The Aboriginal People

This week we were set a mini-project about the Aboriginal people. We discovered all sorts of interesting things about them. Here are a few facts on the Aboriginal people:

• The Aboriginal people have been living in Australia continuously for  40,000 to 50,000 years.
• Constitutional and legal changes have affected the rights of Aboriginal people - would you believe that they were not recognised as proper citizens of their own country until 1967, before that they were classified as native wildlife along with koalas and kangaroos?
• Every different tribe has their own language. (There were up to 500 aboriginal languages at one point.)
• They lived for many years before the white man came.
• They hunted with boomerangs.
• They had many sports: ~ Coreeda is a combination of Aboriginal dance with a unique wrestling game. ~ Battendi is an Aboriginal game set up to enhance both spear-throwers accuracy and distance.
• Aboriginal art is based on story-telling using symbols as an alternate method of writing down stories of cultural importance. This art has ensured the passing on of Aboriginal History.

By Sophie Brosnan 5th class