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<br /> of today's Aboriginal people live in big cities, away from their ancestral homelands. (As of 2013, 21
<br /> percent live in remote areas.)
<br /> ... still have more than 100 languages among all their different tribes, but all except about 20 are
<br /> highly endangered. Aboriginal languages were traditionally unwritten; therefore, painting, music, songs
<br /> and ceremonies became - and remain - an important means of communication, by which to pass on
<br /> traditions, laws and other information. Most Aboriginal languages are now written, and their main
<br /> language is English.
<br /> ... have the world's longest continuing art tradition, which began as rock art in Arnhem Land,
<br /> located on the very central-northern tip of Australia. They also would - and still do - paint on tree bark,
<br /> ceremonial poles, artifacts and their bodies. X-ray style, portraying bone structure and internal organs,
<br /> first arose about 6,000 years ago and continues to this day. Traditional colors are red (derived naturally
<br /> from ochre), yellow (ochre), white (clay or chalk) and black (charcoal). Interestingly, Aboriginal dot art is
<br /> a contemporary painting style that arose from the Papunya Tula art movment in the 1970s.
<br /> ... used the boomerang as a hunting tool. But while many people mistakenly believe Aboriginal
<br /> people used the boomerang primarily to hunt game, it was mostly used to kill birds or to direct them into
<br /> nets. In the latter situation, for instance, when a flock of birds was spotted, an Aboriginal hunter would
<br /> imitate a hawk call. He or a hunting mate would then throw the boomerang above the birds, which would
<br /> swoop down to elude the fake hawk and fly into strategically placed nets. Other Aboriginal hunting tools
<br /> included clubs, spears and the hunting (or throwing) stick, which was thrown from a distance to take
<br /> down large mammals or birds. A hunting stick, although similarly shaped to the boomerang, is lopsided on
<br /> one side and not meant to return. Today boomerangs are mostly used for sport.
<br /> ... had some permanent effect on the land, mostly from using fire to burn off old grass and make
<br /> way for new green growth, and to flush animals out of the woods. This constant, controlled burning,
<br /> traditionally used in small areas, created open woodlands for kangaroos, wallabies, bandicoots and other
<br /> game, and prevented undergrowth from building up to fuel huge, ultra-destructive wildfires. (Europeans
<br /> had a much broader and detrimental influence on the land, by cutting trees for timber, clearing land for
<br /> crops and overrunning grasslands with livestock.) In some parts of Australia, Aboriginal people, other
<br /> landowners and national park rangers are returning to the use of "firestick farming" to prevent violent
<br /> summer bushfires.
<br /> ... experienced many of the same cultural challenges, indignities and atrocities, at the hands of
<br /> the white settlers, as did our Native Americans and African-Americans, including racism, oppression,
<br /> segregation, decimation and genocide. They also lost most of their scared land to non-indigenous people,
<br /> and all of these problems have caused trouble for the Aboriginal people ever since. They have suffered
<br /> disproportionately high rates of depression, illiteracy, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide, and even today
<br /> an Aboriginal person's life expectancy is about a decade less than that of a non-indigenous Australian!
<br /> ... numbered between 315,000 and 1,000,000 people (estimates vary widely) at the time of
<br /> European settlement in the late 1700s; as of 2013, there were about 670,000 indigenous people, which
<br /> was about 2.5 percent of Australia's total population. Most of today's Aboriginal people are of mixed
<br /> Aboriginal and white descent.
<br /> ... had complex cultural, political and economic rules and edicts, but Europeans did not initially
<br /> understand or appreciate these elaborate social systems. Most European colonists considered the
<br /> Aboriginal people primitive and inferior, partly because of their dark skin and the fact that they didn't
<br /> have any native written languages. (The Aboriginal people communicated orally, musically and artistically.)
<br /> ... became Australian citizens in 1947, yet didn't gain equal voting rights throughout the land until
<br /> 1965, when Queensland became the last Aussie state to pass equal suffrage laws. In 1971 Neville Bonner
<br /> became the first Aboriginal to sit in any Australian Parliament. And it wasn't until 1992 that the
<br /> Australia High Court first recognized native land title in Australia, by passing the Mabo decision.
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