Preserving The Culture Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander People In Sydney

The Indigenous Community and Heritage in Sydney

Sydney’s unique culture of indigenous community is rooted in thousand of years’ heritage and the fact that people have continued to preserve the practice. Australian government has taken a number of initiatives previously to preserve the culture of Torres Strait Islander The tourism sector is also concentrated on promoting partly the culture of aboriginal people, for instance Aboriginal Blue Mountains Walkabout (Battiste, 2016). The journey is educational in nature and just an hour drive from Sydney which serves the purpose of protecting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. From recent studies and literature of Australia, scholars have deducted the amount of trama that has been impregnated within the community. Some of the immediate reasons for the feeling of disorientation among the people have been detachment from their own community and family members, cultural shock due to separation from their own culture and assemblage into an alien one. A large part of Sydney’s culture and history is predominated by the ethically and culturally unique Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people who came from the islands of Torres Strait. They are quintessentially nomadic in nature and they carved out their land guided by the spirit of their ancestors. A formal representation of the culture and idiosyncrasies of their culture can be assembled from literature, folk songs, dance, poetry, drama that shapes the aboriginal life and culture. Currently, the aboriginal population sums up to 649,200 people with around 25.5 percent of NT population as claimed by government data (Fisher & McDonald, 2016).

The students of folk literature dispersed all over the world know in-depth about the spirituality of these people, who has striven for ages to spiritually connect with the land they are inhabiting. According to folk stories, they simply did not occupy the land, but were an essential part of the same, they belonged to the land, protecting and preserving it in their own ways. However, the predominant occupations amongst these people were fishery, hunting and farming. As it is with the transient nature of culture and practices, the lifestyle went through turbulent times because of the arrival of the European settlers who brought along with them their own set of beliefs and traditions which were a direct threat to the age old practices and cultural practices of the aborigines.

This set them against a different cultural backdrop which made them the ‘other’, a culturally inferior ad primitive set of tribes in front of the white skin European settlers.   Colonization brought along with them a direct threat to the existence of these islanders as the colonial society was largely intolerant to the proverbial ‘low-class’ aboriginal community. These gradually pushed them towards different strata of society, where they were dominated by the all pervasive culture and norms of their superior European colonizers. This led to a long period of denial on the part of the European community towards the aborigines, followed by cultural an economic exclusion. Consequently, the aboriginal clique was forced to relocate and follow a different set of cultural practice and linguistic.

Traumas and Preservation Efforts

Although here were resistance from their part towards their colonial settlers and planned for widespread protests in order to shelter their culture. As far as history is concerned, they had planned and implemented their planning by disrupting stations, killing farm laborers hailing from the colonial and dominant England and damaging their livestock. Verbal and physical abuse was also prevalent in their mode of protest. There are a number of diaries and journals chronicling the lifestyle of the indigenous which documents how in 1897, the whole of Torres Strait Island was brought under the annexation of Queensland which although endeavored to protect the interests of the community also provided them with alienation from the land, subordinated them to the doctrines and tenets of Christianity and dictated their life through the implementation of Queensland Aboriginal Protection Act.

In the year 1937, the Commonwealth Government conveyed through a conference that he Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders should be ingratiated within the wider population and culture. The final segregation and disorientation came when the children of these people were snatched away from them to be placed in training homes and were hired as laborers or domestic servants (Gausia et al., 2015). One of the pioneers who took the initiative to implant them within the mainstream culture and ensure the well-being of the entire community is Tom Calma, it was due to his applauding sense of social justice that he protested against the degrading state of health prevailing in the community due to lack of action on the art of the county. He championed for the Aboriginal health services in order to steer the community towards a part of enrichment and development. Today, the tourism sector is enriched by the depth of art and culture that is left behind by the aboriginal community, social justice practitioners today envision for a complete cultural immersion within the community, which will help the younger generation recognize and appreciate the writers, dancers, film-makers and musicians hailing from this community which prodigious skills.

One of the core concerns of today is the slow erosion of the traditional aboriginal languages that have witnessed a total exhaustion due to the lack of consciousness within the mainstream culture. Around 12 percent of the indigenous population is speaking their native language where the majority is more fluent in English (Reyhner, 2015). However, the government today has ruled out the usage of derogatory or offensive names used previously to indicate the aborigines, for instance half-caste or half blood. The terms through which they can be addressed are ‘First Australian’, ‘Aboriginal Person’ and ‘Torres Strait Islander’ person.

Impact on Tourism

Here are some of the steps that NGO workers are planning to incorporate within the society in order to promote the well-being of the community are-

1. Creating awareness among the wider population through the help of social media.
2. Allocating team in order to ensure multi-disciplinary care of the indigenous community.
3. Ensuring that the community people are not getting deprived of basic care like dental care, counselling and social care. As a result of their good work, only 22 percent of the population has reported ill health where 43 percent of them have claimed to have access to healthcare clinics and possess knowledge about maintaining a complete healthcare regimen (Clifford et al., 2015).
4. Recognizing and promoting the traditional culture and values of the indigenous community of Sydney.

The cultural protocols and maxims as set in RACGP strives to ensure among the mass a sense of respect and dignity towards the indigenous can (Collins et al., 2017). The students of different universities have also created and promoted for a number of cultural programs and activities to convey the tenets of aboriginal culture to the wider community and most importantly. The study of the aboriginal flag is an important part in respecting and recognizing the community. The flag has the accumulation of three different colors, red which represents the earth, red ochre and spiritual kinship to the land. Black which represents the Aboriginal people of Australia and the yellow is representative of the giver and protector of the realm of the living, the sun.

During the formation of my report, I came to realize how the culture of indigenous people of Australia was connected with the local community and the sheer necessity of preserving their language. This is necessary because of the fact that when translated in English, it loses much of its charm and grandeur. The Australian government should undertake the initiative of implementing the same. For the completion of my project I took up the book Australian History Series: Community and Remembrance which provided me with the opportunity to examine the culture and their origins in-depth. I learnt about their spiritual ties and connections which have come under threat. It has resulted mainly due to the presence of media and technology and other such modern practices. Structure of my portfolio was chosen with the goal of displaying the tradition and practices of the age old community with the depiction of photos so that the readers grasp the idea of their lifestyle and traditions.

Reference List:

Battiste, M. (2016). Research Ethics for Chapter Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage. Ethical futures in qualitative research: Decolonizing the politics of knowledge, 111.

Clifford, A., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Tsey, K. (2015). Interventions to improve cultural competency in health care for Indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA: a systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(2), 89-98.

Collins, J., Morrison, M., Basu, P. K., & Krivokapic-Skoko, B. (2017). Indigenous culture and entrepreneurship in small businesses in Australia. Small Enterprise Research, 24(1), 36-48.

Fisher, L., & McDonald, G. (2016). From fluent to Culture Warriors: Curatorial trajectories for Indigenous Australian art overseas. Media International Australia, 158(1), 69-79.

Gausia, K., Thompson, S. C., Nagel, T., Schierhout, G., Matthews, V., & Bailie, R. (2015). Risk of antenatal psychosocial distress in indigenous women and its management at primary health care centres in Australia. General hospital psychiatry, 37(4), 335-339.

Hunt, L., Ramjan, L., McDonald, G., Koch, J., Baird, D., & Salamonson, Y. (2015). Nursing students’ perspectives of the health and healthcare issues of Australian Indigenous people. Nurse education today, 35(3), 461-467.

Light, R. L., & Evans, J. R. (2017). Socialisation, culture and the foundations of expertise in elite level Indigenous Australian sportsmen. Sport, education and society, 22(7), 852-863.

Reyhner, J. (Ed.). (2015). Teaching Indigenous students: Honoring place, community, and culture. University of Oklahoma Press.