native people of Australia
who probably came from somewhere in Asia at least 30,000 years
ago. In 1996 the population of aborigines and Torres Straits
Islanders was 386,049, 1.5% of the Australian population as
a whole and slightly more than the estimated aboriginal population
of 350,000 at the time of European colonization in the late
18th cent. At that time, there were 500-600 distinct groups
of aborigines speaking about 200 different languages or dialects
(at least 50 of which are now extinct). Although culturally
diverse, these groups were not political and economic entities
and lacked class hierarchies and chiefs. They lived by hunting
and gathering, and there was extensive intergroup trade throughout
the continent.
The aborigines have an intricate classification system that
defines kinship relations and regulates marriages. The Kariera,
for example, are divided into hordes, or local groups of about
30 people, which are divided into four classes, or sections.
Membership in a section determines ritual and territorial claims.
In half of the hordes the men are divided among the Karimera
and Burung sections; in the other half they are divided among
the Palyeri and Banaka sections. These sections are exogamous,
and rules of marriage, descent, and residence determine how
these sections interact: Karimera men must marry Palyeri women,
and their children are Burung, and so on. Sons live in the same
hordes as their fathers, so the composition of hordes alternates
every generation. The complex system, by requiring each man
to marry a woman from only one of the three possible sections,
fosters a broad network of social relations and creates familial
solidarity within the horde as a whole. Aborigines maintain
elaborate systems of totemism (the belief that there is a genealogical
relationship between people and species of plants or animals).
They see the relationship between totemic plants and animals
as a symbolic map of the relations between different people.
Contact with British settlers, beginning in 1788, initially
led to economic marginalization, a loss of political autonomy,
and death by disease. So-called pacification by force culminated
in the late 1880s, leading to a massive depopulation and extinction
for some groups. By the 1940s almost all aborigines were missionized
and assimilated into rural and urban Australian society as low-paid
laborers with limited rights. In 1976 and 1993 the Australian
government enacted land-rights legislation that has returned
to the aborigines a degree of autonomy, and court decisions
in 1992 and 1996 recognized aboriginal property rights. The
recent increase in aboriginal population reflects improved living
conditions and a broad and inclusive definition of aboriginal
identity on the part of the government. Their average standard
of living and life expectancy, however, are not comparable with
that of most Australians. In 1999 the Australian government
issued an official expression of regret for past mistreatment
of aborigines.
Courtesy of encyclopedia.com |
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