Indigenous Settlement Art Lesson Year 56 Aboriginal Settlement
Indigenous Settlement Art Lesson Year 5/6
Aboriginal Settlement • When the first settlers arrived from Great Britain and began the colonisation of South Australia in 1836 they found the Adelaide Plains occupied throughout by Aborigines. The main local group, estimated to number about 300 individuals, was called the Kaurna (pron. "Ghana") Tribe, and their territory extended from near Crystal Brook in the north to Cape Jervis in the south and inland to the Mount Lofty Ranges. Archaeologists believe the Kaurna Tribe occupied this region for many thousands of years. • The Kaurna people lived in family groups or clans and led a huntergatherer existence, moving about their strictly defined tribal lands in a never-ending quest for food. There was rapid extinction of many groups after the arrival of the settlers from Great Britain due to the introduction of fatal diseases, particularly small pox.
Aboriginal Flag • The colours of the flag represent: • Yellow represents the sun, the giver of all life. • Red represents the colour of the earth, the spiritual relationship with the land. • Black represents Aboriginal people, who's ancestors have lived for many years.
Aboriginal Culture • The word "aboriginal" means "the first" or "earliest known". The word was first used in Italy and Greece to describe people who lived there, natives or old inhabitants, not newcomers, or invaders. • Whatever their early history, Aboriginals had settled throughout the entire continent many thousands of years before the white man came and had evolved a way of living that was in harmony with the environment, and that satisfied their needs. Because Australia was isolated from the rest of the world, Aboriginals had little contact with outside groups from whom to "borrow" techniques, to trade goods, to acquire crop seeds, or animals, as was happening in the North of the world. It was only for a few centuries prior to white settlement that visitors came from islands to the north. However, the Aboriginals adjusted to the environment, learned to understand it and gained the maximum from it.
Aboriginal culture • Aboriginal people have a deep spiritual connection with the land. For an Aboriginal child, relationships are not only with people but also with their environment: the land, the animals, the plants, the skies, the waters, the weather and the spirits. • Aboriginal people believe themselves to be guardians of the land. “Like a human mother the land gives us protection, enjoyment, and provides for our needs – economic, social and religious. We have a human relationship with the land. ”
How do we know the land is important to Aboriginal culture? • Recounts from the Aboriginal community. • We know that they were isolated and could only learn from the land not from other communities. • Through dreamtime artworks. • They believed their dreams gave them knowledge of the land from their ancestors through their dreams. This is called dreamtime.
Dreamtime https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=h. OWzc. Luu pi 0
Why do you think, land, water and the sky are important to the Aboriginal culture? • It provides all the necessities to live, land to farm and grow food, medicines, water for survival. • Spiritual connection due to the belief that elders passed information about how to survive through their dreams. • Belief that everybody started as a spirit that at somepoint would be born either as an animal or a plant. The last spirit would become a human and it was their job to look after the animals and plants before them. This means the land water is also important because they feel protective because of it.
Your task: • Looking at the elements discussed which are important to Aboriginal culture, I would like you to make a visualisation to represent a single (detailed) or multiple elements which are important to Aboriginal Culture. Each pair must present what they have created to the rest of the group after 25 minutes.
- Slides: 9