In my previous post, I discussed Aboriginal culture and wrote about how Aboriginal people are tied to nature and the land they live on. These aspects of the environment are used to build their identity. But since the colonisation of these lands by the British in 1788, this community has slowly been losing their basis and identity.

 

‘Terra Nullius’. This is a very important term that you will see in almost all texts that discuss the colonisation of the natives of Australia. Those who were sent by the British Royal Society to survey the lands in the 1780s declared the land as ‘terra nullius’, which means belonging to no one, and this allowed them to gain ownership of the land without any compensation given to the natives. This was due to very skewed reports made by the first colonisers of the land, namely James Cook and Joseph Banks, as discussed in this writing. They said that the land was “sparsely occupied”. However, these observations were made solely based on the appearance of the shores they arrived on, not the interior land. Even after it was recognised that there were natives on the land, their presence and their culture were not given respect. The British believed that they were superior to the natives and imposed their laws on them, as discussed in the above-mentioned article. This was the start of the occupation that the Aboriginal people had to go through.

 

This allowed the British to create their own land laws, ones that excluded the rights of the Aboriginal people. As established in the previous blog post, the Aboriginals are very dependent on their land for their culture. So these laws severed the ties Aboriginal people had with their land and also caused issues with their identity and self-worth. On top of that, colonisation also brought great changes to the land. More forests had to be cleared for agriculture due to the increase of European settlers and the clearing of forests has only increased since then. This only contributes further to land degradation, something very upsetting to the Aboriginal people and it even affects their mental health.

 

Personally, learning about this was quite upsetting, as there is so much knowledge we can gain from Aboriginal people about the land and environment. However, in recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of preserving Aboriginal culture. Moreover, many have realised that what happened to the Aboriginal people in the past was unjust and so there are efforts to undo some of these wrongs. So, there is some hope for the future for, not only Australian Aboriginals, but also the land that they live on! In my next blog post, I will be talking about more recent developments to the rights of Aboriginals and their land!

~ Yalini

(Cover Photo: Hugo Heimendinger from Pexels)