The term 'Koorie' is used to refer to Aboriginal people originating from 'mobs' in Victoria and parts of New South Wales. Koorie English is a recognised dialect of English like Standard Australian English and is spoken by members of Koorie communities across Victoria.
The people used grease from porcupine, possum, muttonbird, seal and penguin to coat their skin as a waterproof layer and for warmth against the extreme weather conditions. The founding population in this new land became the most southerly living humans in the world during the last Ice Age.
These were rectangular, round, oval, or 'boat-shaped' semi-permanent dwellings. These buildings were semi-permanent, as people moved around looking for food sources. Houses had wooden frames covered in reeds or leaves, with mats on earth floors.
For more than 50,000 years before European arrival, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived as hunter-gatherers. With no signs of land ownership, such as fences, crops, stock animals, or buildings, the Europeans who arrived on the First Fleet believed the land was free to claim.
Aboriginal life expectancy is so low because Aboriginal health standards in Australia let 45% of Aboriginal men and 34% of women die before the age of 45. Life expectancy also varies between urban and (very) remote areas. In major cities it is about 74 years, in remote and very remote areas about 68 years.
After British colonisation, the name New Holland was retained for several decades and the south polar continent continued to be called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia.
It is estimated that over 750,000 Aboriginal people inhabited the island continent in 1788.
In The Biggest Estate, Gammage supports his thesis with exhaustive and compelling research from primary sources to prove that prior to British colonisation in 1788, Australia was an “unnatural†landscape, carefully and systematically managed by its traditional owners to ensure that “life was comfortable, people had
At the time of first European contact, it is generally estimated that the pre-1788 population was 314,000, while recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 500,000 to 750,000 could have been sustained, with some ecologists estimating that a population of up to a million or even two million people was
Those Aboriginal tribes who lived inland in the bush and the desert lived by hunting and gathering, burning the undergrowth to encourage the growth of plants favoured by the game they hunted. Today more than half of all Aboriginals live in towns, often on the outskirts in terrible conditions.
Colonisation severely disrupted Aboriginal society and economy—epidemic disease caused an immediate loss of life, and the occupation of land by settlers and the restriction of Aboriginal people to 'reserves' disrupted their ability to support themselves.
The impact of early colonisation on Indigenous People : Disease. The most immediate consequence of colonisation was a wave of epidemic diseases including smallpox, measles and influenza, which spread ahead of the settlement frontier and annihilated many Indigenous communities.
Australia was a harsh and unfamiliar environment, with its hot climate and weird animals. Then there was the brutal discipline of the convict colonies. The evidence suggests that Van Diemen's Land was run more harshly than New South Wales.
Without colonisation, modern technology still would have found its way to our shores just like it has in countries such as Fiji, Solomon Islands & Papua New Guinea etc. Industrialisation & mining however would be nowhere near the levels that we see today and we would be better off for it.
Aboriginal lore was passed on through the generations through songs, stories and dance and it governed all aspects of traditional life. It is common to see the terms 'law' and 'lore' being used interchangeably. Aboriginal children learned the law from childhood, by observing customs, ceremonies and song cycles.
Indigenous people north and south were displaced, died of disease, and were killed by Europeans through slavery, rape, and war. In 1491, about 145 million people lived in the western hemisphere. By 1691, the population of indigenous Americans had declined by 90–95 percent, or by around 130 million people.
A history comprised of dislocation from traditional communities, disadvantage, discrimination, forced assimilation including the effects of the residential school system, poverty, issues of substance abuse and victimization, and loss of cultural and spiritual identity are all contributing factors.
Neck chains were used while Aboriginal men were marched from their homelands into prisons, concentration camps known as missions and lock hospitals or forced into slavery. Women were also forced into slavery as domestic servants. The oppression continues today as well.
Indigenous tribes often fought with each other rather than launch coordinated attacks against settlers.
On 26 January 1938, Aboriginal people protested against Australia Day and called it a 'Day of Mourning'. A forced reenactment. For the 150th Anniversary, Aboriginal people were forced to participate in a reenactment of the landing of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip.
Aboriginal originsHumans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Aboriginal people ate a large variety of plant foods such as fruits, nuts, roots, vegetables, grasses and seeds, as well as different meats such as kangaroos, 'porcupine'7, emus, possums, goannas, turtles, shellfish and fish.
The nations of Indigenous Australia were, and are, as separate as the nations of Europe or Africa. The Aboriginal English words 'blackfella' and 'whitefella' are used by Indigenous Australian people all over the country — some communities also use 'yellafella' and 'coloured'.
The flag's design consists of a coloured rectangle divided in half horizontally. The top half of the flag is black to symbolise Aboriginal people. The red in the lower half stands for the earth and the colour of ochre, which has ceremonial significance. The circle of yellow in the centre of the flag represents the sun.
Governor Phillip reported that smallpox had killed half of the Indigenous people in the Sydney region within fourteen months of the arrival of the First Fleet. The sexual abuse and exploitation of Indigenous girls and women also introduced venereal disease to Indigenous people in epidemic proportions.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the human settlement of Europe and the Americas.
Before white settlers arrived, Australia's indigenous peoples lived in houses and villages, and used surprisingly sophisticated architecture and design methods to build their shelters, new research has found. Many of the shelters the Aborigines built were dome structures.
Most Aboriginal people livein New South Wales and Queensland. More than 68% of Aboriginal people live in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria while Western Australia and the Northern Territory contribute only 22% of the Aboriginal population.
The word 'indigenous' refers to the notion of a place-based human ethnic culture that has not migrated from its homeland, and is not a settler or colonial population. To be indigenous is therefore by definition different from being of a world culture, such as the Western or Euro-American culture.
