M5- Learner Manual
| Site: | Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education & Training |
| Course: | 11026NAT Diploma of Applied Aboriginal Studies 2024 |
| Book: | M5- Learner Manual |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Wednesday, 17 December 2025, 1:54 AM |
1. Introduction
Module 5 is made up of one unit of competency:
NAT11026006 Contribute to maintenance of Aboriginal peoples cultural identity
Please be aware that the resources presented throughout this training in publications, websites, videos, etc. may contain images, voices or names of people who have passed away.
2. Australian Land Mass
Australia is a land of contrast and comprises a land area of about 7.692 million square kilometres.
Although this is just five per cent of the world's land mass (149.45 million square kilometres), Australia is the planet's sixth largest country after Russia, Canada, China, the United States of America and Brazil. It is also the only one of the largest six nations that is completely surrounded by water.
Australia's land mass is:
· almost as great as that of the United States of America
· about 50 per cent greater than Europe, (excluding Russia) and
· 32 times greater than the United Kingdom.
Geographical and climatic features
Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest continental landmass on Earth It is the smallest of the world's continent and apart from Antarctica it is the driest.
The highest point on the Australian mainland is Mount Kosciuszko, New South Wales, at 2228 metres above sea level. The lowest point is the dry bed of Lake Eyre, South Australia, which is 15 metres below sea level.
The mainland and Tasmania are surrounded by many thousands of small islands and numerous larger ones. Nearly 40 per cent of the total coastline length comprises island coastlines. As an island nation, coastlines play an important role in defining national, state and territory boundaries.
Nearly 20 per cent of Australia's land mass is classified as desert. As well as having a low average annual rainfall, rainfall across Australia is also variable. The rainfall pattern is concentric around the extensive arid core of the continent, with rainfall intensity high in the tropics and some coastal areas.
Climatic zones range from tropical rainforests, deserts and cool temperature forests to snow covered mountains.
Within this climate, our plants and animals have evolved on a geographically isolated continent, through a time of a slowly drying climate, combined with continuing high variability. The uniqueness of much of Australia's flora and fauna is thus at least partly due to these features of our climate.
Torres Strait Islands
When considering the land and sea of Indigenous Australia, it important to remember the significance of the island nations that are not part of the mainland such as the Torres Strait Islands and the Tiwi Islands.
Whilst it is a relatively small part of Australia geographically, the Torres Strait is home to 4,514 Torres Strait Islander people according to the 2016 Census of these 50.8% were male and 49.2% were female. Although a relatively small geographical part of Australia, it does have at least four (4) types of topography.
The Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) website states that it works fifteen (15) outer island communities, reaching from the northern most point of Australia to the border of Papua New Guinea. Our communities are made up of diverse traditional language and dialect groups.
The Torres Strait Islands are distributed across an area of some 48 000 km². The distance across the Strait from Cape York to Papua New Guinea is around 150 km at the narrowest point; the islands lie scattered in between, extending some 200 to 300 km from farthest east to farthest west.
The Torres Strait was formerly a land bridge which connected the present-day Australian continent with Papua New Guinea. This land bridge was submerged by rising sea levels forming the Strait which now connects the Arafura and Coral seas. Many of the western Torres Strait Islands are actually the remaining peaks of this land bridge.
The islands and their surrounding waters and reefs provide a highly diverse set of land and marine ecosystems, with niches for many rare or unique species. Marine animals of the islands include dugongs (an endangered species of sea mammal), as well as Green, Hawksbill and Flatback Sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles.
Geographically, the islands in the Torres Strait can be divided into four main groups: an eastern group of high volcanic islands; a central group of low sandy islands; a western group of high islands composed of granite and other volcanic rocks; and a northern group of low islands composed of mangrove muds and peats.
Source: http://www.tsra.gov.au
3. Relationship with the Land
Aboriginal Land Management Practices
Aboriginal peoples consciously and deliberately managed and modified the land for their own means. Fire was well understood and skilfully used. They knew how it would burn, how hot, in which direction and when it would peter out. Through this intricate understanding of the use of fire and its effects, they created a variety of environments. These include areas of grass lands, scrublands, treed areas (managing different types of forests – Mallee, low open woodland, tall forests) some with and some without understorey (low growing plants) depending on the plants that grew there and their intended purposes. This created a mosaic patterning. This gave them control over where, when and how particular animals would shelter, feed, breed, etc. and when and how particular plants would grow, bear fruit and be harvested.
These fires were mostly cool burn, trickle fires. Cool fires are essentially small patches of fire carried out in mild conditions such as cool mornings or late afternoons in late autumn and/or early winter when there is little breeze. This made the likelihood of wild uncontrollable bushfires less likely and therefore less frequent. It also enabled ease of movement through country.
It has been understood by science for some time, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples altered the composition of the flora in Australia (the rise of Eucalyptus spp. over the previous dominant species; Casuarina spp.), by their use of fire. This evidence suggests that there was a period, tens of thousands of years ago, when some fires did burn as hotter fires and wildfires. It is not known whether this was deliberate or not.
Weather events were closely followed. Attention had to be focused on elements such as wind speed and direction, clouds and rain types, as each event is linked to different behaviours of plants and animals. This attention to the weather gave important indications for the best time for hunting and collecting different plants for food, medicine and for making useful items from plant and animal-based sources such as clothing, baskets, tools and weapons.
The four seasons that we refer to today, are a European description of the annual change in conditions that coincide with the position of the sun. These being the summer and winter solstice marking the sun’s highest and lowest point in the sky and the midpoint between each solstice; the spring and autumn equinox. We all know that these descriptions are often out of sync with what actually occurs in this land. The four seasons are metered out evenly, with the calendar dates announcing the start and end of each of these seasons:
Summer 1st December
Autumn 1st March
Winter 1st June
Spring 1st September
Traditionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s understanding of the seasons often identifies more than four seasons, including nested mini seasons within a season. This varies with the different climatic regions of the country. These seasons are not necessarily of the same length and ebb and flow from year to year. Often the nature and length of these seasons would also indicate how the following season might unfold.
The Gooniyandi seasons calendar represents a wealth of Indigenous ecological knowledge. The development of the calendar was driven by a community desire to document seasonal-specific knowledge of the Margaret and Fitzroy Rivers in the Kimberley region, including the environmental indicators that act as cues for bush tucker collection.
Aboriginal calendar examples may be viewed in the Supplementary Resources for this Block.
In recent years there have been some people writing about the land management practices of Australia’s first peoples.
Interpretations of early colonial artists were thought to be idealised images that were made to look more like England. Reviewing early accounts of observations has suggested that those artists (the photojournalists of the time), painted quite accurate scenes.
Some of these accounts are amongst the arguments put forward in publications such as Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe (2018) and The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage (2011), which propose a very different picture. These authors have revisited early writings and paintings and argue that the information in these had been interpreted to fit in with official histories, rather than taken as accurate observations, such as in works by John Lycett, John Glover, Eugene von Guérard and many others.
You can view some examples of these early landscape paintings at the following sites:
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/joseph-lycett-the-pastoral-landscape-in-early-colonial-australia/
In his book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe (a senior Aboriginal historian and storyteller) argues that Aboriginal people right across the continent were raising crops and domesticating plants through practices such as sowing, harvesting, irrigating and then storing their harvest. These are not the practices of hunter-gatherers. Pascoe challenges the use of the ‘hunter-gatherer’ tag in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A great deal of evidence comes from the early records and diaries of the settlers and explorers, telling it as they saw and experienced it. When Major Thomas Mitchell first came to the Port Phillip district in Victoria (1836) he was struck by how Australia’s Indigenous peoples had shaped the land and that how much some of the landscape resembled Europe.
The world of the Australians was as moulded by conscious human action as were the hedgerow fields of England. If one used the plough and the iron axe to shape their world, the other used fire and the stone axe.
Recent archaeological assessments have uncovered basic farming practices of some Indigenous groups in Victoria. The Gunditjmara people, engineered and constructed a sophisticated system in the Lake Condah region. This system was used to farm huge quantities of eel, enough to feed up to 10,000 people. According to archaeologist, Heather Builth:
The Gunditjmara weren’t just catching eels, their whole society was based around eels…The villages associated with the Lake Condah fish farm…were actually more like company towns, with dwellings built to house the people who worked the farms. It’s like you have your council houses for the factory. That’s what was going on here.
There is also evidence of small-scale damming of rivers, waterways management, creating fish traps.
The colonial belief was that Aboriginal peoples did not ever build dwellings but wandered through the landscape as nomads. James Dawson, a Victorian pastoralist from the 1800’s reported:
the residences were formed with a frame of stouts limbs, tall enough for a person to stand upright in and that this dome-shaped frame was clad in grass and covered over with turf, “like slates on a roof”. He is at pains to demonstrate that these were strong and comfortable abodes...
These early accounts describe what they saw as ‘carefully managed parklands’ and like a ‘gentleman's estate’ with ‘obviously managed pathways’. It was clear to them that the way the vegetation was tended was purposeful and displayed a sophisticated understanding.
Bill Gammage discusses his book ‘The biggest Estate on Earth’ in the following Youtube video:
Observation over millennia gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples vital information. Aboriginal peoples’ land management practices show us that Country is ‘read’ to indicate when and how things will occur. The way that birds behave, the timing and abundance (or lack) of flowering of certain plants, the way the stars appear etc. are all used to predict other events that indicate timing, abundance and enabling planning and management working in sympathy with the seasons and cycles of wet/ dry, flowering and fruiting, breeding cycles of fauna. This all ensured that populations for future hunting/ harvest etc. were understood to sustain the human population. These practices were also linked to spiritual and kinship obligations.
This gentle relationship with Country is being taken up by some modern ecologists through joint management projects and other caring for country initiatives. Modern day advantages include a reduction of out-of-control bushfires and the ‘reading’ of the elements and other signals from the land itself.
Non-Indigenous Land Management Practices
Early settlers did not necessarily understand what they saw when arriving in Australia. As the land management practices were so very different to those in Europe, they were mostly overlooked.
Australia has not seen volcanic activity in recent times and missed major glaciations in the last ice age (only the mountains of Tasmania, some of south-eastern Australia and New Guinea were covered in ice). These are two most important mechanisms for forming soil.
This limited formation of new soil is why Australia is referred to as an ‘old continent’. The most recent soil forming processes were about 15,000 years ago (ice age) but other areas have not had any of these soil forming processes for up to 600 million years.
In 18th century Europe fire was to be feared, though it was also used to clear the land for grazing animals with hard hooves for wool and meat production and to ‘tame’ and ‘conquer’ the wild. They also cleared the land by mechanical means, felling old growth, ripping smaller trees and shrubs wholly out – roots and all. This left the soil open to erosion by wind and water.
They then stocked the land with hooved animals that were previously unseen in this country. These herds and flocks have compacted soils, destroying soil structure, and increasing run-off and nutrient levels in the waterways. Many of these practices continue today and have a negative environmental impact. This of course, also obliterated the subtle land management practices of the Indigenous peoples. Thankfully, modern farming displays a greater awareness of impacts on the land and practices are increasingly more environmentally sustainable.
European settlers came from a very different environment. Their soils were deep, formed by volcanic and glacial activity (processes which are still occurring in many places around the world) They carried on with what they knew and found that it often didn’t work, so they moved on to further areas to see if they could make it work there.
In a sense, managing the land was, and is, about progress, economic growth and production for maintaining a population that is ever increasing. This extends to global economic advancement, with practices such as exporting produce and mining.
Both underground and open cut mines devastate landscapes leaving behind, toxic by-products (gasses, mineral rich slag heaps, waste ponds) that frequently seep into waterways and other adjacent lands. Fracking practices have drained water bodies and creeks due to fractured riverbeds. The water often turns up downstream with toxic levels of minerals that cannot sustain life. Governments and mining companies still seek unlimited access to these natural resources.
Water courses have had their flows redirected to fit with planning for the built environment. Hard surfaces (roads etc.) have increased runoff and increased nutrient levels.
These environmentally damaging practices are supported by us through our daily use of roads, transport, foods that are produced and trucked in, water that instantly flows every time we turn a tap, gas and electricity to power our homes and cook our food, etc. It’s impossible to scale it back to the sustainable practices in use before 1788 due to much larger human populations.
Consider the following question in preparation for your weekly Q&A with your trainer:
With the devastating bush fires of 2019/2020 that ravaged so much country there has been more attention focussing on environmental land management practices of Australia’s First Nation’s people.
What are some examples of those traditional land management practices?
Conflicting Values
These very different cultures with sets of land values obviously clash. To those of 18th century European value set, Australia was an untapped resource that was not being used. They saw no ‘progress’ as they understood it. There were dangerous creatures that needed to be eradicated or controlled and pest animals that ate their crops (e.g., kangaroos) The land needed to be owned and managed for economic purposes and fenced to define boundaries and keep stock in, while keeping people and nature out.
For Aboriginal groups, this ‘progress’ restricted their movement through country and created barriers to other related nation groups with whom they previously traded and interacted. It halted or hindered their ability to tend country and honour cultural obligation. Some areas were left to overgrow and become a fire hazard while other areas were utterly overtaken.
Native Title
Native Title comes with conflicts and limitations as it does not grant legal ownership of lands and waters. It instead recognises the pre-existing rights of First Nations peoples. This has created difficulties when making Native Title claims, as claimant groups are expected to show evidence of continued connection to country, cultural or traditional practices that are relatively unbroken. This process can take many years and cost a substantial amount of money to complete. When Native Title is determined not all rights are automatically granted.
Under Native Title, commercial rights are generally not recognised. There are no rights to minerals, gas, etc. that might be found on their lands. Native Title also does not grant the ability to veto mining projects. Instead, they must advocate and negotiate with mining companies to protect their lands, especially sites of cultural significance such as sacred sites. The rights of pastoralists, federal government, areas of public works like roads, schools or hospitals and private owners also override Native Title.
Native Title rights can be extinguished, where rights are no longer able to be exercised in the claimed area. Once extinguished, these rights are very seldom reinstated.
There is no protection for Native Title holders if governments make amendments to legislation. However, the Native Title Legislation Amendment Act 2021 (the Amendment Act) extends the areas in which historical extinguishment may be disregarded to include areas of national, state or territory parks where there is agreement with the relevant government party. This will expand the areas where native title can be recognised.
4. Maintaining Cultural Identity
Maintaining Cultural Identity through Language
In the early days of colonialism according to Walsh, there were more than 250 distinct Aboriginal social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties. These 250 languages included about 800 dialects, with each language being particular to country and peoples. Currently only around 120 are still spoken and of these, most are considered endangered.
These peoples all spoke more than one language, as is usually the case for speakers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. This was important as each nation and clan needed to speak their own language and the languages of groups with which they shared boundaries and had relationships, for trade, marriage, cultural, environmental and resource sharing.
They needed also to know whether their languages were passed down through their mother’s (matrilineal) or their father’s (patrilineal) line. This was connected to their moiety and was important for the way that trade and kinship with other clans was structured - matrilineal to matrilineal and patrilineal to patrilineal.
The deterioration of Aboriginal languages was brought about by a number of factors. These included:
· Disease and massacres which devastated clans, especially around the areas colonised early in the piece.
· Through government policies such as Protection and Assimilation, Integration and the forcible removal of children, peoples were moved off traditional lands onto missions and stations and connected groups and families were dispersed and stolen from each other.
· As is the case for many colonised and overthrown Indigenous peoples around the world, they were restricted (or forbidden e.g., Irish, Icelandic) to speak their own languages. This was clearly the case on missions and stations.
· The restrictions on movement and interaction with neighbouring clan groups due to being moved away, blocked by fencing and built infrastructure in the quickly changing landscapes, helped to deplete languages further and secure disconnection from relatives in other language groups, hence kinship ties.
This separation and breaking of linkage was devastating for Aboriginal culture as a whole. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is an oral culture. All forms of knowledge are held in language through songs and stories. There is no written information to refer to. Language connects peoples to their country and to spiritual and cultural practices. Many daily life skills and practical knowledge (e.g., environmentally sustainable practices) became inaccessible and buried.
It has been recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are vitally important for the maintenance and retrieval of culture and identity. Language programs have been running in primary schools in regional and remote locations in recent years, which is helping to halt the loss of remaining spoken languages.
In NSW, planning and consultation are currently taking place to amend legislation and processes to the First Languages Bill and the Land Rights Act. These will inform the proposed, standalone Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill. This legislation is being revised and created to support the work of the proposed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Authority (ACHA). Other states and territories have similar legislation that is in varying states of amendment.
The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Authority will assist in supporting Indigenous Languages and Arts program for projects and organisations that support participation in and maintenance of Indigenous culture through languages and the arts. There are specified government funds for language retrieval and maintenance programs, with additional funds recently allocated.
When considering language retrieval and maintenance it is the old people, traditional owners and elders who are so very important, as they are the ones who have knowledge and use of language that can be passed on.
The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IY2019) to raise awareness of the crucial role of languages.
There is more information on what is happening for language maintenance and retrieval through the following link:
https://www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/indigenous-arts-and-languages
Consider the following question in preparation for your weekly Q&A sessions with your trainer:
Should Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander languages be taught in the Dept of Education mainstream curriculum to all students?
Maintaining Cultural Identity through the Arts
Art is a universal expression of culture and identity for all peoples, globally. The arts are of critical importance to maintaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and identity. This is an area where culture can be both strengthened from within and shared with the rest of the world in celebration through a range of arts mediums, including:
· Painting
· Dance
· Theatre
· Film and television
· Music
Aboriginal artists have embraced both traditional and contemporary forms to showcase their culture as a means of connecting with and maintaining their culture and identity as well as socio political commentary and expression of what it means to be an Indigenous person in contemporary Australia.
In traditional ceremonial enactments, there are sections where men or women are supposed to lower their eyes when parts of the enactment are depicting women’s or men’s knowledge, respectively. In displays for NAIDOC or other ‘public show’ of culture this is not required. Sensitive content, such as secret and sacred material will usually be left out or be encoded such that only appropriate persons can ‘read’ it.
This is an area where men’s and women’s activities and responsibilities are often defined. For example, in some communities’ women are wholly forbidden to play the Yidaki (Didgeridoo). In other areas women are not supposed to play during ceremonial gatherings but may play informally.
The traditional processes of art making (in any medium), connects the maker to ancestral knowledge and affirms identity and belonging. The act of making brings ancient aspects of culture (past) into the active present. Knowledge is acquired through being taught as well as the act of making. This may include tending to traditional and spiritual obligation.
Both making and teaching the next generation how to make paintings, objects, dances, songs etc. has always been the primary means of passing on and maintaining culture. This is still the case today.
Cultural knowledge is passed on through the stories that accompany the artistic expression and skills and process of making and performing.
The completed work of art is a little different. Though the completed work establishes and demonstrates community ownership of stories and cultural pride, not all community members are able, or allowed, to know the information it contains. Some of this knowledge is reserved for the initiated or entrusted custodians of specific knowledge. This will be passed on to future members who are assigned such responsibility, which may be encoded or hidden in the completed work.
Theatre, Film and Television
There has been a surge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers in theatre, film and television in recent years. This continues to push forward as they gain confidence and support to tell their stories through these media. Aboriginal actors and directors have gained recognition with international audiences as well as won national and international awards. Many of these artists have become household names for mainstream Australians. In Australia, up until the 1990s Indigenous actors were rarely seen on the screen but since then numbers have increased considerably to the degree that some have become household names.
The National Indigenous Television network (NITV) has had a great impact with exclusive Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content. It presents a platform for Aboriginal stories and information to be presented from an Indigenous perspective, with content that includes drama, historical accounts, documentaries and satire.
Aboriginal stories are being played on the stage, depicting both traditional and urban Indigenous people’s stories. Recently, there have been theatre productions played wholly in Indigenous language to audiences of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous patrons, to great acclaim. Mainstream Australia is embracing this surge as we all see the high quality of work pour out, helping to build understanding and respect.
Dance
Traditional, ceremonial displays and contemporary dance are well secured in the arts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers are becoming a regular feature for opening both Indigenous and non-indigenous events and celebrations across Australia.
In 1976 the NAISDA Dance Academy welcomed its first students. They learned from collaborations of Indigenous dance creators, western trained choreographers and traditional cultural owners in workshops for young people keen to learn and perform this new dance fusion. NAISDA also had a professional troupe the Aboriginal/Islander Dance Theatre (AIDT). This vibrant touring company employed students and graduates of the new Careers in Dance training program.
Many NAISDA graduates move on to perform with the Bangarra Dance Theatre. This company is renowned nationally and has an international profile as well.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performing arts such as dance and theatre, are great platforms for modern performance that is about culture, identity and politics.
Music
Traditional songs and percussion are well known as part of traditional ceremony and dance and is instantly recognisable as Australian Aboriginal music.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians have also been a feature in Australian mainstream culture for a long time, probably the most prominent of all the arts areas till recent times. Both solo artists and bands are an established feature in Australian music. This is a medium that can reach a very wide audience through the radio and streaming services.
Visual Arts
There is great diversity in the geographic representation, medium and subject matter of Indigenous visual arts. The arts are a primary means of transmitting Indigenous culture and communicating identity, place and belonging. Indigenous knowledge, history and other cultural information has been and continues to be transmitted orally over many generations. Expressive art creation (Dance, ceremony, rock paintings and carvings, western desert and other painting – e.g., Namatjira through to conceptual forms) keeps stories (culture) alive, through the ongoing sharing of information.
Contemporary Indigenous artists often use traditional motif in their work alongside non-traditional elements and materials such as manufactured paints, found objects and European themes and tropes. These works often depict socio-political commentary about oppression, colonialism and the difficulty of being an outsider in a culture reinventing itself to survive in its own country.
Although appropriation (using style and theme element of culture’s other than one’s own) is considered a valid practice in contemporary art, some Indigenous artists have come under scrutiny for using styles and motif that are not connected to their own country (e.g., Western Desert ‘dot’ painting or the Rarrk feature of Kunwinjku art styles from Northern Australia) especially those who have been raised and live in urban areas.
A view of different styles of Indigenous visual art is possible through the following links:
https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/aboriginal-art-styles/
https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/facts-about-aboriginal-art/
Visual artists often need permission to paint a particular story. Where important stories are concerned, and particularly those containing secret or sacred information, an artist must have permission to paint the story. Traditional Aboriginal artists cannot paint a story that does not belong to them through family lineage.
Aboriginal art on canvas and board only began about 50 years ago: Traditionally, the paintings we now see on canvas, were scratched or drawn on rock walls, used in body paint or on ceremonial articles and importantly, drawn in the ground accompanied by song or story.
In 1971, Geoffrey Bardon, a school teacher working with Aboriginal children in Papunya, noticed the Aboriginal men, while telling stories to others, were drawing symbols in the sand. He encouraged them to put these stories down on board and canvas. Since then, Australian Aboriginal Art has been tagged as one of the most exciting contemporary art form of the 20th Century.
Aboriginal visual art has assisted cultural revival. As the older artists teach the young, it revitalises young Indigenous people's appreciation and knowledge of their culture. This also increases self-esteem and pride in one’s culture and gives non-Aboriginal people an accessible avenue to build stronger bridges of understanding.
More information in the following links on Aboriginal painting.
Understanding Symbols in Aboriginal painting:
https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/aboriginal-art-symbols/ (This web page includes imbedded videos to watch)
There are rock paintings and carvings scattered across the country. Many of them are off the beaten track, while others are seen on a regular basis in such as in national parks. Rock carvings in Kilarney Heights, at the edge of Gaddigal national park (Sydney north side), have 1950’s homes built all along a big rock shelf. In one yard, where the rock carvings become obvious in the afternoon light, there is a Hills Hoist cemented into the rock in the middle of the carvings. This is now on the register (since 2014) when the renting resident made some enquiries and had a traditional owner come with the Heritage Council to investigate.
Rock art styles:
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/aboriginal-rock-art
Styles/regions:
http://www.aboriginalartstore.com.au/aboriginal-art-culture/aboriginal-art-regions/
International Profile of Aboriginal Visual Art
Aboriginal works account for the majority of static visual arts export in Australia. Western desert style painting still has a major profile. This style of painting is highly sought after by international visitors and art collectors and is a multimillion-dollar business. There are quite a few very high-profile, well-known collectors who have huge collections of Australian Aboriginal art. More contemporary works which take major reference to desert and other traditional styles are also sought after.
Objects such as Yidaki (Didgeridoo), boomerangs, woven bags and baskets, and Coolamon are also considered collectable pieces. The more traditional the higher the asking price. This does not include shiny, overly painted pieces with non-traditional colours which are obviously made for the tourist market and are often made in Asia.
The provenance of the work (knowing where the work comes from) is one of the most important things about applying a dollar value to these works, especially for the collectable and international markets. This most often also means that the work is ethically sourced and appropriate funds and acknowledgements get back to the artist.
At Tranby, on Gadigal country, there are paintings and sculptural/ object-based works displayed around the campus. All these works were created by Aboriginal artists. There is also information about some of the artists, displayed alongside many of the works.
The Role of Elders in Maintaining Cultural Identity
Elders are the closest link to traditional culture. They are usually initiated persons who are the keepers of knowledge. Cultural knowledge and traditions are passed on to the next generation through elders.
Creation stories provide information on cultural rules or laws for living. The Dreaming provides rules for social relationships, economic activities, religious activities and ceremonies. Elders know the creation stories and have deep knowledge of how the lessons taught through the Dreaming stories can be applied to ways of living a cultural life.
In some communities, men and women are elders with equal standing; in others it may be a few men who hold that status.
Aboriginal peoples reveal their culture bit by bit to the younger generations. "You have to be initiated and trusted to be able to give another level of culture to [another] person," says Aboriginal woman Kathy Balngayngu Marika.
Elders are usually addressed with "uncle" or "aunty" as a term of respect. These terms are used for people held in esteem, generally older people who have earned that respect but they are not necessarily elders. Being older or senior does not mean that people are elders. It takes a long time to become an elder.
Jenny Munro, a Wiradjuri woman says,
"You become an Elder because you have lived your life in a particular fashion giving service to your community. Your wider group will decide that you've reached a milestone and that you are then an elder”.
It is important to make an effort to make and/or maintain relationships with elders and traditional owners to maintain or rediscover cultural protocols and beliefs. These relationships are where you can build a deeper understanding of the diversity of traditions and beliefs and educate yourself firsthand. Cultural education through elders is where you can build a firm basis for the respect for culture and knowledge holders.
You might have direct connections to elders already. Cherish these relationships and keep them going. This might need to include making time to travel to country to seek out elders and traditional owners of country to which your family is connected. If links to parental country of origin have been broken and you’re not sure where your country is, you may need to do some investigation to find out who the elders and knowledge holders are in the local community where you currently live.
Even for contemporary, more urbanised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, relationships with mature Indigenous community member and elders can help to strengthen cultural identity and may be the basis for spiritual belief.
References:
https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/subject-guide-indigenous-australians-festivals
https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/barka/native-title-limitations/#:~:text=Under%20Native%20Title%2C%20commercial%20rights,be%20found%20on%20their%20lands.
https://www.kateowengallery.com/page/10-Facts-About-Aboriginal-Art.aspx
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/respect-for-elders-and-culture
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/Environment/Land-management/Indigenous/Indigenous-calendars
Pascoe, Bruce. 2018. Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?, Magabala Books
Gammage, Bill. 2011. The Biggest Estate on Earth, How Aborigines made Australia, Allen & Unwin
Walsh, Michael (1991). "Overview of indigenous languages of Australia". In Romaine, Suzanne. Language in Australia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 27–48. ISBN 978-0-521-33983-4.