Indigenous Australian Aboriginals and the Colony of Britain.

Indigenous Australians are believed to have arrived onto Australian mainlands across the sea of from Maritime, Southeast Asia 40,000 –70,000 years ago. In 1606 was the first known landing within Australia by Europeans by a Dutch navigator named Willem Janszoon. During the 17th century other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts of Australia, numerous European explorers followed, however, in 1770 Lieutenant James Cook explored the East Coast of Australia representing Britain returning with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay, New South Wales. Seventeen years after Cook’s touchdown on the east coast of Australia, the British government decided to establish a colony at Botany Bay.

Indigenous language contained a lot of spiritual words and beliefs, the ‘dreamtime’ or ‘dreaming’ is their connection to the land and Earth. (Jens Korff, 2014)

Students Kiarra and Karri Moseley and Luke Bidner-

“My culture is my identity.

Dreamtime stories tell the life of my people.

Growing older.

Hearing stories of my ancestors living off the land

Becoming one with the creatures

Even though I haven't met them

I feel this unbreakable connection

Through the stories I have heard.

The stories that have been passed down through generations.

These stories are living through us.

Without our culture we have no identity

And without our identity

We have nothing.” (Jens Korff, 2014)

The dreaming creates the structures of society, the rules for social behaviour and the rituals performed to ensure continuity of life and land. The indigenous Australians believe that before animals, plants and humans become, their ‘souls’ had existed. It is believed within Indigenous culture believed that external life before the life of an ind...

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...ng the indigenous rapidly as they had not come across nor encountered these within their ways of living. These diseases included chickenpox, smallpox, typhoid, measles and influenza. (Wiliam, 2014) Because of the spread of diseases unintentionally brought in by the Europeans this caused a large decrease of people within the Indigenous Australians.

Indigenous Australians colonized the land 40,000 –70,000 years ago, throughout the duration of them living on the land there was no significant changes. The indigenous culture lived as one with the land and Earth and respected it living within harmony as it was sacred. However, over the 200 years the Europeans colonized Australia significant changes have been done. Deforestation, introduction of foreign species, climate change, pollution across the land, and spread of disease have all occurred and are continuing to form.