Aboriginality Spirituality

Discuss the implications of dispossession of the land for the spirituality of Aboriginal people.

Land to Aboriginal Australian’s is incredibly important. The traditional owner of the Brisbane area
once said, “We were born from the land. We will return to the land when we die.” It is viewed as the
most significant part of their existence and is all that is needed for their survival. When Captain Cook
arrived on Australian soil in 1788, he declared it ‘terra nullius’ meaning ‘land belonging to no-one’.
However, it did, and until very recently, it hasn’t been acknowledged that Aborigines are the
traditional owners of Australia. Hence the implications of the dispossession of their land on their
spirituality have not been acknowledged until now.

The Dreaming and land is central to Aboriginal spirituality. From Native Title and Land Rights, a
quote was made that stated that, “For Aboriginal people, land is not only our mother – the source of
our identity and our spirituality – it is also the context for our human order and inquiry.” The
Dreaming of Indigenous Australian’s provides them with a past through stories of creation passed
down through ancestors. It also gives them a present, for example their way of life and everything
they will ever need to survive. Land also provides them with resources that are used for food,
medicine, shelter etc. However these resources (plants and animals) can also be spiritually tied to
individuals and tribes as totems. Land is incredibly sacred to Aboriginal people. Places that ‘white
man’ will never know are holy sites for ceremonies specific to their culture.
As described above, land to Aborigines is really everything to them and the enormity of it cannot be
expressed through words. So now imagine that all of this was to be ripped out from under them in one
swift movement. Now imagine the catastrophic consequences of this, which were never considered
nor foreseen.

The picture book The Rabbits portrays the possums’ lifestyle as connected to the land, leaving
minimal footprints or tracks. In 1788, the First Fleet arrived to settle in Australia. This was
symbolised as an invasion by the rabbits in The Rabbits. According to Land Rights, Sovereignty and
Health, “At no time have we given consent to the occupation of our land and seas. We are living in a
society that is living the lie of ‘terra nullius’.” This arrival is a settlement on Indigenous land and led
to buildings, fences, farming and destruction that were extremely foreign to the Aboriginal people.
They do try to defend themselves and their home, as described in The Rabbits, but the “weapons of
the rabbits were too large and deadly.” It wasn’t just their homes being destroyed; there were impacts
much more severe and irreversible for the Aborigines. Land Rights, Sovereignty and Health notes that
“the invasion, occupation, and subsequent cultural, legal, and spiritual imposition of the invader, has
denied us our sovereign rights, has dispossessed us of our land, suppressed our culture, suppressed
our identity, often sought to obliterate many of our languages and suppressed all and eliminated
many of our ceremonies and spiritual practices and beliefs.” The dispossession of the land wasn’t
just the loss of a material object, it was their sense of self and it defined who they were as a society. It
devastated Aborigines as the land embodies everything to them. It is the only thing they had known
for thousands of years. Therefore the implications of this loss would be felt for many decades in a
way that white Europeans could never have predicted. Land Rights, Sovereignty and Health states
that “such injustice inevitably causes disease, mental stress and illness in the one dominated. This
oppression is the cause for our physical and mental ill health as seen in our mortality and morbidity
rates.” This was because of European diseases such as influenza and the permanent scarring of
destroying a person’s identity. This results in a lifetime of not caring about one’s self which leads to
suicide, alcoholism and petrol sniffing. Also Kevin Rudd points out the “appalling 17 year life gap
between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy”.

It is a reality that the majority of Aboriginal people at some point in the history of their families, have
been dispossessed of their land and dispersed against their will. The parliaments of Australia have
been directly responsible for this. Even after taking control over Australian land, the parliaments of
Australia continued to interfere in the lives of Aborigines under their policies of ‘protection’ and
‘assimilation’. From the 1930’s to the 1970’s, (as mentioned in Kevin Rudd’s Sorry Speech)
Aboriginal children were taken away from their families, their land and their culture, and forced to
live on government missions and reserves. They had Christianity imposed on them and were punished
for following their spirituality. They became known as the Stolen Generation. This was the opposite
of dispossession. Their parents were the fortunate ones to continue living their lives on the land,
however when their children were removed, the same outcomes occurred. There was a clear loss of
their stories and ceremonial practices as there was no-one to pass theses on to.

The recognition of Indigenous land ownership has been a long and laboured process. Land Rights,
Sovereignty and Health points out the fact that Cook’s occupation on this land was illegal. However it
wasn’t until about the 1970’s that Australia was beginning to acknowledge the injustices that had
happened to the native people of our country. Gough Whitlam created a more affirmative policy for
Aborigines. It was called ‘self-determination’ and aimed to give Indigenous people the right to
chooses how they wanted to live. Finally Australians were recognising that land rights and Native
Title go to the “very roots of the Aboriginals’ rights and dignity as people.” Another step forward
only just occurred this year when Prime Minister Rudd said sorry to all Aboriginal people affected by
past parliaments decisions related to the Stolen Generation. “Today we honour the indigenous peoples
of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. To the mothers and the fathers, the
brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the
indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

“Traditionally, life came from and through the land. Life was revealed in the land. The land was not
an inanimate ‘thing’. It was and is alive. Physical birth is a ritual, and death is the transformation of
life back into the Dreaming” (quoted from Land Rights, Sovereignty and Health).
For Aboriginal people, land and life is nothing without the other. Everything goes in a cycle. From
the text Native Title and Land Rights an Aboriginal elder told us so many years ago that “Land
invented us, it looks after us, and we look after it. It is sacred and must be cared for by its entire
people”. The Aboriginal way of life has been right all along. Unfortunately this hasn’t been realised
until recently. As the book The Rabbits concludes, “Who will save the possums and the rabbits from
the rabbits?”
The dispossession of land from the Aborigines was devastating and had irreversible consequences.
As Kevin Rudd said it is time to take action and “deal now with what has become one of the darkest
chapters in Australia’s history”.

Rock stays, earth stays.

I die and put my bones in cave or earth.
Soon my bones become earth...all the same.
My spirit has gone back to my
country ...
my mother.
From “Kakadu Man” by Bill Neidjie.