ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS

Aboriginal Australians, according to researchers and genetic studies, are one of the oldest living populations in the world ( outside Africa ).

It is an incredibily mysterious and interesting culture. There used to be more than 300 Aboriginal spoken languages, today there are only seventy-five languages left.

They developed their own mythology, which is called Dreamtime legends ( Alchera ) .

The Dream-time is the time when their anchestors originated the world.

Their myths are accepted as truth therefore their religion turns around the Dream-time legends. They believe in spirits, and they use totems to identify theirself, their family or a social role. Unfortunately many aboriginal children were taken away  from their family by colonizers and converted ( by choice or not ) to christianity. Colonizers though they were doing a good thing for them, today this doesn’t happen anymore of course, but it must be said Aboriginal Australians have been subject of many injustices and cruelty, and there is a high risk that their beautiful cultural background will slowly disappear. There are not many tribes left, some are just made up for tourism, and there is a considerable percentage of homeless / alcoholic australian aboriginals.  They never completely adapted to Western culture and their culture has been damaged a lot. There are many interesting facts about them, but the one I found more incredible it’s their art, which is infused with mystical meanings, magic, dreams and visions. They were very intuitive and took their dreams very seriously. Sometimes, they would dream a melody, and the next morning they would draw it as a sort of map. This is how they knew where to go for example to find food,water or to meet with other aboriginal. It is said they used to be thelepatic , able to hear each other’s though from big distances. Bruce Chatwin, is famous for his book called the songline, which wrote after his trip in Australia. His purpose was to study Aboriginal songs and their meaning.

 

   " The basic idea that Chatwin posits is that              language started as song, and the                              aboriginal Dreamtime sings the land into                    existence. A key concept of aboriginal culture is      that the aboriginals and the land are one. By            singing the land, the land itself exists; you see the    tree, the rock, the path, the land. What are we if      not defined by our environment?"                                      (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songlines)