Thursday, January 26, 2012

A day.



Australian story.

The old Lake Condah Aboriginal Mission Reserve is situated on the 
volcanic plains of south-west Victoria, where the local Aboriginal 
tribes lived for possibly 30,000 years, long before the volcanoes 
stopped erupting. Their most recent eruptions, dated between 10,000 and 
4,000 years ago, produced the basalt that has made this a most fertile area.  
Conditions became so good that the indigenous people of the area were 
among the few to build permanent houses—out of stone—and carry out 
a form of fish farming in the wetlands. They developed the practice of 
making woven fishtraps that caught eels as the waters rose and fell, and they 
then preserved the eels by smoking them in hollow trees. Their way of life 
continued unchanged until European settlement in the early 1830s. 
When the European settlers arrived, there was an inevitable clash over 
the use of the land. Sheep and cattle were brought to graze where the 
Gunditjmara had hunted and fished. Their land was enclosed and they 
were killed if they hunted the new animals for food. Many massacres 
took place before the Europeans eventually overcame the opposition, 
and the indigenous people were defeated by starvation. As the European 
farmers prospered, they were prepared to employ the men from the much- 
diminished tribes whose way of life was now irretrievably destroyed. In 
1860, the Victorian Government appointed a Board for the Protection of the 
Aborigines (BPA) to save lives, and the Anglican Church was encouraged to 
set up Christian missions to save their souls. 

you can read more here.


3 comments:

  1. Good to be reminded of this history

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  2. I love reading stories about the indigenous people of a certain place. Didn't the Europeans make a mess of things - i always wonder what knowledge has been lost to us all?

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  3. They sure did, and plenty of sustainable knowledge has been lost. We must never have to be reminded of this. We should always know this and not feel guilty or shamed by it, but learn from it and change it.

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