Aboriginal Art Australia
July 2nd 2010 18:04
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Moderated by katyzzz
Comment by Quintin J Watt
(That's Djabugay Aboriginal for 'hello'!)
We meet to chat about something a bit different here - but still of great interest to me. And it has a link to the subject of your previous thread on which I posted recently. Why my interest?
A) I'm an (amateur) artist
B) I have ex-in-laws in Australia; Queensland to be precise. My wife was from the Philippines and most of her family have emigrated there now. The Djabugay tribe of Northern Queensland are a people (like so many full native Aborigines) whose language and authentic culture is in danger.
C) I'm also a cultural historian (that's what my degree is in) and VERY interested in Australian Aboriginal mythology (if 'mythology' is quite the right word!)
and D) There's a conceptual link to the last thread of yours on which I posted. You'll see what it is in a mo'.
The Australian Aborigines are to Australasia as the Native Americans are to your country (I assume you are an American?). Unlike the Native American tribes of what is now the United States, however, they have survived in rather better numbers, compared to the days when they had the whole country to themselves (i.e before the late eighteenth century - pretty much the time that the United States began to be heavily colonised by Europeans). The reason they survived, and their culture survived, rather better was twofold:
1) Most of the hinterland of Australia is very arrid, more or less desert and scrub ('the outpack' or 'the bush') and, unlike the North American hinterland, not highly desired by the European settlers. Almost all of the towns and cities (as any atlas will show) are around the coastal outline of Australia. Even the dense tropical rainforest interior of a state like Queensland was never much colonised by Europeans.
2) European settlers (mainly from Britain, but also some ethnic Chinese, Japanese and South-East Asian people) never came to Australia in the vast numbers that they did to the US (in that case, from all over Europe) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As you probaly know, until around the 1970's, Australia was a very underpopulated country and many Brits were being offered assisted passages to encourage them to emigrate (not any more, though). Today the Australian government is highly selective in its immigartion policies.
Some people, in their stupidity and ignorance (including many Brits, I'm afraid), believe that all the white Australians are descended from 'convicts'. WRONG! This, of course, is because the early colonies, at Botany Bay and elsewhere were, for a time, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a place where deported 'convicts' were sent - mailnly, in fact, simply poor people, including familes i.e. women and children also (there was still then, of course, a HUGE divide in Britain between the rich and the poor) who were unfortunate enough to have been driven by their destitution to steal a loaf of bread ....
Today, in ANY white Australian community, you will probably find a majority who either emigrated there as young children, or are second, perhaps third, generation Brits (often with fond, even sometimes idealistic, memories of 'the mother country'. Hmmmm.)
Any white Australian who can authentically trace their ancestry back to the original 'convicts' is something of an 'aristo' (in what is still a pretty classless country).
As to the 'abos' - they were there SOOOOOO long before and, interestingly, unlike the Native Americans (who had Asian Mongoloid ancestry and crossed into The Americas via the Bering Sea - then narrower or possibly also a land bridge - in Neolithic times, circa 15,000 years ago), the Australian Aborigines, by contrast, are of the Indo-Aryan ethnic differentiation - which makes them distant cousins of the white Europeans.
And they, unlike the Native Americans, had been in Australasia for some 40,000 years before the white settlers came - long before Captain Cook discovered their remote island continent on the othe side of the world in the eighteenth century (and that was nearly three hundred years after Columbus chanced upon North America, or to be more precise the Carribean).
That would place the Aborigines' origins way back in Paeleolithic times, right on the heels of the disappearance of Neanderthals and around the time of the retreat of the last ice age (Australia was then linked by a narrow land bridge to South East Asia).
The numerous tribes have all still survived - albeit their numbers almost halved t (owing to slaughter, of course, by the early white setlers - but never on the scale that it happened to the Native Americans). Even today, that's a very touchy subject with most white Australians. It has taken them many decades to come to terms with the long Aboriginal history of their country. One whole group of people, the Tasmanians, were completely exterminated before anthropologists and ethnologists and philologists had even had the chance to study them (altough an attempt is being made to reconstruct the now extinct Tasmanian languages).
All these long long and distant pre-European times are recorded by the Aboriginal peoples not in writing (for, like the Native Americans of what is now the United States, they never had written languages) but by an oral tradition. They refer to these times as 'The Dreaming Time' or 'The Dream Time' - for it is as a kind of dream to them, shrouded in deep, distant (and, for them, almost magical, memories). So, in case you hadn't guessed it; that's the connection to the subject matter of your last thread! (Dreams!)
The shamans and medicine men, who often doubled as 'bards', 'priests' or their equivalent of 'holy men' and storytellers kept this tradition alive ....
And it still survives today in Aboriginal art, which many true full blooded Aborigines see as a vital link to THEIR past (when it was all theirs) and to their gods (same difference!). Most beautiful of all of these, without a doubt in my view, are the sand panitings (some lovely examples of which you posted here). It's important to remember that, for the true Aborigines, these, like the authentic didgeridoo players and tribal drummers, are not just a tourist attraction curiosity. For them it is as vital to their culture as would be, say, 4th July (TODAY!) for all (you) Americans.
Happy 4th July
G-dye ya y'all ...
Jeff Watt, Cultural Historian
Comment by katyzzz
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I am Australian, living in Australia, My mother was British, my father of Irish/Scottish descent, none were related to the convicts and when my father brought my mother to Australia they paid their own way.
Unlike the popular belief I do not feel that modern Australians are responsible for the actions of their relatives or anybody else's in previous eras, however I am all for helping them. Millions have been expended with little value achieved from that expenditure, bureacratic bungling which we all accept far too readily, but some poor aspects of Aboriginal society are theirs and theirs alone, and some people just have to be taught to accept responsibilities for their own actions, many white Australians and convicts in particular have had it very tough, but they helped build Australia, far too little credit, if any is given for that.
The dreamtime is fascinating and I understand your interest, please do not think me harsh, just honest and brave enough to depart from peer group pressure.
The Aboriginal dilemma is a confusing one and not made better by their own representatives, who. like the rest of us make mistakes, and many line their own pockets.
But if we could only get rid of greed we'd all be better off and the greedy might be a little happier.
A bit off track I know, but all things do not happen in isolation and I for one am sick of Aboriginal issues being rammed down my throat repetitively, we all need to move forward.
When I see others working as hard as I did to help my attitude may well change, but in the interim, talk remains for me, all too cheap, not that I view your comment at all in this way.
It was very interesting to hear what you say, but all white Australians are not so black as they are painted, but others, of course, are guilty of heinous crimes.
May the world, with the help of God, progress a little. It is sorely necessary, most are getting it wrong as all of us witness daily.
Comment by Quintin J Watt
Thank you for your friendly reply, and please accept my aologies if I caused any offence either:-
a) By suggesting you might be American - many visitors to your blog, as many internet users generally, would be, I would think - and therefore may have found the comparison between the story of the Aborigines and that of the Native Americans useful or even, dare I suggest it, instructive?
b) By my (admittedly light-hearted) attempt at a little Australian slang.
c) By giving my own take as a cultural historian on Australian (including Aboriginal) history. I am always willing to be corrected by someone who knows more than I do about a subject - which you obviously do, in this case, as an Australian.
I understand (but obviously cannot experience first hand, as you do) the dichotomy and the frustration which many white Australians of good conscience like yourself (and I know there are many like you) must feel about the Aboriginal Australians, especially those who live in urban poverty - despite so much being done at state and national levels to try and help them.
I like white Australians. You are, in my experience, always friendly and welcoming people - not only in your own country but when you come here (to UK) either as visitors or more permanently. The story of the first white settlers ('convicts' and their descendants, if you wish) and their struggle to build a new homeland is a story which is seldom told and apt to be overlooked (everyone, by contrast, knows the story of 'how the west was won'!)
Modern Australians cannot be held responsible for the denuding of Aboriginal numbers in those early days or for such tragedies (and it was a real tragedy) as the elimination of the Tasmanians - any more than we modern Brits can be held accountable for the many many ethnic cleansing crimes against humanity of our old (imperial) ancestors - including our major and proactive role in the African slave trade.
Yet it seems hard for many Aborigines to forget (even though, as I've said, the decimation was mild compared to that of the Native Americans). It may take many more generaions for the wounds to heal on both sides. At least, though, modern white Australians have begun a real and honest dialogue about this. This is the best that can be expected as a beginning - for it is, after all, only five or six generations since.
You may not feel it, perhaps, but your country is young - much younger even than America, and much much younger than ours! 4th July is not your date, of course - but you need not be embarassed about your patriotic history either.
In time you and your Aboriginal neighbours could be reconciled - how long did it take for the Celtic (native) inhabitants of Britain to accept their Anglo-Saxon conquerors, for these to accept the (originally pagan) Norse raiders who came a couple of hundred years later, or for all of these to come to terms with their Norman rulers (who came a century and a half later yet again)? And then, what of the Scots and Irish? ... and I note you said you have some Irish/Scottish ancestry. Whole 'nother story there!
I rest my case.
To end on a very light-hearted note:
"The empire's bull weeder woven art; mirror calls take cupboard long go."
('The impossible we do overnight; miracles take a bit longer' - my slogan) ... is that a good strine translation????
Best wishes
Jeff
Comment by katyzzz
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The Aboriginal problem in this country is a very complex issue and the experts just don't seem to get it right whatever they do.
I love Aboriginal art, many do not, not having the depth of mind to appreciate human differences.
Aborignial culture is one of the most interesting things about Australia but the plight, bad treatment, and sheer hard work of the convicts barely gets a mention. It too is interesting.
The situation brought about by all this globalisation really bothers me and I think MAN lacks the wisdom which GOD alone has.
I really think there are very few Aborigines affected now by the past but the constant telling to them and other of the same old story holds them back from happiness.
You are very well informed Jeff and obviously very intellectual.
But too much talk about major issues and not enough action always leaves me cold, not that I expect you to be taking any action but others should.
Comment by Quintin J. Watt
I'll just conclude my contribution to this thread by saying to you that I am sorry if anything I said upset you. I sense that you feel very strongly about this and, especially as you have been very kind to me (albeit we know each other only online), you are a friend. I do not seek quarrels, of course, with my friends.
I am grateful for your support and will, of course, continue to follow your threads with great interest.
Best wishes Jeff
Comment by katyzzz
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Keep up your good work. You triggered my thinking but nothing you said caused me any sadness or distress, I really was referring to others I have encountered and I for one, while having the utmost sympathy for the Aboriginal cause, do not feel responsible for the past actions of others, as I was not a party to them.