Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Aboriginal Spirituality - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Balance rites, rites of passage, coming of age, death and burial
    - - Describe Aboriginal Law and Lifestyle
      - Ancestor Spirits moved through the land creating features that we can see today
      - Explain the creation of the natural world and the Laws of day-to-day life
      - Learning the Dreaming stories is a lifelong process
    - - Relive the actions of the Ancestor Spirits
      - Ancestor Beings are "made present" through people, objects, words, and movements used in the ritual
      - E.g. smoking ceremony (cleanses and heals), taking out front teeth, removing hair
    - - Carry ceremonial responsibilities known as Balance Rites
      - Assist the growth in species embodied by ancestor spiritsG
      - Give responsibilities towards specific animals
  - - - There are ceremonies and obligations associated with ritual rites
      - It is responsibility of the elders to perform relevant rites each year to protect the ritual estates
      - Storytelling, art, music, ceremonies are used to engage with ancestral beings, ensuring that the Dreaming is kept alive
        
        They recreate and affirm the Dreaming events and the power of the land is renewed
      - The human world and the land are equal, neither dominates
- - - - Colonization
      - Taking away what the Aboriginal people had
      - Terra Nullius - legal contract from 1788 that the land did not belong to anyone
      - Brought European diseases
      - Started wars and caused death
      - No recognition of the Indigenous people and no treaties
    - - Overwhelming, detrimental, devastating
      - Loss of identity
      - Loss of cultural knowledge
      - Loss of language
      - Losing connection to the land and the Dreaming
      - Not being able to accomplish ritual responsibilities
      - Totemic obligations (ceremonies) could not be fulfilled and connections to ancestor spirits were broken
  - - - The Australian Protection Board
        
        Decided where ATSI people could go or live, what their names were, who they could visit or marry, how their children would be raised
        
        In 1915 the Protection Board was given the power to remove their kids from their families
      - Missions (church run) and Reserves (government run)
        
        Removed them from their families
        
        Destroyed sacred sites
        
        Disrupted hunting and gathering skills
        
        Did not allow ceremonies
        
        Forced them to be Christian
        
        Clans/families were ignored and disrupted
      - 'Protectionism' was the dispossession of ATSI children under the law
      - ATSI people were seen as uncivilized, inferior, and a dying race
    - - Assimilation replaced Protectionism in 1937 when they realized their race wasn't dying out
      - There was a problem of a growing number of 'half castes'
      - Devastating effects on ATSI culture
      - The goal was to get rid of the Indigenous culture in the 'half castes' and assimilate them into white culture until all the full bloods died out
      - Targeted kids they thought they could convert more easily in the stolen generation (half castes because of their lighter skin)
    - - Unable to pass on Dreaming stories
      - Kinship systems were destroyed
      - Languages were not allowed to be spoken
      - Destroyed traditional gender roles
      - Whole populations died due to dispossession, disease, alcohol and malnutrition
      - "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life" Paul Keating (Prime Minister) 1992
      - Loss of identity
      - Ongoing effects in the 21st century
- - - - Creates Sacred Sites