This website has been constructed to store the interests of the author in his quest for a better life for remote living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia.
On this site the word Aboriginal will be used to indicate all Australians from an Indigenous origin within Australia. This includes the Tiwi Islands and the Torres Strait Islands, all part of the Federation of Australian States.
The subjects are those which the author believes are of particular interest especially when discussing the “where have I come from” and “where am I going” in relation to Aboriginal people.
One element that should come through to the reader is the urgency of the situation and the need for quick action if Australia as a Nation is going to work as one in helping to arrest the downward spiral in the health status of its Aboriginal people.
The life expectancy of the 100,000 people that still live in remote and isolated communities across the North of Australia continue to fall. This will continue while they are unable to embrace modern European living. They need to be sensitized to the changes this needs to lifestyle, nutrition, exercise and an understanding of the language, values and customs of the modern day mainstream Australian.
The more the process of assimilation and reconciliation is seen at work the more one realizes that for those alive today it may be too late. Their lives have already been moulded into one which crosses two barriers and fails to properly reach a satisfactory balance of equilibrium. The two cultures will only be brought together after generations of trying, testing and developing. For the one alive today (2005) it may be too late and so the need to concentrate on the child. In the wonderful words of Chilean born poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Gabriel Mistral:
Many things we need can wait, the child cannot. Now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, his mind is being developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today.
The needs of the child should come before all else.
The young mothers of today – often in their teenage years – have to be helped to understand the important role they are taking on as custodians of the next generation.
Through the pages of this website you will be able to get a view on how these challenges can be met and the actions that are needed to help make the change from ancient culture to a new world of beginning for a new race of people. These will be the true Aboriginal Australians – happy in the transition they have been able to make from their forefathers to their after fathers – those of us that want to help.
“Give us the fortitude to endure the things which cannot be changed, and the courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to know one from the other.”
– Oliver J Hart
25 April 2005
09 April 2005
An Introduction
Australia
General
Australia is a prosperous country with 20 million people in 2004.
Read more about the Nation and its people at the Lonely Planet Worldguide and click on
Australasia + PacificGuide to Australia.
History
In 1770 Captain Cook discovered the continent that is now Australia.
England decided to be the mother of the thought to be uninhabited continent, which is apart from some black people who gave Cook and his mates a pretty hard time. Cook claimed the continent on behalf of the King of England in 1770. As easy as that – so everyone thought at the time.
In 1788 Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the First Fleet to the new found continent and settled in what is now known as Port Jackson in the state of New South Wales. Phillip checked out the more southern harbour entry point now known as Botany Bay first and decided it was too exposed to the weather and went on to Port Jackson. Sydney Harbour was settled and Sydney Cove became the first settlement.
A complete history of the Australian nation and its people follow this link to the Lonely Planet Worldguide and for students of the country the National Library of Australia has a guide to research on the Internet.
Aboriginal people of Australia
The original inhabitants of the continent of Australia are thought to have been on the landmass for 70,000 years before the arrival of the white men and women of England. There had been other stopovers on the Australian coastline by explorers from France, Portugal and Holland as well as traders and fisher people fron the nearby Asian countries to the north.
It was the arrival of the first English settlers in 1778 that caused immediate concern to the natives who did not find their new visitors friendly and many of them died at the hands of the unwanted invaders.
Over 200 years later present day Australians are still trying to come to terms with the disruption their forebears caused to these people who had been on the island continent for so long. There is no treaty between black and white Australia and it was not until 1967 that the new citizens of the country agreed through voting at a referendum (by 90% in favor) for the first Australians to be recognised as full citizens of their own country. That should read “countries” as each Aboriginal tribe has its own nation or country in the area where they come from. The land means a lot to them and is their place of worship. A full account of the history of Australia’s Aboriginals is given in the Lonely Planet Worldguide.
Australia is unique in being the largest island continent in the world. Unlike so many other natives of countries around the world that have some land connecting them as continents, This means that before Governor Phillip and the settlement that followed around the Nation the indigenous Aboriginal had not seen white people ever before – in fact apart from the few stray explorers the vast majority had never seen anyone other than their own people. The result of this was that they had lived for so long off the land with no metal weapons or tools. Their navigation was by the stars, rivers and land features. Because of this nomadic existence they had no reason to collect possessions or build permanent homes. Life was drifting in search of food, water and to have ceremonies with neighboring tribes or clans. Without a currency - trade was bartering with each other as the way of exchanging goods and chattels while the men, being the dominant sex with power over the political system exhibited their wealth through the number of wives they had.
A look at the List of Livestock and Provisions that was brought on the eleven ships of the First Fleet in 1788 gives a startling reminder of what a shock it must have been for the Aboriginal Australians around Sydney Cove to see all of these things for the very first time.
It is hard for the modern 21st century Australian to understand that it is only as recently as the 1980s that the last Australian is believed to have been found in Central Australia who had never seen white man. For some groups in Northern Australia the traditional attire for women was no tops into the 1970s.The Aboriginal people were treated with scorn by the early settlers and even 150 years after the first fleet arrived they were still being massacred as a nuisance to the pastoralists who seized the land for the farming of sheep and cattle from one end of the country to the other. Despite the slaughter of their own immediate forebears the Aboriginal people worked hard helping the pastoralists and later the mission stations that began to emerge in the late 1800s. Apart from wanting to spread the word of God to the indigenous ones the missionaries were also protecting the natives from the invasion by settlers. The coming of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart is an example of the dedication to the people of Northern Australia demonstrated through the work of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Darwin.
Whilst the work of the missionaries is sometimes derided for breaking down the culture of these proud people, there is no doubt that under their tutelage the Aboriginals began to learn a sense of white man’s values that was a useful forerunner to the process of assimilation that was followed by the government of Australia around the time of the referendum in 1967.
Aboriginal people fought in all the wars Australia as a nation has been involved in since the Boer war of the 1890s, and yet in 2004 the government is still just hanging on to a program of reconciliation – an attempt to have a sharing of the country and its resources through Reconciliation Australia by acknowledging the past and building a framework for a shared future.
What follows is an expose of the thoughts of Rollo Manning after eight years in Darwin (since 1996) seven of which have been spent in the health care arena and since 2001 working directly with the people of the Tiwi Islands firstly with the Tiwi Health Board and following its demise as a social entrepreneur assisting Tiwi people to regain control of their own future.
In the pages following you will find some stimulating suggestions on how white Australia can reconcile with black Australia through action projects that will help the remote living Aboriginal find a better way of combining life in the two cultures.
DISCLAIMER
Every attempt has been made to state matters of fact as they are.
The experiences behind any assertions made by the author are gleaned from being with the people of the Tiwi Islands. If these do not extrapolate directly to other Aboriginal people of Northern Australia it is unintentional and no offence should be taken at statements that do not equate with other people’s thinking.
The text of this site has been shown to senior Tiwi people and they agree with the general approach to Aboriginal reconciliation as stated through these pages.
Photographs are used with the knowledge of the persons in the pictures and apologies are made for the depiction of anyone who is no longer with us.
R W Manning
© Darwin Northern Territory Australia July 2004
General
Australia is a prosperous country with 20 million people in 2004.
Read more about the Nation and its people at the Lonely Planet Worldguide and click on
Australasia + PacificGuide to Australia.
History
In 1770 Captain Cook discovered the continent that is now Australia.
England decided to be the mother of the thought to be uninhabited continent, which is apart from some black people who gave Cook and his mates a pretty hard time. Cook claimed the continent on behalf of the King of England in 1770. As easy as that – so everyone thought at the time.
In 1788 Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the First Fleet to the new found continent and settled in what is now known as Port Jackson in the state of New South Wales. Phillip checked out the more southern harbour entry point now known as Botany Bay first and decided it was too exposed to the weather and went on to Port Jackson. Sydney Harbour was settled and Sydney Cove became the first settlement.
A complete history of the Australian nation and its people follow this link to the Lonely Planet Worldguide and for students of the country the National Library of Australia has a guide to research on the Internet.
Aboriginal people of Australia
The original inhabitants of the continent of Australia are thought to have been on the landmass for 70,000 years before the arrival of the white men and women of England. There had been other stopovers on the Australian coastline by explorers from France, Portugal and Holland as well as traders and fisher people fron the nearby Asian countries to the north.
It was the arrival of the first English settlers in 1778 that caused immediate concern to the natives who did not find their new visitors friendly and many of them died at the hands of the unwanted invaders.
Over 200 years later present day Australians are still trying to come to terms with the disruption their forebears caused to these people who had been on the island continent for so long. There is no treaty between black and white Australia and it was not until 1967 that the new citizens of the country agreed through voting at a referendum (by 90% in favor) for the first Australians to be recognised as full citizens of their own country. That should read “countries” as each Aboriginal tribe has its own nation or country in the area where they come from. The land means a lot to them and is their place of worship. A full account of the history of Australia’s Aboriginals is given in the Lonely Planet Worldguide.
Australia is unique in being the largest island continent in the world. Unlike so many other natives of countries around the world that have some land connecting them as continents, This means that before Governor Phillip and the settlement that followed around the Nation the indigenous Aboriginal had not seen white people ever before – in fact apart from the few stray explorers the vast majority had never seen anyone other than their own people. The result of this was that they had lived for so long off the land with no metal weapons or tools. Their navigation was by the stars, rivers and land features. Because of this nomadic existence they had no reason to collect possessions or build permanent homes. Life was drifting in search of food, water and to have ceremonies with neighboring tribes or clans. Without a currency - trade was bartering with each other as the way of exchanging goods and chattels while the men, being the dominant sex with power over the political system exhibited their wealth through the number of wives they had.
A look at the List of Livestock and Provisions that was brought on the eleven ships of the First Fleet in 1788 gives a startling reminder of what a shock it must have been for the Aboriginal Australians around Sydney Cove to see all of these things for the very first time.
It is hard for the modern 21st century Australian to understand that it is only as recently as the 1980s that the last Australian is believed to have been found in Central Australia who had never seen white man. For some groups in Northern Australia the traditional attire for women was no tops into the 1970s.The Aboriginal people were treated with scorn by the early settlers and even 150 years after the first fleet arrived they were still being massacred as a nuisance to the pastoralists who seized the land for the farming of sheep and cattle from one end of the country to the other. Despite the slaughter of their own immediate forebears the Aboriginal people worked hard helping the pastoralists and later the mission stations that began to emerge in the late 1800s. Apart from wanting to spread the word of God to the indigenous ones the missionaries were also protecting the natives from the invasion by settlers. The coming of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart is an example of the dedication to the people of Northern Australia demonstrated through the work of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Darwin.
Whilst the work of the missionaries is sometimes derided for breaking down the culture of these proud people, there is no doubt that under their tutelage the Aboriginals began to learn a sense of white man’s values that was a useful forerunner to the process of assimilation that was followed by the government of Australia around the time of the referendum in 1967.
Aboriginal people fought in all the wars Australia as a nation has been involved in since the Boer war of the 1890s, and yet in 2004 the government is still just hanging on to a program of reconciliation – an attempt to have a sharing of the country and its resources through Reconciliation Australia by acknowledging the past and building a framework for a shared future.
What follows is an expose of the thoughts of Rollo Manning after eight years in Darwin (since 1996) seven of which have been spent in the health care arena and since 2001 working directly with the people of the Tiwi Islands firstly with the Tiwi Health Board and following its demise as a social entrepreneur assisting Tiwi people to regain control of their own future.
In the pages following you will find some stimulating suggestions on how white Australia can reconcile with black Australia through action projects that will help the remote living Aboriginal find a better way of combining life in the two cultures.
DISCLAIMER
Every attempt has been made to state matters of fact as they are.
The experiences behind any assertions made by the author are gleaned from being with the people of the Tiwi Islands. If these do not extrapolate directly to other Aboriginal people of Northern Australia it is unintentional and no offence should be taken at statements that do not equate with other people’s thinking.
The text of this site has been shown to senior Tiwi people and they agree with the general approach to Aboriginal reconciliation as stated through these pages.
Photographs are used with the knowledge of the persons in the pictures and apologies are made for the depiction of anyone who is no longer with us.
R W Manning
© Darwin Northern Territory Australia July 2004
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