Aboriginal societies Tutorial 1: Prepare and discuss...

Aboriginal societies are at their fullest potential when uncomplicated and crude. From this statement we can assume that foreigners should not have entered Australia, for many of the Aboriginal societies took their footsteps toward modernization. We may also assume that being undeveloped does not necessarily mean 'bad'. My opinion is that to a large e tent, Aboriginal societies are best at their simplistic and primitive state. !erhaps, it had been a wrong move for Aborigines to travel towards modernization, for at their current state, with more than a hundred different languages in the "orthern region alone, in order for trade and widespread of social network, Aborigines had to be multilingual to allow communication between each region. An Arrernte, the original indigenous Australian Aborigines who lived in the centre area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice #pring, could speak up to ten lanugages$ Many people in our society today tries to learn more than three languages. %owever, those who learnt up to three or more were minute in &uantity and rare. %owever, in 'ust the Arrernte group alone, most of the group members would knew how to speak ten or more languages ("ote, it is languages, not dialects). *ertainly this had a lot to do with the Aboriginal culture of wide social network and the fact that there were no translators during the under+developed period. ,nlike today, where people can recruit translators or simply use the internet's translators to help finish their work, Australian Aboriginal did not have the technology. -herefore everyone had to help themselves. #hould they not work hard enough, they will be eliminated. Aboriginal societies are best left primitive and simplistic. From the ./00s to the .100s, and even earlier than that, many conflicts occured between the 2uropeans and the Aborigines. #ince the records were available, Aborigines were killed in in'ustice by the 2uropeans as 2uropeans believed that they were superior compared to the Aborigines, ignoring the fact that everyone is e&ual. Many a times it was very obvious that the 2uropean #uperior *ourt was biased against Aborigines. *onflicts started by 2uropeans turned into a massacre of Aborigines as 2uropeans have better technology and weapons. 3ots of massacre occurred during the .1 th century. 4athurst massacre, *ape 5rim massacre (Where few shepherds used their guns and killed 60 over Aborigines.)7 8fficial !unishment raids by the government in ./607 *onvincing 5round massacre (9ispute over a bleached whale) and many others more. -he figures in these few massacre alone is depressing. :.;:<;:6; %owever, we could not be confirmed that Aborigines are best left simplistic. For instance, Aborigines lived nomadic lives and had no permanent homes. -he

introduction of seeds, plows, and many technologies allowed the Aborigines to have sufficient food for living. 3iving a hunter+gatherer lifestyle is very risky as well. A mistake while hunting could cause their life to end. =et should they had reared up animals instead, they could easily obtain food that is safe. Aboriginal hunt rates, even when both males and females participate, was at a rate of >.?. 8n the other hand, as long as the weather conditions are pleasant, there is no drought or any natural disasters such as heatwaves, the crops would stay safe and they would obtain a nearly .00? rate of harvest, with a greater amount. -here is an overkill hypothesis + hunters+ gatherers societies may have killed too much, causing the e tinction of many animal species. -his hypothesis was thought up by @ared 9iamond, and indeed, many parts of the "orth America had lost its original inhabitants, the large mammalian species that had became e tinct due to overe ploitation of human beings. At would be unfair for us to 'udge that the invasion of 2uropeans caused disasters for the Aborigines. For e ample, during .16< + .16>, there was a series of killing at *aledon 4ay in the "orthern -erritory of Australia. Members of a @apanese fishing boat crew abducted and raped a group of =olngu women. When the =olngu men came to rescue the women, five of the boat's crew were killed. An a related incident, two white men lost their lives as well. A policeman investigating the deaths, *onstable Albert Mc*oll, was also murdered by the =olngu people. According to witnesses, he had hand cuffed a =olngu woman and shot the woman's husband who responded to her cries of help. -he killings triggered panic in 9arwin, generating fears that the Aborigines might stage a riot. A punitive e pedition was propoced by the police to 'teach the blacks a lesson' since during .1</, there was a punitive e pedition which resulted in ..0 lives of Aboriginal men, women and children. (-he *oniston massacre) -he crisis would have brought more bloodshed should 9onald -homson had not offered to investigate the causes of the conflict. -he results were that he managed to persuade the Federal 5overnment to free the three convicts who were innocent and documented their culture, after living for over a year with the Aborigines. An .1>., he persuade the Army to establish a #pecial Beconnaissance Force of =olngu men to repel @apanese raids on the northern coastlines of Australia. -his, was the decisive moment in the history of Aboriginal+2uropean relations. -his accident offered a new life for the Aborigines. A am very sure that many more of these kinds of accidents occured and changed the Aboriginal+2uropean relations, bringing positive changes to the Aboriginal #ociety. :>; 9espite the fact that the invasion of the 2uropeans into the Aboriginal society has brought them cultural improvement, A still believe that Aboriginal societies are best left simplistic though modernization has brought them sufficient food for the society as

this modernization has also brought in pollution to this untouched part of human societies. Moreover, it has brought in diseases that are foreign to their land, leading to more deaths. -he soil erosion that the immense plowing and repeated over+farming has caused the soil to be infertile and barren. -he nutrients from the fertilizers caused the water to be polluted and caused algae bloom in rivers, wiping out species home to the river. "ot only that, for Aboriginal societies are small in our standard today + around >0 people. -he introduction of domestic farming had caused many societies to be nucleated together. An a sense, they are not Aborigines anymore. 2ven though the relationship between Aboriginal+2uropean has been improved, the deaths of the Aborigines7 the families destroyed had left deep scar in the hearts of the Aborigines. -he foreign viruses and bacteria that the 2uropeans brought in killed many of the Aborigines. -he number of women that they had raped, the children they had killed, the men they had perhaps enslaved and tortured +-his people had lost their lives due to the in'ustice and no one will ever know. -he holes that they had made, the 2uropeans will never be able to fill it up again. -herefore, A agree to a large e tent that Aboriginal societies are best left simplistic as modernization had changed their simple lives forever and the conflicts between the 2uropean and them had caused their number to deplete even further. 2uropeans may have brought in technology and domestication7 however, it also brought in disaster, chaos and diseases + all which led to the downfall of the Aborigines. 4ibliographyC #ource .C
httpCDDen.wikipedia.orgDwikiD3istEofEmassacresEofEAndigenousEAustralians

#ource <C
httpCDDen.wikipedia.orgDwikiD*apeE5rimEmassacre

#ource 6C
httpCDDen.wikipedia.orgDwikiD*onvincingE5roundEmassacre

#ource >C
httpCDDen.wikipedia.orgDwikiD*aledonE4ayEcrisis

Sunny Liu Yang 3.16