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The Aborigines
Aborigine is the name given by the white settlers to the first Australian inhabitants. However, the Indigenous Australians do not like this name because it has a negative connotation, stereotyping them as one type of people; therefore they sometimes feel discriminated against by being called Aborigines. Instead, they like to maintain their group names, for example, Murri, Koori, Nanga or Wonghi. The names are different from region to region, but they all mean the same thing: "human being". I want to avoid the word Aborigine and so I will call them Aboriginal people or native Australian inhabitants. This helps to give them back the dignity, which they lost by the use of the word Aborigine.
The Aboriginal people came 40,000 to 60,000 years ago from Indonesia and New Guinea. At that time there was an ice-period and the sea-levels were around 130 meters lower than today. It was possible to walk, so they didn't need a canoe or a boat for travelling. They could jump from one little island to another island. First they settled on the coast and later in the middle of the continent. At that time the temperature and the climate weren't as hot as they are today and there was vegetation present where desert is today. 10,000 years ago, in the last stages of the ice-age, the sea-level rose and land bridges disappeared. Then Australia, as a continent, developed in isolation and the Aboriginal people and their culture became isolated as well.
Now I want to tell you something about the Aboriginal people, their culture and their way of life:
 The Aboriginal people live in tribes consisting of about 500 people. These tribes are subdivided into groups of 20 to 50 people. Each group has its own tribal area. The territorial boundaries are very strict. The Aboriginal people live a life as hunters and pickers. The food (berries, roods, insects, etc) collected by the women and children plays a bigger role than the meat hunted by the men. Along the coast, they eat fish. Most of the tribes live a semi-nomadic life, that is a life without cattle breeding. They do not build shelters, but walk around their areas to find some food and water. For them it is not necessary to be a farmer. For many thousand years the land had given them all that they needed. So they lived in peace and harmony with nature until the white settlers arrived on the east-coast in 1788.
Before the arrival of the settlers, there existed more than 200 to 300 different languages amongst the Aboriginal people. Today only around 50 of these languages are still spoken. The Aboriginal people have no written language. All their stories are conveyed by oral reports or by painting an incident of historic significance.
The Dreamtime or Dreaming is a very complex and interlinked system on a high spiritual level. The system is too complex to be described briefly and therefore I only want to say that the system builds on three pillars: the Physical-, the Human- and the Sacred World. But it is very difficult to understand these systems. There exist relationships and connections through the whole continent. Dreamtime means the creation process like in the Bible, the Book of Genesis. The land was waste. There was nothing at all. The creation ancestors or Dreaming ancestors came out of this "desert" and created the sky and the Terra, all the plants and animals - of which humans later evolved from. After the Dreaming ancestors had created everything they went back into the land and appeared in special places like the "Uluru". These are sacred and ritual places. The Aboriginal word for Dreamtime is Tjkurpa or Alcheringa. The spelling and the pronunciation vary from language to language and region to region.
 Dance is integral to culture, a physical and spiritual expression of Aboriginal norms, religion and stories. As an essential part of their ceremonies it incorporates music, song and art. Body art is an important form of expression, often used by the dancer. Some dances are gender-based. Sacred dances include the initiation ceremonies of young boys and girls and fertility rituals for women and the earth. The Aboriginal word for special dances is corroborees.
Songs and dances have always been a part of their culture. The basic instruments of their culture in historical times included hitting the ground with hunting sticks, clapping boomerangs together or using hands or the stomping of feet to keep the beat or time. They have more than two different instruments, but I will only talk about the clap sticks and the didgeridoo. The native Australian inhabitants use differently shaped clap sticks for percussion. By hitting them together they make different pitches like music notes. The didgeridoo is made from a straight, termite-hollowed branch, usually of eucalyptus, but sometimes of bamboo. It is cut down to about a meter or more in length. Didgeridoos have a wax mouthpiece to give a good lip grip. When the yidaki (the Aboriginal name for didgeridoo) is blown, it creates a rhythmic droning sound. Expert players can make bird and animal sounds as well. You need a special circular breathing to produce the sound of earth and nature.
Visual imagery is a fundamental part of Indigenous life, a connection between past and present and between people and the land. The early form of Indigenous artistic expression were rock carvings (petroglyphs), body painting and ground designs, and the earliest engraved designs known to exist date back at least 30,000 years. There are different types of art. One is the Rock Art, very famous in Arhemland and in the Kakadu National Park, and another kind of art is Dot Painting. Mostly the paintings show Dreamtime ancestors or important events of the Dreamtime.
Aboriginal Words:
Tjukurpa, Alcheringa -> Dreamtime
Corroborre -> Dance
Yidaki -> name from the Yolngu (a tribe in Northern Territory) for the Didgeri-doo
Uluru -> a ritual place from the Anangu (another tribe in Northern Territory)
Sophia Buck 13a
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