Indigenous’, 1987). The more correct term would be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

The poor health position of Indigenous Australians is a contemporary reflection of their historical treatment as Australia’s traditional owners. This treatment has led to Indigenous Australians experiencing social disadvantages, significantly low socio-economic status, dispossession, poverty and powerlessness as a direct result of the institutionalised racism inherent in contemporary Australian society.

To better understand Aboriginals as a Dream Culture I want to give more insight into Aboriginal Australians general culture and their conceptions of “Dream Time.” In his discussion of religion, Mircea Eliade describes a concept of Cosmos vs Chaos (Eliade 1957). In this notion an unordered world is chaotic only until is it transposed during a sacred time: “By occupying it and, above all, by settling in it, man symbolically transforms it into a cosmos though a ritual repetition of the cosmogony” (Eliade 1957:31). In other words until a land is tamed or created it is considered unordered. This can be applied to Aboriginal’s understanding of the world prior to their current presence. Aboriginals believe that in a time before the Dreamings, the land and world was a featureless earth. It was not until the dreamtime, or time of creation: “where there is contact with appearances from both realms of inside the earth itself as from ill-defined upper region” that the earth began to have its composed landscapes (Cowan 1992:26). The Dream Time is not only a period but more of a dimension where ancestral beings moved across the earth and created not only land, but every aspect of the earth including animals, plants, and man. It is important to realize that the ancestors created the natural earth and that is why Aboriginals live a particular lifestyle. Most Aboriginals living in this cosmogony are hunter-gatherer tribes. This aspect of their life can be traced to stem from the idea of

Aboriginals or indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. Aboriginals were nomadic people who came to Australia about 40,000 – 60,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Religion is a great part of Aboriginal culture. The essay answers these questions: What do Aboriginals belief? What is a Kinship system? What is Dreaming and Dreamtime? What rituals does Aboriginals have?

Aborigines are believed to have lived in Australia for between 60,000 and 40,000 years, their early ancestors coming from South-East Asia. Precise population details for the period before European colonisation are unavailable, but it is estimated that there were between 300,000 and 1,000,000 Aborigines in Australia when European settlers first arrived in 1788.