The Aboriginal culture in Australia

Australia’s history is kind of recent; however Europeans were not the first humans to settle on this big island. In fact, some people known as “Aborigines” are present in Australia for more than forty thousand years.

First, what you need to know is that: Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up more than 2.5% of Australia's population.

Nowadays, Aborigines only live in special reserves where their spirituality and practices are just like rules. There are a lot of different tribes of Aborigines each with its own unique mixture of cultures, customs and languages. In present day Australia these groups are further divided into local communities, who live in different areas. Even today, you can still find approximately two hundred different Aboriginal dialects in Australia.

Most of these Aborigines live in special reserves that are mostly located in the “Red Centre”, near Alice Springs, where some places are considered as highly spiritual for Aborigines. Uluru (which is the aboriginal name of “the Ayers Rock”), is for example one place filled out by memories and spirits for these people, which is why they ask tourists for silence and respect in those areas.

There have been a lot of laws concerning Aborigines in Australia. At one time, some of them were banishing them from some cities and other  “public areas”. Now those laws do not exist anymore.  Nowadays, the Aborigines are still living in those reserves and the only ones you can see outside of them, would be the ones who have been chased from their tribe. That is probably the reason why, all the Aborigines you will see in big cities, will be doing some paintings or Aboriginal music in order to earn some money to live.

Here is a video of an aborigine playing Didgeridoo (aboriginal instrument) in the middle of Sydney.

(For some reasons, including the very poor quality of the Australian internet connexion, it would have taken approximately 12 hours to upload this video directly, which is why I did it through Youtube).

  Australia is very rich culturally speaking, and Aborigines definitely represent a great part of this culture.

Cheers.