In the center of the Australian desert there are 6 separate aboriginal cultural communities called Aranda. These include the Western Aranda, the Northern Aranda, the Eastern Aranda, the Central Aranda and the Lower Southern Aranda. Some of these communities have died out completely and others are combined ("Aranda").
Although the aborigines are considered to be a separate race, they are thought to be descendants of the Ainu of Japan and the Dravidian race of India. There is evidence that the ancestors of the aborigines began their settlement in Australia about 40,000 years ago. This makes them the oldest cultural system that has ever existed (Wardwell 27). Since the Aranda people lived in the desert and rainfall was extremely rare and unpredictable, they became nomads. This nomadic lifestyle wasn't easy for these people and since there were no pack animals they had very few belongings (“The Aborigine Songline Tradition”). They had no permanent shelters and no need for clothing. Since the land was so poor there was no domestication of animals or any agriculture of any kind. These people were hunters and gatherers. Men were responsible for the hunting trips as well as the laws, and the sacred ceremonies while women, on the other hand, were the gatherers. They were also responsible for building temporary shelters and carrying water and firewood. The animals they hunted included kangaroos, opossums, and flightless emus. They gathered roots, seeds, nuts, fruits, grubs, insects, plant shoots, small reptiles, and amphibians (Wardwell 27).
To the Aranda people, the land was called an “Eternal Land” and the mountains, plains, sand hills, springs, and rivers were celebrated in the stories and songs and passed from generation to generation with precision (“The Dispersion of the Strehlow Children” 1). The aborigines believed the earth began as an empty plain and creation took place during what they call “dream time” when giants walked all over the earth creating all the physical components of the world like fire, and light as well as things like laws, rituals, life and death. When they were finished, the giants transformed into various topographical features in the land (Wardwell 27). This proves that the people of the Aranda culture see nature as something sacred.
The lives of the people of the Aranda culture as well as every aboriginal culture in Australia was altered forever in the 19th century when the Europeans began to settle there (Wardwell 27). Although these people had been around for 40,000 years, the English settlers believed that they could just take over the entire continent and demolish this ancient culture, and for the most part, they did.
REFERENCES:
Wardwell, Allen. Island Ancestors. Washington: University of Washington press and the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1994.
“Aranda.” MSU Webpals (1995) http://www.pals.msus.edu/cgi-bin/pals- cgi?SET%20WEB%20MSUCAT/te%20%20Aranda/SAGE%200/M AXDI%205/di%200001 2 Mar 2003.
“The Aborigine Songline Tradition.” The Memosys Website http://www.uni- ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/cunni08.htm 2 Mar. 2003.
“Dispersion of the Strehlow Children.” http://www.strehlow.com.au/cdsca/strehlow/Wighard%20Strehlow.pdf 2 Mar. 2003.
Written by Brandi Cornish, 2003