3.1.

2- Indigenous
relationships with
outdoor environments
• Relationships with Australian outdoor environments
expressed by specific Indigenous communities before and
after European colonisation
 Indigenous Arrival
Some evidence suggests that humans were living in Australia as early as 120,000 years ago.
This means that homo sapiens were present in Australia over 70,000 years before they
migrated to Europe and much of the Northern Hemisphere.
SahulTime-
Is an interactive animation
that allows you to simulate
the sea level around Australia
at different times in the past.
http://sahultime.monash.edu
.au/

Use this simulator to help

answer the questions in your
work book.
 The Super Nomads
Indigenous communities have the view that their occupation of Australia has been continuous- that
is, they have been here so long that they consider that they have always been here.
Whether they have been present for 50,000 or 120,000 years makes very little difference from our
21st century place in time- Europeans have only known of Australia for just over 400 years.
To put this period of time into perspective:

• 300,000 years ago- evolution of homo sapiens from a common ancestor

• 30,000-50,000 years ago- humans domesticated dogs
• 10,000 years ago- Tasmania became isolated from mainland Australia
• 7000-10,000 years ago- development of agriculture
• 4000 years ago- end of the ‘stone age’ in Africa, Asia, Europe and much of the Americas.
• 3000 years ago- dingos arrive in Australia
•  750 years ago- Polynesian islanders arrive in New Zealand (last major human migration)
• Year 1606 – Willem Janszoon (Dutch sea captain) arrives on Australias west coast and
communicates with local aborigines- Australia starts to appear on European maps as Terra
Australis Incognita (unknown southern land)

Watch: “First Footprints- The super nomads”

Indigenous Australia • As early as 30,000 years ago,
indigenous peoples had traversed
all of Australia- from the tropical
north to the dry centre to the
temperate and cold south- and
started to develop relationships
with vastly different environments
found across the entire country.
• This led to a complex arrangement
of languages- with language being
one of the key ways different
groups identified themselves.
• Despite these vast distances and
different languages, many aspects
of their culture and their
knowledge were shared across the
entire country.
 Indigenous Perceptions text pg.152
The perceptions Indigenous communities had of their land developed over an incredibly
long period of time, and the way we characterise their perceptions now are the result of
trial and error, mistakes and successes, over tens of thousands of years.

Indigenous communities across Australia are, and were, incredibly diverse. There were
hundreds of languages spoken across Australia that where shared some common links but
were all uniquely different.
Indigenous perceptions are closely connected to their spirituality, sometimes called the
Dreaming (also known as the Dreamtime).

The Dreaming is a collective name often given to the variety of stories, myths and legends
that Indigenous communities used to make sense of their environment and to understand
both the ways in which their environments worked and the ways in which they were formed
or created. 10 canoes intro- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyP1uOeftgA
Indigenous Perceptions- the dreaming text pg.152-153
Some of the key elements of Indigenous perceptions that flow from their Dreaming stories include:
 The sense that the land is filled with their ancestors- the rocks, trees, waterholes and creeks, valleys and
mountains, even the stars and the sky are their ancestors, transformed from their human characteristics
into those of the land around them. This view of the land gives suggestion to their understanding of life
after death, where ancestors become features of the land around them.
 From the notion of a land full of their ancestors comes the deep connection Indigenous cultures feel with
the land. Unlike later European settlers who perceived people as being very different from the land around
them, Indigenous communities were a part of the land, related to it, born from it, to return to it when they
died.
 The hunter-gatherer life of Indigenous communities (practices) helped to fuel this connection with the land.
Hunter-gatherer communities live completely in an environment. There are no permanent walls separating
them from their land, and so no disconnection between land and people. They viewed themselves as a part
of the environment they lived in, not separate from it.
 This connection with the land helped to build a perception in Indigenous communities that the land was
simultaneously both their protector and something to be protected.
1. Hunting and gathering
• Hunting and gathering refers to a community or society that hunts animals for meat and other useful
materials, and gathers wild fruits, nuts, vegetables, roots, grasses and other edible plants.
• Hunting and gathering tasks were often divided on a gender basis.
- Men undertook the hunting
- Women and children spending time gathering
• What was hunted depended on where they were and what types of plant, fish and animal species were
present in these areas. We have good evidence for the hunting of species like kangaroos, wallabies and
other mammals, emus, crocodiles, lizards and snakes, fish and eels.
• Gathering would have included a huge range of edible plants, many of which we now recognise by the
term ‘bush food’.

Hunting and gathering develops in people a very close connection with a place (the environment they are in).
When you rely on your understanding of and ability to read the environment for your next meal, it changes
the way you see and relate to it. You constantly look at the environment in relation to where you can hunt a
particular animal, where a tasty plant is most likely to grow. Hunting and gathering requires people to know
these things intimately. If they don’t, they die.
2. Nomadism and semi- nomadism
• A close connection with a place through living off the land can lead in many situations to a need
to be able to move around easily. You might find that a particular animal species that is being
hunted is itself moving to a different place, and you need to move your community to follow it.
Or you might find that hunting and gathering in one place has depleted the resources available
and it is time to try and find better supplies somewhere else. Or maybe the environment has
changed – perhaps a change in season, getting hotter or colder- and a move to another place
might improve your level of comfort.
• It’s likely that one, two or even all of these reasons can be applied to many Indigenous
communities across Australia that were nomadic or semi-nomadic. The early European records
show that most Indigenous communities moved from place to place following resources or as
the seasons changed.

Nomadic – Communities that move Semi-nomadic – Communities that

across large distances and to many move from one location to another
different locations and back again in regular cycles
3. Firestick farming
• Indigenous communities used fire in conjunction with their nomadic and semi-nomadic movements.
A community may burn an environment they wished to move through, or that they were about to leave. It
seems that they would often light these fires as they moved from place to place, creating a patchwork of
burned and un-burned land.
Constant burning made it easier to move through the environment, which for a nomadic people, was very
important. But there are some other reasons that fire-stick farming was so widely used and relied upon:
• The Australian bush environment was vastly clearer than we find today.

''The fresh terraces, lawns and grottos with distinct plantations of the tallest and most
stately trees I ever saw in any nobleman's grounds in England, cannot excel in beauty those
whose nature now presented to our view,'' Arthur Bowes Smyth (First fleet, 1788)
• Fire promoted plant growth. After a fire has burned out, the ash that covers the soil acts as a rich source of
nutrients for plant regrowth and grasses are often the fastest to reappear. Kangaroos, wallabies and other
grass grazers will be enticed back to an environment after such regrowth making them more plentiful for
hunting.
3. Firestick farming cont’d
Purposes:

 The fire drive- fire would be used to flush larger game out of wooded areas (kangaroos, wallabies) for
hunting.

 Regeneration- remove old growth and promote the growth of new grass to encourage grazing animals.

 Cultivation- There are many accounts of aborigines clearing small areas and encouraging the growth of
particular plants, similar to a modern orchard, at regularly visited campsites.

 Ceremonial parthways- clearing of a path for nomadic and ceremonial movement.

Watch: “First Footprints- The Greatest Estate” (32min)

4. Sacred sites
• All societies have sacred places. We generally recognise them as cathedrals, churches,
mosques or synagogues.
Indigenous communities also had sacred sites. These places had many purposes to
Indigenous Australians. Some were for the burial of their elders. Others were for the
initiation ceremonies of boys and girls into adulthood.
• Another purpose for these places was to help preserve precious resources.
Recent research by scientists and archaeologists found interesting connections between
some indigenous sacred sites and the breeding grounds of particular species. Many sacred
sites forbade hunting, effectively acting like a conservation zone where particular species
were protected.
This indicates a smart and sustainable use of resources.
Indigenous Impacts
While we can easily see that indigenous lifestyles are typically what we would call low impact, or minimal
impact, their relationships have definitely resulted in changes to the outdoor environment over time.

Their practices have developed so as to be sustainable and allow them to passed down from generation to
generation. If they hadn’t been able to do this, they simply would not have survived the harsh Australian
environment for such a long period of history.

There is very little evidence left to show their rich and ancient culture beyond rock art, scarred trees, shell
middens, fire scaring and other small features.

OR IS THERE!
There are three easily evidenced impacts that indigenous people have had on outdoor environment.
 Fire  Dingos  Decline of the megafauna
Indigenous Australia after European arrival
The first Europeans to arrive in Australia didn’t like it… William Dampier, a Dutch seafarer, first
mapped Australia in 1688 and labelled it New Holland or Terra Australis Incognita.
Captain James Cook arrived and claimed Australia in the name of the British Empire in 1770.
Continuous occupation of Australia began from 1788 with the arrival of the First Fleet. The British
Empire claimed the Australian continent by right of “terra nullius”- this Latin term meaning "land
belonging to no one" which is used in international law to describe territory which has never
been subject to the sovereignty of any state, or which any prior sovereign has expressly or
implicitly relinquished sovereignty.
Indigenous Australians had no written laws, no obvious permanent settlements and no forms of
understandable government. This lead the arriving Europeans to believe the land belonged to no
one and was theirs for the taking.
Conflict with Europeans
Conflict differed from place to place but often followed similar themes:
• European practice of Land ownership- Indigenous communities were encouraged to
move, often forcibly removed and dispossessed of their lands.
• Nomadic and semi-nomadic movement was discouraged by roads, fences and other
permanent structures.
• Prevention of firestick farming- Europeans saw this as dangerous to their homes and
farms.
• Loss of sacred sites- sometimes accidently, other times deliberately destroyed.
• Deliberate killings- European landowners, police corps and government authorities, even
other indigenous groups.

Many of these continued into the recent past. As more remote groups were found, even
into the mid 1950’s, they were forced to assimilate into European-like society.
Indigenous people in the Alps-
For SAC 1 and the exam:
- Be able to name an Aboriginal group or community that lived in an
area you studied/visited
- Know about indigenous relationships relevant to places you’ve
visited/studied, both before and after European colonistation
Mt. Bogong
Where we visit on the Bogong camp is the
Bogong moth artwork
traditional lands of the Jaithmathang or
Yiatamathong people.
Task:
1. Read documents: (links on website)
• ‘Aboriginal people in the alps’ & ‘The bogong moth’
2. Research and record the indigenous relationships with the Australian Alps
This should include their perceptions, interactions and impacts
Think about:
• Evidence- what shows they were there?
• Seasonal movement- when and why?
• Large gatherings- purpose? What allowed these to occur?