Cultural Reporter
Aboriginal Australians
Growing up in a small town in Central Nebraska, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to “experience” culture. In my younger years I always just thought everyone lived and acted just like me. Everyone had cars, clothes, a house, and went to the store for food. As I continued to mature my worldview began to change as I slowly came into contact with other cultures. When I got older I began to understand that the world is full of a large variety of cultures and lifestyles.
As soon as I started to stray from my Saturday morning cartoons on the TV I started learning about the world and all it’s different people through the television. This is the only basis, or reasoning I have behind choosing Aboriginal Australians for my Cultural Reporter Project. Learning about different tribes that live off the land, waste nothing, and live in homes built by their own hands has always been interesting to me.
Aboriginal Australians is a broad term that that encompasses all of the regional groups of Australia’s Indigenous People’s. [1] There are several different subdivisions of the Aboriginal Australians that are generally based on the region and the local indigenous languages. Many scholars have dated the arrival of humans from 40,000 up to 125,000 years ago.
In 1788 the British began to colonize Australia. This caused many problems of the Aboriginal Australians, such as loosing land and new illnesses brought to Australia by these new “white men”. [2] When the British colonization began, the Aboriginal People inhabited all of the continent and most of the surrounding islands.
Today this culture has dwindled over time and has become a minority in Australia. Indigenous people only make us 2.5 percent of Australia’s population. [3] The Aboriginal Australians have been mistreated and undermined by the government in various ways over the years.
Now days a new administration in the Australian government is trying to repair some of these wrong doings and helping to raise the Indigenous People’s standard of living. [4] In my mind, Aboriginal Australian’s story is very comparable to that of the American Indian and that is another reason I am interested in learning more about Aboriginal culture and customs, then and now.
Works Cited
Great start to the project. I love the use of pictures and video to really bring a richness of detail to this report. In terms of this project, you might want to look at the impact of the summer Olympics on the tensions between white and aboriginal Australians. There was some tension there regarding proper cultural representations. Co-cultural theory could shed some light on this.
ReplyDeleteSee Purdue OWL for APA formatting and work on this for second blog. Here's how you cite web sites:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from http://Web address
Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/