History of The Australian Aboriginal People Essay

History of The Australian Aboriginal People - Essay ExampleHowever, what appears to be blow over is that the first Aboriginal settlers colonized what is now Australia between 30,000 and 80,000 years ago via what is now Papua New Guinea or what is now Indonesia (Australian Aboriginal History, 2002 Siasoco, 2006).In 2001 the race of aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders was 366,429, approximately 1.9% of the Australian population as a whole and slightly more than the estimated aboriginal population of 350,000 at the time of European village in the late 18th century. At the time of the European invasion, there were 500-600 distinct groups of aborigines speaking almost 200 different languages or dialects at least 50 of which argon now extinct (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2006). Although culturally diverse, these groups were not political and stinting entities and lacked class hierarchies and chiefs. These aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who lived in small family groups of 15or 30, called bands. Bands were the basic residential and economic unit (Siasoco, 2006 Arrernte Culture, 2006).Despite their variety and differences, the aboriginal people possess several unifying factors. ... People within these social networks frequently co-operated to exploit abundant resources during devout seasons or to share scarce resources during drought or flood (Siasoco, 2006).The aboriginal people are a culturally and religiously rich people. Their social structure, family ties and sorting system is almost as complex as the people. However, spiritually, unlike other religions, aboriginal belief does not place the human species apart from or on a higher level than disposition. Their spirituality involves a close relationship between humans and nature. Aborigines believe some of their Ancestors metamorphosed into nature (as in rock formations or rivers), where they remain spiritually alive. In the oral tradition of storytelling, aborigines refer to the beginning of the world as Dreaming, or Dreamtime. In the Dreaming, or the Alchera of the Aranda, the aborigines believed that their ancestors who rose from to a lower place the earth wandered on a featureless world and gave the world its present shape and form they believe that their ancestors metamorphosed to form different various parts of nature including animal species, bodies of water, and the sky (Arrernte Culture, 2006 Australian Aboriginal History, 2002).The aborigines have an intricate classification system that defines kinship relations and regulates marriages. The Kariera, for example, are divided into hordes, or local groups of about 30 people, which are divided into four classes, or sections. Membership in a section determines ritual and territorial claims. In half of the hordes the men are divided among the Karimera and Burung sections in the other half they are divided among the Palyeri and Banaka sections. These sections are exogamous, and rules of marriage, descent, and reside nce