Aboriginerne i Australien

The first English settlers arrived in 1788 and they discovered that Australia was not empty.

The aborigines lived In Australia for 60.000 years. They had no contact with the outside world. The aboriginal’s language is the oldest language on earth. They did not build houses or shelters they lived in hundreds of tribes and there were many 100 different languages. There is a period called creation time or the dream time. Certain places such as Uluru were sacred, people were linked to some powerful creative spirits. The aborigines had no written language, but they did develop great artwork. No one knows how many people lived in Australia before the first white settlers came. Bush trucker is the traditional food the aborigines ate to survive in the outback. They ate fruits, nuts, roots, seeds, vegetables, and

even insects and grubs. In 1830, a missionary named George Augustus Robinson was asked by the. colonial authorities to do something to stop the killings. 1845, there were only 45 Aborigines left. By the end of the 19th century, there were only about 60,00o Aborigines left. In the 20th century, the Australian government tried to integrate Aborigines into white society by removing them from their traditional tribal areas. From 1900 to 1971, up to one fourth of all Aboriginal children were taken from their families by force. Today, there are roughly 257,000 Aborigines in Australia. That is about 1 percent of the total population. An Aboriginal athlete, Cathy Freeman, the Queen of the Track, has become a positive role model and a symbol of achievement for many Aborigines. During the Sydney z000 Olympics, Cathy Freeman won Australia's tooth-gold medal in the 400-meter race. The whole question of the Aborigines is still explosive.