[SOLUTION] The Official Nationality
This assignment is another “learning quiz.” The information on Aboriginal Australians will be provided here and through the questions of the quiz.First, some basic background on Aboriginal Australians and their culture.The official nationality of the indigenous people of the Australian continent is Aboriginal Australian. You will often hear or read the word “Aborigine” (pronounced: a (as in “cat”) – bore – RIDGE – gen – knee), but this term is now considered derogatory or at least, disrespectful. Whenever the nationality is written, or any form that references the community, it must be capitalized, just like American or Chinese or Ethiopian, etc.The term “aboriginal” (not as a nationality) means “the first of a kind present in a place.”
It is importantly different from “native” or “indigenous” in that aboriginal people or creatures in a particular place migrated from somewhere else, rather than evolving in the region from primordial ancestors. In fact, with the exception of the African continent, all “modern” humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are “aboriginal” to the rest of the world’s regions. You will learn in the documentary video that Aboriginal Australians came to the continent a very, very long time ago, and so, make up one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world.While Aboriginal Australians have many varied tribes and cultures, the video will help you discover that a single spiritual concept is common to and binds all Aboriginal peoples and communities. Each regional tribe has its own way of honoring and connecting with this common idea, and is expressed through diverse cultural practices.
Music and dance, though, in some form, are often integral to expressing the peoples’ spirituality.Similarly to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians were abused, oppressed, and culturally devastated by Western Europeans, when the British invaded and colonized the continent, using it first as a “penal colony” (essentially an island prison) in the late 1700’s. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s. After the penal colony was dissolved and Australia became a full British colony with farming, mining and industry, Aboriginal Australians were made to “assimilate” into British culture by force, mostly by taking the young children from their parents and putting them into boarding “schools” for assimilation “education.”
This was also done to many Natives Americans at a similar time in history.Also, similarly to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians were pushed out of their ancestral lands, if those lands were useful to the colonizers for natural resources, agriculture, or industry. While the Aboriginal Australians tried to defend their lands early on, they were mostly defeated and either assimilated or moved into more barren and harsh regions that the colonizers didn’t want. In some cases, these harsher landscapes were actually the most spiritually important ones to certain Aboriginal tribes, which remain so, today, but they were not at all hospitable for daily human living.The present results of this history of deep racism is much like Native Americans’, as well – systemic poverty, public health issues (including home and food insecurity, substance abuse, and domestic violence), and cultural degeneration among the Aboriginal Australians.
On the positive side, though (again, in parallel with Native Americans), since the 1970’s on, mostly lead by political liberals with native activists, there has been a growing movement for Aboriginal rights and to protect and regain Aboriginal lands and culture. The national Australian government, as well as local ones, are gaining in Aboriginal representation and influence, and lately, efforts toward reconciliation and even reparation have been gaining traction.With this assignment, you will become familiar with a couple examples of traditional, Aboriginal Australian culture, learn about the unique Aboriginal spiritual story, and examine some of their music and dance.
