Didgeridoo

The best know instrument of the aboriginals is a didgeridoo.
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument created when a tree branch is hollowed out by termites. Mostly it is straight with a pointed end and is painted richly with lizards, kangaroos and such.
The length normally varies between 1 and 1.5 meter, though some are even longer than 2.5 meter. You can play standing, sitting or even walking. The didgeridoo is a sacred instrument, used often in tribal rituals, though is gaining internationally popularity.

Art

The Aborigines used to paint on the walls in caves and in the sandy beach, but are paining more and more on canvas. There are two kinds of paintings; Desert Art and Urban Art.
By the Desert Art the meaning of the paintings is hidden for everyone except the tribe itself.
But Urban Art is exactly opposite; it has a massage for outer world, which mostly is to gain attention to their situation.

History

The word Aboriginal comes from the Latin word 'ab origine', which means from the beginning there. The Aboriginals came at least 50.000 years ago to the down under, Australia.
The men were hunters and made tools. The women prepared food and raised the children.
The aboriginals did not cultivate crops and did not breed animals; they lived on what the land gave them. Australia was discovered by Holland in the 17th century. They called it Nieuw Holland. Willem Jansz first set foot on Australia in 1605. In 1642 he was the first one to sail round Austria. In 1770 James Cook rediscovered the land and found the Aboriginals. He thought them gentle and nice. Despite this his successors began to murder the Aborigines. After a century there were less than 60.000 of the originally 300.000 aborigines.
They even made a law in 1824, which made it possible to kill Aboriginals, without any explanation. This murdering and discriminating didn’t stop until much later.
Only recently, in 1967 they where aligned in law. In 1974 they gained the right to establish on their own area. In spite of all the positive developments there is still much discrimination. There are much more unemployed aboriginals than white people, and half of the prisoners are aborigine. Another problem is the alcohol by which many aboriginals have come in a futureless situation.

Religion

According to the Aboriginals everything is connected to each other; the land, the animals, the weather; how people behave; the way you find your food. Living and dead nature does not make any difference for them. The earth is created in a time which is still active.
In this creation time, which often is called Dreaming, the mythical ancestors gave shape to the land and lived at it. These ancestors are still present in the land itself.
Because of all this, the aboriginals have a firm connection with the nature.
The knowledge of this religion is passes through stories, dances, song, holy ware and rituals.


Introduction

Aboriginals are original citizens of Australia. The name aboriginal is deduced form the latin term “ab origine” what “from the beginning” means. The aboriginal culture is one of the few which isn’t affected by the western culture. The very strong band with nature and living in harmony with it is an important aspect of their culture. Aboriginals live in small family groups and are nomadic.

Way of living

The aboriginals are totally adapted to the environment in Australia, they never did any agriculture or stock-breeding, not even when they where short of food. By this way they try to don’t disturb the natural environment. Ceremonial body and sand painting, dance, sang and music are a very important piece of their lives, just like Uluru (Ayers Rock) the communal holy rock from their nation. They can find places where water and food is on the basis of myths which their forefathers tell them, earlier these myths where the differences between life and death, because this information was essential to survive. Because they find their food by hunting and gathering, they live in moveable groups at the size of maximally two families. The men hunt for wallabies, kangaroos, emus and other great wild. The women gather fruit, seeds, beets and honey. At this time there live about 145000 aboriginals in Australia.
There used to be over 600 different tribes, each with their own territory, cultural heritage and language. Despite al those differences they have one thing in common, their dream time, this is the period before the existence at earth but at the same time the after-world where the unborn live and where the deaths return. Places in the landscape, like Ayers Rock are seen as incarnations from their fore fathers from the dream time. The aboriginals believe that somebody’s soul didn’t die a the same time as the body, and that ceremonies are necessary to be sure that somebody’s soul leaves the body and incarnates somewhere else. One of the incomprehensible habits of the aboriginals is the walk about, at random times men leave their countries to disappear for weeks, months or even years, to follow the way that their fore fathers once followed, often with as only target to meet a stranger. The different tribes come in contact with each other by the “corroborees”, ritual music sessions at which songs and dances are exchanged, to provide each other access to each others fore parents ways.

Language

The traditional aboriginal tribes speak each their own language and they often subdue some other aboriginal languages. They hardly speak English, this in contrast with the tribes which live in cities or nearby the cities. There used to be over 500 languages in Australia before the Europeans took over Australia, now a day about 25 of them are daily used. In 1970 the Australian government guided a policy which contained that aboriginal children were taken away from their parents and were placed in a white family, which is one of the reasons why the language extinguished, because they couldn’t learn it from their parents or grandparents.