15th
September 2010 – My Exchange partner, Barega an Aborigine, came
The following dialogue is our conversation at dinner. I
think it is more interesting to read it if it is written like this:
While she took the bananas, my mother asked him:” Maybe you can
tell us a little bit more about the nutrition of the Aborigines? I
think this is a wonderful chance to learn something about the Natives
of Australia. When I was a child I thought it would be an adventure
to meet an Aborigine.” Barega started shyly to answer my mother:
“We are hunters and pickers and the Aborigines, who live on the
coast also fish a lot and in the Victoria of today, there are two eel
farms. These Aborigines used complicated systems to catch them.” He
ate a little piece of his bird and I could see that he was really
happy to eat his own traditional food. So I asked him: “And what
did they do with the eels? Eat them all?” “No.” he answered”
They traded with them to the area, where Melbourne is now.” “The
Aborigines traded. I can’t believe it!” I wondered, while I
tasted the bush-banana. I decided that I didn’t like them, but I
didn’t want Barega to see this. He started to tell us something
more while I tried to look at him and put the bananas inconspicuously
back into the sauce pan.
“The area from Sydney also was a
big trading facility. The Aborigines sold there their typical
nutrition, the bush food. They still eat kangaroos, emus and their
eggs and also wombats, goannas, snakes and birds. If they live in the
desert they also eat insects like the honey ant and the witchetty
grubs.” “They eat insects. I think I would not like this.” I
said. Barega joked “Oh I can do it tomorrow so that you could try.”
And I answered: “No thank you. I don’t think that we could buy it
here in York, maybe in London. But what do they also eat? Maybe we
can cook something else.” “On the coast they eat mussels and
crustaceans. Although the Aborigines eat a lot of meat they also eat
nuts, fruits and berries for example the bush-tomato, the bush-banana
and the bush-plum.” My father asked: “And how do you catch the
animals?”
“To catch animals they used the
javelin thrown by a woomera or by hand and there are two boomerang
types. The first one, which does not come back, and the second one,
that comes back, but the first type is the better one and the
Aborigines called it also throwing stick.”This sounded interesting
and I said: “And you can catch animals with a boomerang?” He
answered humbly: “A little bit”
16th
September – His first day at my school
Today Barega had a presentation about the history and
the groups of the Aborigines. Our teacher Mr. Gilderoy decided this
is the best chance to learn something about other cultures and so we
will learn something about the Aborigines in the next few lessons.
But first here is the text of Barega´s presentation:
“Hello my name is Barega and I
come, like Mr. Gilderoy said, from the Arrente which is an aboriginal
clan in Australia. The word ‘aboriginal’ comes from the Latin
words ab origin and
that means “from the Beginning”. In your language, in English, it
just means something like “Natives”. Today the English word
Aborigines is considered pejorative and more acceptable and correct
expression is “aboriginal Australians” or “aboriginal people”
and since 1980 is “indigenous Australians” particulary popular.
Now I want to tell you something about the History of
the Aboriginal population, how they came to Australia and what
happened to them when the Europeans came.
The Aborigines descended like every Nation from the
Africans. They moved to Australia 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, as they
began to build seaworthy ships. There is a roughly date, about 48,000
BC, but this could be wrong.
The Aborigines always had contact to
the outside world. For example the Dingos came to Australia 40,000
years ago and since the 16th
century there came pickers of sea cucumbers. Then in 1606 the first
Europeans came. Willem Jansz was followed by a lot of other
discoverers but the British colonisation started first in 1788.
In this time many immigrants came to
Australia and many diseases came with them, illnesses
like measles, smallpox and tuberculosis which also often killed
Europeans brought death to Aborigines. So many Natives died.
In 1834 there occurred the first recorded use of
Aboriginal trackers, who proved very adept at navigating their way
through Australian landscape and finding people.
In 1868 the first Australian cricket team moved to
England. In this team were mostly Aboriginal Australians.
The 19th
and the 20th
century was the worst time, because this was the time of the
suppression and the Stolen Generation. Everything started with the
appropriation of land and water resources. At the beginning most
Aborigines were allowed to vote, but with the 20th
century their situation got worse. They lost many rights, for example
the control over their work, their marriage and their social life.
In the first world war 500 Aborigines had to fight for England. In
Australia the full-blood Aborigines were killed by the white people
during the half-blood children were stolen to educate like white
children. About 1/3 to 1/10 were stolen. There were differences
between religion and time. Also in the second world war the
Aborigines had to fight.
There was no chance for a better way of life.
But then in the 70s the stealing and killing stopped.
In 2000 an Aboriginal athlete light
the Olympic fire and at the 13th
February 2008 President Kevin Rudd made a public appology. Since this
day there is a “Sorry Day” every year.
Before the English settlers came they had a population
of approximately 318.000- 750.000 and they were all divided into
400-700 groups/clans. To say how many Aborigines now live in
Australia is not that easy because young people once in a while have
aboriginal blood in them and they just count as Aborigines if they
are convinced that they are and if they say that they are and make
that legal.
Then and today there are many
different Aboriginal groups who have their group name from their
language. They live all across Australia: for example the Ngunnawal
in the East, the Nunga in the South, the Umatji in the West and the
Anangu in the West, North and South.
The largest groups in Australia are the Pitjantjatjara,
the Luritja, the Warlpiri and our clan, the Arrente. A very similar
group to the Aborigines in central Australia are the Torres Strait
Islanders. They live in the very, very east on over 100 islands at
the, who would have thought this, east-coast. Every group has their
own culture, language and belief structure.
More than 250 languages were spoken in Australia before
the Europeans arrived, but now there are just 15-20 languages spoken
by all age groups.
There are many languages who are related like families.
The first “family” is spoken on
7/8 of the country, the second on 1/8 and the third one
is a mix between an individual Aboriginal language and English.
Most young Aborigines can speak English because they go
to an English school where both languages are taught and because of
that I could make the exchange.
Today we had RE and Barega told us a little bit about
their belief system. It is very different from ours so here I will
try to explain it: The Aborigines do not believe in one god or
something like that - they belief in a whole story. Their most
important story is the history of creation; they call it the
“dreamtime” or “tjukurpa” in aboriginal language. The
creator ancestors travelled across their land and created the land,
the plants and the animals and gave them all a name. But their belief
is not just this dreamtime, it defines their rules, moral and
cognation. And they have special dances (they have dances for every
cause), songs and art, which help them to understand this belief.
Barega told me that every dance has a special melody. If they dance,
they paint their bodies with ochre. The same pattern, that they draw
on their bodies are also drawn on their paintings.
18th
September 2010 – Our next “Aborigine lesson”
Mr. Gilderoy gave us a worksheet. Here it is:
- Life expectancy
It is really difficult to say how old the Aborigines
get, because their deaths are poorly identified. So the figures for
the size of the population need large adjustment factors.
Accordingly are the differences between the years.
In the following table you can see the life expectancy
from Aboriginal men and women in comparison to the other Australians.
|
year
|
male |
female |
difference |
|
1973
|
45.3 |
49.8 |
25 years
|
|
2005
|
59.4 |
64.8 |
17 years
|
|
2006
|
67.2 |
72.9 |
11 years
|
The second problem for finding out the size of the
population is the difference between northern and southern Australia.
You can see this in the following table. These figures are also from
2006.
|
|
Male |
female |
|
Northern
Territory |
61.5 |
69.2 |
|
New
South Wales
|
69.9 |
75.0 |
- Health
The Aborigines health is not so good and they get ill
twice as often as other Australians. As well 1.5 % more of the
Aborigines have a disability or a long-term disease. On the following
table you can see which illnesses have the most Aborigines and how
many Aborigines have this in comparison to the other Australians.
|
illnes
|
Frequency |
|
Circulatory
system
|
2 to 10 fold |
|
Renal
failure
|
2 to 3 fold |
|
Communicable
|
10 to 70 fold |
|
Diabetes
|
3 to 4 fold |
|
Cot
death
|
2 to 3 fold |
|
Mental
health
|
2 to 5 fold |
|
Neoplasms
|
60 %
increase in the death rate
|
|
Respiration
|
3 to 4 fold |
Many people think that more Aborigines have these
illnesses, but the Australian Government says these figures to
protect the image of the Aborigines.
Exercises: Read both texts and write a report about the
reasons for the low life expectancy. (200 words)
Of course Barega wrote the best text, although he had
146 words too much. He told me that he had to write a text about this
theme two times before. We both finished the text soon, so we had
time to talk to each other and Barega had a great idea. Maybe we can
dance a typical Aboriginal dance in the PE lesson on Monday and when
we asked Mrs. Smith, our PE teacher, she answered, we could set up
the lesson on Monday. This will be the funniest lesson we have ever
had!!!!
I thought it would be interesting,
because the lesson was very boring, to hear something else about
Baregas culture and so I asked the teacher if Barega could tell us
more about his language. The teacher agreed and Barega began to
speak.
I asked him if he could write the text he said in my
diary:
…And
of course I agreed.We normally speak a mixture between Arrente and
English, but when we are at my grandmothers, we just speak Arrente.
A
word that many people do not understand is billabong. It’s not the
make???.
It means just something like pond and in Australia not
all people know this word, either.
You cannot imagine how it is to live in a land with so
different cultures and languages. Before the Europeans came we, the
Aborigines, had over 250 different languages.
Now we just have 15-20 spoken by all age people.
My name has a special meaning. Actually all Aboriginal
names have a meaning.
My name, Barega, stands for the wind.
I would call you, Fred, uhmm.. Let me think about it...
Dheran.
…what
does that mean?
…a
gully
…haha.
very funny.
19th
September – Visiting my aunt
This morning, when we were all sitting around the table,
Mum asked us if we would like to come with her to Aunt Margret’s
birthday party. Aunt Margret is her sister, so Mum said that her
“sister is very friendly”. We looked at Barega, but he just
wondered. After a little conflict of agreement, my mother and me
understood that in the Aboriginal society all the sisters of his
mother are also his mothers and all the brothers of his father are
too his fathers. So when Mum, said that we will go to my aunt and
then in a second sentence said, that her sister is very friendly,
Barega was very confused, because he did not really know what the
first thing had to do with the other thing. It was a really funny
situation. But what really confused me was that all the brothers of
his mother are not his fathers, but his uncles and the same with the
sisters of his father. He explained me the reason for it: in contrast
to the children of his “mothers” and “fathers”, he was
allowed to marry all the children of his aunts and uncles. That
sounded very strange to my European ears, because in our society (I
think) no one would have the idea to marry his or her cousin. But
Barega had also a reason for that. He told me that most clans are
just made up from one family, so there are no other possibilities to
marry someone.
Well, after this very confusing dialogue we drove to
Aunt Margret and it was a very nice afternoon.
20th
September 2012 – Watching the Olympics
This Sunday evening we watched the Olympic closing
ceremony on TV. I asked Barega if there are any special aboriginal
sports. He told us that they have a lot of different sports but that
they are not that famous and more like games than sports like it is
understood in Europe. He said that the majority of them are team
games, which you can play with different numbers of players, from 2
up to 20 or more. There are a lot of ball games. Some are a bit like
volleyball; some like hockey and some are just catching games. For
example Woggabaliri, that is a game for which you need four to eight
players, which are standing in a circle. They throw the ball and use
their hands and feeds to not let it fall on the ground. My Mum knew
some kind of ball games from her teaching at the primary school. That
was funny, because Barega told us, that children in their clan also
play this game.
On TV they played just right now a song from the
Beatles. My dad asked Barega if he knew them, but of course he knew
them, so my mum asked him about Aboriginal Bands. He told us that
there are some bands which mix up the traditional Aboriginal music
with modern music, but he also said that they are not that famous in
other parts of the world. His favourite musician is Herb Patten. He
plays like Herb the gum leaf, which makes very funny noises. Here are
two videos from him playing the leaf; it is worth to listen to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWUEEuXBtg
(Herb at Australia’s got Talent)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Znte5nJm80
(Herb at ABC Radio National)
For those who are interested in: he told us that they
have lots of different instruments like the didgeridoo (that’s a
long wooden instrument, which is often painted; it makes a very deep
and deep-throated sound; in former times, only the men played it;
some people say that Aborigines would tell stories with playing it,
but that’s not correct; they use it just as a background instrument
in their ceremonies). A friend of mine has got one, so Barega and me
will visit him soon and try it out. That will be great!
They also use clapping sticks, rattles and drums for getting the
rhythm, rasps and the Bora-Bora (a bullroarer). That is a wooden
instrument at a cord, which you just have to take at one end and
leverage it with turning it around, to get a sound with it. You just
have to swing it very fast. It produces a dumb sound, a little bit
like a swarm of bees. Barega said that they use it only in
initiations.
Initiations - that was once again a theme, which
interested my Mother. There are a lot of different kinds of
initiations in the different regions, Barega said. There are clans,
which scratch their skin in the age of 16 or 17, there are clans
which do nothing and there are clans, like Barega’s clan, which
separate the boys in age of 10 to 12 years from their families,
especially their mothers. He told us that it was very hard, because
he was not allowed to speak to anybody and nobody was allowed to
speak to you for THREE weeks.
21th
September 2012 – Our dancing in PE
The PE lesson was very funny because
we tried to dance parts of this Aboriginal Dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rspN1MUcIOk
If you try it you will see that it is very difficult,
but It is great fun!!
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