The first people

Before you read

Which of these words do you think you will find in a description of Australian Aboriginal people?

The first people

sacred – hellig / heilag
commit murder – begå mord / gjere eit mord
exclusion – utestengelse / utestenging
ignorance – uvitenhet / fåkunne, utan kjennskap til noko
prejudice – fordommer / fordommar

Before the Europeans came, there were about 500 different Aboriginal peoples living in Australia. They were the only humans here for thousands of years. That’s why there’s no word for Aboriginal (meaning original people) in their languages. It’s a European word.

Did you know that dreaming is an important part of Aboriginal culture? But not a dream in the Western sense. Dreaming is the English name for an Aboriginal concept – a timeless connection with ancestors and the land. The ancestors created the natural world, and are still here in sacred rocks, trees and different parts of the landscape. There are many stories about ancestors, laws and life and the land. They are all timeless. Unlike religions like Christianity or Islam that talk about a “heaven” people can go to after death, the Dreaming is part of Aboriginal people now and forever, it’s not separate from them.

Aboriginal people also have a different attitude to time and place than Westerners. Try to imagine a life where you don’t make or spend time. You can’t use it or waste it, and there’s never too much or too little. Time just is. What matters is your connection to your family, your people and to the natural world. In Aboriginal culture, no one owns the land. You belong to the land in the same way you belong to your family. You hunt animals and gather fruit, vegetables, seeds and insects. You look after the land, and you do not take it or steal it or build walls or fences on it. You are part of the land, and the land is part of you.

Can you understand why the arrival of the European settlers was such a disaster for Aboriginal people? Their culture and way of life was destroyed. Just as it was for Native Americans, the First Nations in Canada, the Maoris in New Zealand and the many original cultures on the African continent. The negative effects of colonialism are still felt today. Did you know that the average life of an Aboriginal person is about 25 years shorter than the rest of the Australian population?

It has taken a long time for the Australian state to officially recognise that the European settlers were responsible for the difficulties the Aboriginal people still suffer today. In 1992 the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, held a very important speech in which he said: “We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice.”

Today there are a number of health programmes and educational programmes to help Aboriginal people. They’re also getting rights to more and more land, although they’re having to fight hard for this. Just think of the problems the Sami have had in Norway. If it’s so difficult to find a solution in a small country like Norway, it’s not surprising that it’s taking a long time in a country as vast as Australia.