Judith Wright was famed not just for her poetry but for her activism on behalf of the aboriginal, or indigenous, people of Australia. She was keenly aware of Europeans’ displacement, often violent, of these people, and used her written and socio-political work to recognize and seek redress for this history.
In terms of terminology, there are two groups of indigenous people: the aborigines and the Torres Strait Islander peoples. We will focus on the former.
Aboriginal Australians, who arrived from Asia via Southeast Asia, have lived on the continent for 30,000-60,000 years prior to European arrival in 1788. Evidence suggests complex social behaviors such as cremation, personal ornamentation, and long-distance trade. There was a wide variation in pre-European populations, though only anatomically modern humans occupied the continent. They adapted to different climatic and ecological conditions, spoke over 200 different languages, and viewed society in a communal fashion; however, they did not have political or economic institutions. They were hunter-gatherers and thus dependent on their natural environs, and although they were also nomadic, they had a strong sense of attachment to their home territory. According to Britannica, “The worldview of Aboriginal peoples centered on ‘the Dreaming,’ or ‘dream-time,’ a complex and comprehensive concept embodying the past, present, and future as well as virtually every aspect of life. It includes the creative era at the dawn of time, when mythic beings shaped the land and populated it with flora, fauna, and human beings and left behind the rules for social life. After their physical death and transformation into heavenly or earthly bodies, the indestructible creative beings withdrew from the earth into the spiritual realm.”
When Europeans came, there were about 750,000-1.25 million aboriginal people. Massacres and epidemics ravaged their societies, and though there was some resistance, the aboriginal people’s population was dramatically and tragically reduced. In the 20th century, assimilation practices carried out by the government led to children being removed from their homes, placed in adoptive families, receiving new names, and being forbidden from speaking their native languages. It was not until 1965 that citizenship and voting laws applied to them, and 1967 when all federal laws did.
National Geographic sums up the contemporary state of affairs: “Today, about three percent of Australia’s population has Aboriginal heritage. Aboriginal Australians still struggle to retain their ancient culture and fight for recognition—and restitution—from the Australian government. The state of Victoria is currently working toward a first-of-its-kind treaty with its Aboriginal population that would recognize Aboriginal Australians’ sovereignty and include compensation. However, Australia itself has never made such a treaty, making it the only country in the British Commonwealth not to have ratified a treaty with its First Nations peoples.”
