Aborigines

        Aborigines came from Asia by boat 50 000 years ago. They are divided in 500 tribes and they speak 700 languages. Aborigines are half- nomads. They live on their hunting, fishing and picking fruits. Men have spears, javelins and boomerangs for hunting whereas women have clubs and they carry young children. Tribes exchange ochre and pendants.

         Aborigines must marry with somebody of their family. They believe in many gods « Big Persons » symbolised by totems. Those gods tell them during their dreaming time. Art is used for the rituals and decorate things, bodies, rocks and barks, they paint with ochre. Aborigines play didgeridoo, a music instrument for rituals. Didgeridoos are grooved by termites.

         When the english arrived in 1788 they fought to take aborigines’area and they brought with them new illnesses (nnow Aborigines are only 350 000). Between 1885 and 1967 30% to 50% of aborigines’children were stolen from their parents and placed in white families : « The still generation ». Today this Generation claims its rights and wants to know its origines. 

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