Analysis of the development of ethno-cultural situation of an English-speaking

country/ethnic group (EG): Australia

1. Ethnogenesis (origin of an EG).

Aboriginal Australians comprise many distinct peoples who have developed across
Australia for over 50,000 years. These peoples have a broadly shared, though complex,
genetic history, but it is only in the last two hundred years that they have been defined and
started to self-identify as a single group. Australian Aboriginal identity has changed over
time and place, with family lineage, self-identification and community acceptance all being
of varying importance.
The ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australian people migrated from South East
Asia by sea during the Pleistocene epoch and lived over large sections of the Australian
continental shelf when the sea levels were lower and Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea
were part of the same landmass, known as Sahul. Prehistorians believe that it would have
been difficult for Aboriginal people to have originated purely from mainland Asia, and not
enough numbers would have made it to Australia and surrounding islands to fulfil the
beginning of the population that we have seen in the last century. This is why it is commonly
believed that most Aboriginal Australians have originated from South East Asia, and if this
is the case, Australian Aboriginals would have been among the first in the world to have
completed successful sea voyages.
Studies regarding the genetic makeup of Aboriginal Australian people are still
ongoing, but evidence has suggested that they have genetic inheritance from ancient
Eurasian but not more modern peoples, share some similarities with Papuans, but have been
isolated from Southeast Asia for a very long time.
Aboriginal people are genetically most similar to the indigenous populations of Papua
New Guinea, and more distantly related to groups from East Indonesia. They are quite
distinct from the indigenous populations of Borneo and Malaysia, sharing relatively little
genomic information as compared to the groups from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
This indicates that Australia was isolated for a long time from the rest of Southeast Asia, and
remained untouched by migrations and population expansions into that area.
2. Ethnic history (formation of an EG).
 Today the population of Australia consists of more than 270 ethnic groups. Until the
mid-20th century, however, Australian society was, with some accuracy, regarded in the
wider world as essentially British—or at any rate Anglo-Celtic. The ties to Britain and
Ireland were scarcely affected by immigration from other sources until then.
The complex demographic textures in Australia at the beginning of the 21st century
contrasted quite sharply with the homogeneity of the country during the first half of the 20th
century. Although some nine-tenths of Australia’s population is of European ancestry, more
than one-fifth is foreign-born, and there is a small but important (and growing) Aboriginal
population.
Despite the country’s long-standing Anglo-Celtic heritage, two ethnic groups, the
Chinese and the Italians, have had an important presence in Australia since the 19th century.
The long history of Chinese migration to Australia dates from the early 19th century.
In the 1850s tens of thousands of Chinese people arrived to provide a source of cheap labour
as workers in the goldfields. After the gold rushes, many Chinese miners returned home to
their families in China, but others stayed to establish businesses or work the land.
Italian migrants are another cultural group with a long and rich history of settlement in
Australia. The first Italian community was established in Victoria during the gold rush of the
1850s. After the gold ran out in the region, many Italians remained in Australia and
established agricultural communities in other parts of the country.
Like the Chinese, many Italian migrants came from rural backgrounds, which helped
them to excel in farming and viticulture. After World War II the Australian migration
schemes of the 1950s and ’60s brought large numbers of Italian migrants to Australia.
By the time of European settlement in 1788, Aboriginal peoples had occupied and
utilized the entire continent and adapted successfully to a large range of ecological and
climatic conditions, from wet temperate and tropical rainforests to extremely arid deserts.
Population
The number of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, though still
only a tiny fraction of the total population, increased dramatically in the last decades of the
20th century and into the 21st century, jumping from 115,000 in 1971 to some 550,000 in the
2011 census.
From the 1970s and ’80s the drift of Aboriginal people to the towns and cities
transformed the old patterns except in Northern Territory, where the rural distribution has
remained predominant. Their migrations to the country towns have often left Aboriginal
families as stranded “fringe dwellers,” a term with social as well as geographic connotations.
3. Geographical distribution.
Most of Australia’s population is concentrated in two widely separated coastal regions
– the south- the east and east, and south-west. Of the two regions, the south-east and east is
by far the largest in area and population. The population within these regions is concentrated
in urban centres, particularly the capital cities.
Australia has an average population density of 3.4 persons per square kilometre of
total land area, which makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.
This is generally attributed to the semi-arid and desert geography of much of the interior of
the country. Another factor is urbanisation, with 89% of its population living in a handful of
urban areas, Australia is one of the world's most urbanised countries.
The life expectancy of Australia in 2015–2017 was 83.2 years, among the highest in
the world.
Since the end of the White Australia policy in 1973, Australia has pursued an official
policy of multiculturalism and there has been a large and continuing wave of immigration
from across the world, with Asia being the largest source of immigrants in the 21st century.
Today, most of Australia's Indigenous population live on the east coast of Australia,
where almost 60% of Indigenous Australians live in New South Wales (208,476) and
Queensland (188,954) which roughly represents 2–5% of those state's populations. The
Northern Territory has an Indigenous population of almost 70,000 and represents about 30%
of the total Northern Territory population
In the 2016 Australian census, the most commonly nominated ancestries were: English
(36.1%), Australian (33.5%), Irish (11.0%)
Scottish (9.3%), Chinese (5.6%), Italian (4.6%), German (4.5%)
Indian (2.8%).
4. Race, physical features.
The Australoid race (also the Minor Australian race, the Australian race, the
Australoids) is one of the human races. Distributed on the continent of Australia. It is
included, together with the Veddoid race, in the large Australoid, or Veddo-Australoid, race.
Representatives of the classic type of the Australian race are the Australian aborigines.
 The Australoid (Australian) small race is characterized by such anthropological
features as:
 dark skin color (slightly lighter in comparison with the skin color of African
Negroids);
 dark brown color of the iris of the eyes; deep-set eyes, usually with a wide slit;
 dark brown or black hair pigmentation (while in different age groups, lighter hair can
be found - more often in children and young women); hair, as a rule, narrow wavy and wide
wavy (in some local groups, curly hair can also be found - in the northeastern regions of
Australia, in which, most likely, there was a cross-breeding of Australians with Melanesians
or Papuans, as well as in the southeast in the state of Victoria, where mixing with the
Tasmanians may have taken place);
 very wide nose with an almost flat nose;
 high upper lip, medium-sized or sometimes thickened mucous membranes of the lips;
 medium wide face;
 very large teeth (the largest in the world, especially among the aborigines of the South
Australian populations);
 long limbs.
People who identify themselves as 'Aboriginal' range from dark-skinned, broad-nosed
to blonde-haired, blue-eyed people. Aboriginal people define Aboriginality not by skin
colour but by relationships. Light-skinned Aboriginal people often face challenges on their
Aboriginal identity because of stereotyping.
5. Religion, beliefs.
Australia is a secular country, with a high degree of religious freedom and religious
diversity. Although the state and religious groups are maintained as separate entities,
religious institutions continue to play a large role in Australian society. For example, many
primary and secondary schools, hospitals, aged-care facilities and charity organisations are
owned and funded by religious organisations.
Christianity is currently the most dominant religion in Australia, introduced by British
settlers at colonisation. There has always been a degree of religious diversity in Australia.
However, it was not until the abolition of the White Australia Policy (in the 1970s) that non-
European communities were able to significantly establish themselves and grow in numbers.
Since then, the country has seen growing diversity of non-Christian religions as well.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have held a range of spiritual beliefs and
practices for thousands of years. There is not one single Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
religion or spirituality. Traditional beliefs and practices vary significantly across different
regions and groups. However, they generally share a common holistic worldview that
emphasises the reciprocal relationship and interconnectedness between people, landforms,
animals and other elements of natural landscapes. The natural world is understood to be
energised by spirits that are equal to one another, thus reflecting a deep respect for the land.
This holistic understanding underpins all areas of life in a way that many Aboriginal and
Torres Strait people believe confirms their Indigenous identity.
A person is allocated various totems at birth relating to place and kinship. From here,
one learns particular songs, dances and ceremonies associated with the totems and
participates in helping sustain and care for the lands.

6. Social structure. Settlements. Traditional occupations.

In Australia, there are five main social classes and they are established working class,
established middle class, mobile middle class, emerging affluent class and established
affluent class.
At the top of the social hierarchy in Australia is the class or level known as the
established affluent class. This particular class resembles an older generation of newly
emerging Australians who are rich and affluent.They have above average educational
qualifications and both the partners or parents have high prestige occupations.
Emerging affluent class is the second level class in the Australian social hierarchy and
is one which consists of those Australians who have turned the benefits of education into
high household incomes.
The third social class is the mobile middle class. The people within this class come
from middle class family backgrounds but usually have good educational qualifications in
Australia since parents make it a point to get their children good education so that they can
go ahead and earn well in life.
Established working class is the lowest class in the social structure of people in
Australia. These individuals have the lowest household incomes and also the lowest rates of
cultural and social capital. Both these people as well as their parents have low occupational
prestige which means that they don’t really take up reputed or sought after jobs.
In various measures, Aboriginal societies exhibited both hierarchical and egalitarian
tendencies, but they were classless; an egalitarian ethos predominated, the subordinate status
of women notwithstanding.
Traditionally the Aboriginal family was a collaboration of clans composed of mothers,
fathers, uncles, aunties, sisters, brothers, cousins and so on. In today's terms it is known as an
extended family .
Aboriginal societies were “open”: there were no social barriers to prevent a man from
becoming a leader in religious matters by his own efforts. Both men and women acquired
prestige through knowledge of ritual performance and expertise in directing or performing
ritual.
Australia has not yielded readily to development by Europeans. Even on the relatively
favoured eastern periphery, the first European settlers were perplexed by the
environment.They also continued to clash, often ruthlessly, with Aboriginal communities.
Pioneer settlers took pride in conquering the continent’s prodigious distances, and that
became a national trait.
For thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans, northern Sydney was
occupied by different Aboriginal clans. Living primarily along the foreshores of the harbour,
they fished and hunted in the waters and hinterlands of the area, and harvested food from the
surrounding bush. Self-sufficient and harmonious, they had no need to travel far from their
lands, since the resources about them were so abundant, and trade with other tribal groups
was well established. Moving throughout their country in accordance with the seasons,
people only needed to spend about 4-5 hours per day working to ensure their survival. With
such a large amount of leisure time available, they developed a rich and complex ritual life –
language, customs, spirituality and the law – the heart of which was connection to the land.

7. Culture:

7.1 Material culture: Artefacts. Architecture. Clothes. Food. Households.

Australian Aboriginal artefacts include a variety of cultural artefacts used by

Aboriginal Australians. Most Aboriginal artefacts were multi-purpose and could be used for
a variety of different occupations. Spears, clubs, boomerangs and shields were used
generally as weapons for hunting and in warfare. Stone artefacts include cutting tools and
grinding stones to hunt and make food. Coolamons and carriers such as dillybags, allowed
Aboriginal peoples to carry water, food and cradle babies. Message sticks were used for
communication, and ornamental artefacts for decorative and ceremonial purposes.
Aboriginal children’s toys were used to both entertain and educate.
Aboriginal peoples used spears for a variety of purposes including hunting, fishing,
gathering fruit, fighting, retribution, punishment, in ceremony, as commodities for trade, and
as symbolic markers of masculinity.
The boomerang is recognised by many as a significant cultural symbol of
Australia.The oldest wooden boomerang artefact known, excavated from the Wyrie Swamp,
South Australia in 1973, is estimated to be 9,500 years old.
Message sticks, also known as "talking-sticks", were used in Aboriginal communities
to communicate invitations, declarations of war, news of death and so forth.They were made
of wood and were usually flat with motifs engraved on all sides to express a message. The
type of wood and shape of a message stick could be a part of the message.
Housing for Indigenous people living in many parts of Australia has been
characterised by an acute shortage of dwellings, poor quality construction, and housing stock
ill-suited to Indigenous lifestyles and preferences. There have been two main approaches to
the design of Indigenous housing in Australia – Health and Culture.
Traditional clothing in Australia is said to be that of swagmen and bushmen of the
past. They wore long trousers, buttoned sleeves, strong leather boots, and hats with corks
hanging from the brim to keep away flies.
Across northern Australia, ceremonial skirts or aprons are made from strips of bark or
bush string and hang down like grass skirts.
Aboriginal breastplates (also called king plates or aboriginal gorgets) were a form of
regalia used in pre-Federation Australia by white colonial authorities to recognise those they
perceived to be local Aboriginal leaders.
The cloaks were made from numerous possum pelts sewn together with kangaroo
sinew, and often decorated with significant incisions on the inside such as clan insignias.
They were rubbed with ochre and fat to both decorate and protect them.
 Australian cuisine is the food and cooking practices of Australia and its inhabitants. As
a modern nation of large-scale immigration, Australia has absorbed culinary contributions
and adaptations from various cultures around the world, including British, European, Asian
and Middle Eastern.
Examples of Australian native plant foods include the fruits quandong, kutjera,
muntries, riberry, Davidson's plum, and finger lime. Nuts include bunya nut, and, the most
identifiable bush tucker plant harvested and sold in large-scale commercial quantities, is the
macadamia nut. Knowledge of Aboriginal uses of fungi is meagre, but beefsteak fungus and
native "bread" (a fungus also), were certainly eaten.
Aussie Meat Pie is a quintessential Australian Dish that is synonymous with the
country’s identity. And while the western world is fond of eating pie for desserts, Aussies
have created their own version of pie and made it an integral part of their food culture.
Cutting tools made of stone and grinding or pounding stones were also used as
everyday items by Aboriginal peoples.

7.2 Non-material culture: legends and myths. Folklore. Traditions, rites, rituals.
Family relations. Calendar holidays.

Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in

the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across
Australia in their ceremonies.
The main legend is legend the about Rainbow Serpent. There are countless regional
variations sculpted by the hundreds of difficult Indigenous cultures and language groups, but
the common thread is that a huge snake slumbers beneath the Earth’s surface until it emerges
from the ground to awaken different groups of animals and to travel through the landscape
forging hills, lakes, valleys and rivers in previously featureless terrain.
Another legend about the three Brothers . Where New South Wales meets Queensland
and South Australia in the barren outback, there were three brothers who were leaders of
their Wangkumara tribe … until they were tempted to swim across the river and fraternise
with women from another group. Their punishment? Immolation, which transformed the
siblings into three upright rocks. Only one of the brothers remains standing today.
 The main heroes and stories of australiam folklore are: Bob the Railway Dog – A Dog
that was remembered for traveling along the South Australian Railway; Booie Monster –
Reports of a monster lurking in a cave first reported in the 1950s; Drop bear – Stories of
drop bears are frequently related to visiting tourists as a joke;
Platypus – Native Australian animal which is one of only two mammals that lay eggs
(the other being the echidna), and one of the few species that is venomous. Due to its unique
features the scientist who initially discovered and examined the creature thought it was made
of several animals sewn together and deemed it to be a hoax.
To this day Ceremonies play a very important part in Australian Aboriginal peoples’
culture. Ceremonies, or rituals, are still performed in parts of Australia, such as in Arnhem
Land and Central Australia, in order to ensure a plentiful supply of plant and animal foods.
They contrast in different territories and regions and are an important part of the
education of the young. Some ceremonies were a rite of passage for young people between
10 and 16 years, representing a point of transition from childhood to adulthood. Most
ceremonies combined dance, song, rituals and often elaborate body decoration and costume.
The Elders organized and ran ceremonies that were designed to teach particular aspects of
the lore of their people, spiritual beliefs and survival skills.
Aboriginal people perform Funeral ceremonies as understandably the death of a
person is a very important event. The people often paint themselves white, wound or cut
their own bodies to show their sorrow for the loss of their loved one. They conduct a series
of rituals, dances and songs to safeguard the person’s spirit leaves the area and returns to its
birth place where it can later be reborn.
Traditionally the Aboriginal family was a collaboration of clans composed of mothers,
fathers, uncles, aunties, sisters, brothers, cousins and so on. In today’s terms it is known as
an extended family . For Aboriginal people their family provides psychological and
emotional support which is important to their wellbeing.
Aboriginal family obligations, often are seen as nepotism by other Australians, and
are not strictly nuclear families. The structure of Aboriginal families reflects cultural values
and involving kinship responsibilities.
Traditionally the Aboriginal family was a collaboration of clans composed of mothers,
fathers, uncles, aunties, sisters, brothers, cousins and so on. In today’s terms it is known as
an extended family . For Aboriginal people their family provides psychological and
emotional support which is important to their wellbeing.
Aboriginal family obligations, often are seen as nepotism by other Australians, and
are not strictly nuclear families. The structure of Aboriginal families reflects cultural values
and involving kinship responsibilities.
The most popular australian national holidays are:
 1 Jan. New Year's Day.
 26 Jan. Australia Day.
 2 Apr. Good Friday.
 3 Apr. Easter Saturday.
 5 Apr. Easter Monday.
 3 May. May Day.
 1 4Jun. Queen's Birthday.
Labour Day commemorates the achievements of the Australian labour movement. The
celebration of Labour Day has its origins in the eight-hour day movement, which advocated
eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest. On 21 April 1856
Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne, Australia, stopped
work and marched from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an
eight-hour day. Their direct action protest was a success, and they are noted as the first
organised workers in the world to achieve an eight-hour day with no loss of pay, which
subsequently inspired the celebration of Labour Day and May Day. In Tasmania the public
holiday is called Eight Hours Day and in the Northern Territory it is called May Day.
Christmas is observed on 25 December each year to commemorate the birth of Jesus.
In Australia, it was introduced with British settlement in 1788 as the cultural norms were
transferred to the new colonies. Though a Christian religious festival, it does not breach the
constitution's separation of Church and State provision, because it is declared under State
law, which is not subject to the provision.

7. Lingual situation.
Australia legally has no official language. However, English is by far the most
commonly spoken and has been entrenched as the de facto national language since European
settlement. Australian English is a major variety of the English language with a distinctive
pronunciation and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar
and spelling.General Australian serves as the standard dialect.
English is the only language spoken in the home for close to 73% of the population.
The next most common languages spoken at home are: Mandarin (2.5%), Arabic (1.4%),
Cantonese (1.2%), Vietnamese (1.2%), Italian (1.2%), Greek (1.0%), Hindi (0.7%), Bangla
(0.6%), Spanish (0.6%) and Punjabi (0.6%). A considerable proportion of first- and second-
generation immigrants are bilingual or even multilingual.
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number
being quite uncertain although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250
up to possibly 363.
The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there
are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous
Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages",
or the "Australian family".
Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while the
remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does
not imply a genealogical relationship.
Many languages became extinct with settlement as the encroachment of colonial
society broke up Indigenous cultures. The surviving languages are located in the most
isolated areas. Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four
belong to the Western Desert grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert.
8. Ethnic identity: Ethnic name. Values. Stereotypes. Attitude to other EGs.
Aboriginal Australian identity, sometimes known as Aboriginality, is the perception of
oneself as Aboriginal Australian, or the recognition by others of that identity. Aboriginal
Australians are one of two Indigenous Australian groups of peoples, the other being Torres
Strait Islanders.
Various factors affect Aboriginal people's self-identification as Aboriginal, including a
growing pride in culture, solidarity in a shared history of dispossession (including the Stolen
Generations), and, among those are fair-skinned, an increased willingness to acknowledge
their ancestors, once considered shameful.
 Aboriginal identity can be politically controversial in contemporary discourse, among
both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. Successive censuses have shown those
identifying as Indigenous (Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander) at a rate far exceeding
the growth of the whole Australian population.
Australian values include: respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual,
freedom of religion (including the freedom not to follow a particular religion), freedom of
speech, and freedom of association
commitment to the rule of law, equality of opportunity for all people, regardless of
their gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, race, or national or ethnic origin
Some of the more common stereotypes ones say that Aboriginal people:
 are primitive and nomadic,
 lack complex laws and social organisation,
 are drunks,
 are violent,
 live in the outback,
 are un-educated no hopers,
 are involved in too much crime,
 don’t have a religion, have sinned and need to pray for forgiveness,
 must fit the image of a dark-skinned, wide-nosed person,
 live a traditional tribal/ancient lifestyle.
Most Australians accept multiculturalism and believe it to be the future of the country.
However, a reactionary attitude has lingered as some people remain uncomfortable with
divergences from a Western standard.
However, outside of national politics, Australians generally treat and accept people of
all backgrounds equally and may simply relate more to those whom they share similarities
with. Australians have largely embraced the cultural diversity immigrants bring, and the
country constantly draws upon these influences to build its own developing national
character.
Increasingly, a bi-cultural identity is being seen as an asset to be treasured and proud
of in Australian society. The younger generation in particular, is becoming increasingly
culturally aware with many seeing overseas experiences as a rite of passage towards
maturity. Moreover, world travel is now a popular aspiration in the minds of most seeking
more international exposure. Broadly, the Australian public is developing an appetite for
new experiences and actively seeking different things.