Australian Aboriginal culture

See notes for health workers

Culture

General

• culturally diverse - traditional lives in remote region versus typical westernised lifestyle
• central belief that man, nature and land are inextricably bound.
• strong sense of belonging to a specific locality or an extended family
• highly spiritual in nature
• land inhabited by the spirits of ancestors
• highly structured - each person has a distinct place in society
• rituals mark the passage of individuals through different life stages
• the dreaming - all that is known and all that is understood
• very low power distance
• low individualism/highly collective
• high quality of life vs quantity of life
• low uncertainty avoidance
• emphasis on
  • being
  • the past and present
  • harmonious relations with the environment

Religion

• classical Aboriginal society is deeply religious
• everyday life is suffused with religious belief and interpretation
• it may be difficult to separate out humans from non-human (whether dead or spirit); nature from super-nature and past from present
• culture is characterised by a unity of meaning in which all is explicable and any action rarely accidental
• the underlying principle for all this is known as 'the Dreaming' or the Law

Family

• high birth rates generally mean large, extended families
• siblings of the same gender are considered equal (eg two brothers are equal)
• any child of the two brothers would refer to both the brothers as father
• children of both brothers would call each other brother and sister, not cousins.
• several mothers and fathers are possible and there may be many brothers and sisters.

• personal names are not always used and people may be referred to in terms of their family relationship eg cousin brother

Family roles

• many obligations and responsibilities amongst the family
• mothers, aunts and grandmothers responsible for the care and education children
• uncles (mother's brothers) responsible for training, discipline and initiation of youths
• grandparents and grandchildren can mix freely
• men may need to avoid face-to-face contact with mothers in law
• brothers-in-law may need to keep a distance from each other

Children

• responsibility for children shared throughout the extended family
• children belong to everybody
• may movement of children between relatives
• children may be raised by a grandparent or aunty

Gender

• well defined gender roles (secret women's business)
• in some situations men and women may need to avoid entering through the same door
• men's and women's business may need to be kept separate

Leadership

• traditional Aboriginal society did not have chiefs, kings or other formal ruling roles
• authority is based on
• gender
• age
• life-experience
• religious knowledge
• wisdom
• verbal skills
• status gained through initiation stages is also relevant

• power is almost always situational
• decisions are usually reached via persuasion and consensus.
• groups of elders may be drawn together from time to time to discuss matters of importance and continue to have a function today

Cultural sub-groups

Local group areas

• groupings in Aboriginal Australia may be associated with a particular area of land
• these clans do not necessarily live together or engage in common activities
• in some parts the members of this group may be multi-lingual
• the term 'tribe' is inaccurate should not be used - language-groups' (eg, the 'Pitjantjatjara' or 'Kuku-Yalanji' people) may be better labels

Major cultural regions

• South eastern coast
• Riverina
• North-east Coast
• Rainforest
• East Cape York
• West Cape York
• Gulf
• North -east Arnhem Land
• Wagait
• Fitzmaurice
• Kimberley
• Indian Ocean
• South west Coast
• Western Desert
• South Australian Gulf
• Lake Eyre

Names of groups

Aboriginal people use other terms for themselves and their different groupings meaning 'Aboriginal person from a given area'.

• Bama, or Pama (Cape York Peninsula, north Qld)
• Murri (much of Qld and northern NSW)
• Koori (southern NSW and Victoria)
• Nunga (southern South Australia)
• Anangu (northern South Australia)
• Yapa (parts of Central Australia)
• Yolngu (parts of Arnhem Land)
• Nyungar (southern Western Australia)

Rituals

'Going through the law'

• short periods of intense learning
• body marking and circumcision
• usually occurs around 13 - 16 years
• new knowledge, responsibilities and status following this initiation

• classical Aboriginal culture was largely nomadic and not based on sedentary living however Aboriginal people had firm and particular ties to certain areas of land

Education

Learning

• usually by observation, trial and error, real life performance
• usually in a specific context
• little written instruction, practice or abstract concepts

Schooling and Employment

• 80% attend primary school
• 60% attend high school
• 17% have post secondary qualifications
• 1% have post graduate qualifications (1994)

Language

• in 1995 20% of indigenous population in WA spoke an Aboriginal language
• no single Aboriginal language
• currently approximately 90 languages survive
• several have thousands of speakers
• common for Aboriginal people to be multilingual in some areas (especially in northern Australia)
• in some of the central regions the same language is spoken over large areas
• many Aboriginal languages are not understood by other Aboriginal groups

Creolised language

• most Aboriginal people also speak and understand English
• in many parts of Australia this may take be a form of creolised language (a mix of languages, predominantly English)

Written language

• Aboriginal languages were originally only oral languages without a written form
• more recently many major languages have dictionaries, written grammars and written materials
• for some Aboriginal groups there can be a correlation between language and territory

Aboriginal terms

References