Day Four: An Aboriginal Community

Colin and Maria's way of life is pretty urbanized. They live in a regular house, and live a life like you and me, in a community in Broome. That doesn't mean that they don't practice their culture still, or get back out to see their tribes. Colin told us that some communities are still living by Aboriginal law and living the Aboriginal life --what it was like before the government took over. Since we weren't able to get up to the upper peninsula, we were the first group to be taken to a Aboriginal community. We were the guinea pigs, and it was a pretty big deal. We were setting the bar for people after us that want to come and visit and bridge the gap between cultures. We drove for about 4 hours and they took us through the aboriginal community and onto their beach. No white peopel had ever been to this beach before. At first it was kind of weird because everyone that drove by us would look at us oddly. Before long, the elders of the community warmed up to us and the children wanted to play with us. They taught us how to fish, make bread, and cook the fish. They not only taught us usful skills, they taught us about their culture. The elders opened up to us, taught us some of their language, shared their stories, shared some songs, and even gave some of the group skin names. Shane, our Australian professor, told us that we made more progress with these people in 4 hours than a lot of people have been trying to do in years.

The Elder women: I thought it was interesting to know that the people in charge of the community are always the women.

The tide went away

Most prestine and untouched beach

Lezlee and me!

Heather, Kelsey, Lezlee, and me

The aboriginal children. They thought it would be funny to put mud on. Also, the mud keeps the bugs away.

Me playing with the kids--they were so awesome! The kids were so curious of my culture and the color of my skin. They wondering if I had any black people in my family back home because a lot of these kids are half-casts or have some sort of white person in their family. They wanted to know what America is like becuase their perception of America is that every one has guns and there is a lot of killing in America. I got questions from a few of them asking me if there was a lot of killing in America. Two people in this Aboriginal culture could be related, but not by blood but by skin tribe. A little girl was telling me that she could call one of the boys brother and uncle. It is hard for me to understand. They all have skin names and some of them have totems (an animal that they came from in which they have a connection with and cannot hunt for food). One of the girls walked up to me and said, "isn't it weird"... I was confused and asked "what wierd" she stated that it is weird that we are all walking on bodies. 60,000 years of her ancestors have been buried on this land and they are all around us. I got goose bumps and Colin said that getting goose bumps is a sign from them telling you that they are still around. One of the elders asked my freind what his name is, and he said Brandon. They gave him a look and said we cannot say that name in our community because someone by the name of Brandon just passed away in the community so that name is not spoken and retired, in memory of him. 

This was probably one of the coolest cultural experiences I will have in my lifetime and it happened just in one day. 

Day Three: Shooting Spears

Day Two, we still couldn't go up to the Peninsula, so we went to Maria's Tribe's land and got taught how to make spears, throw them, make bread, and sat around and talked to Colin some more. The girls were not allowed to make the spears because of their culture, but the girls could still watch and could still throw them. While the boys learned how to make spears, the ladies learned how to make some bread. Colin talked to us about his culture and way of life. We talked about the afterlife, dream time, and their way of life. It was really bizarre for me to hear about their beliefs because their beliefs weren't normal to me. I was thinking that is probably how they feel about my culture and way of life and the European settler's culture and way of life that they were forced to practice. Their dreamtime is really interesting. They believe that when we sleep, the body is asleep, but the spirit(soul) is not. The spirit can travel back in time to our memories or can travel forward in time. It can visit a scene from the future whether that scene is good or bad. If you tell someone about it, that is how you make sure it won't come true. For instance, if you were to dream about a family member getting into a car accident, you would have to tell someone so that it wouldn't come true. They are heavily into intrepreting dreams. Colin talked about how there is a basic understanding of the rules and way of life through all of the Aboriginal tribes, but every tribe is different. They all speak different dialects, and abide by different rules. He described it as being like Europe. It is divieded by borders in which each country is different, with different rules and different  languages. You have to get permission before entering another tribe, just like you need permission before entering another country. We talked about technology, and how much that we don't really need it. We can make a cell phone, but physically can never get ride of it. His people have been living on this land for 60,000 year without electronics and still have survived off of the land. Colin puts things in perspective that I would never have thought of before.  

Making Spears

Throwing Spears

Me throwing a spear

Maria's Tribe's land 

A spear

Making Aboriginal Bread

teaching us how to throw

Day Two: The Morgans

We woke up bright and early, ate a quick breakfast, and were off to the Morgans. Usually, this is the day where we were supposed to head up to the upper peninsula in the Kimberley, but because of the recent cyclone and all the rain that came in, the roads were all flooded out and we may even get trapped up there. The Morgans were so nice to let us all stay at their house. They have a huge garage where we all set up tents in.

They were two person tents and Lezlee and I shared one. 

Before we set up our tents, we sat around the garage and chatted with Colin (our father for the week) for 2-3 hours about his culture and racism. That is a long time to sit around and chat, but he held our attention the whole time. He talked to us about the Stolen Generation and how it affected him personally.  I never knew what the Stolen Generation was until I got here, but that is actually what I wrote my research paper on. The Australians kind of keep it hidden. For 100 years, the government had control over the Aboriginal people. They wanted to make Australia more of a "white county" and thought that the way the Aboriginal people lived was a barbaric lifestyle, so they wanted to make their lifestyle more like the European Settler's life style. The government devised a plan to take the Aboriginal children away from their mothers without thier mothers permission and put them into camps or foster homes to try and make them "more white". A half-caste child is a child of half Aboriginal and half white descent. Some of the Aboriginal women were raped by the white people and so many half-caste children came about. Since the white gene is the dominate gene, the children were more white then black and so the government wanted to also weed out the black color over time from the Aboriginal skin and make this county into a white country. This is a form of cultural genocide and many Aboriginal people were affected by these government laws. Colin's mom was one of the children taken and put into a camp. They gave her a new name and told her that she could only speak English and not her native tounge. A lot of the Aboriginal languages are lost because of this. This happened up until the 1970s, but the governement didn't acknowledge anything happened until 2008 when the government made a public apology. Colin and Maria (my mother for the week) were both very greatful for the apology, but they have now asked the question--now what?! Actions speak louder than words, and the government still has ridiculous laws that pertain to the Aboriginal people. 

This story and hearing Colin talk about it, gave me a whole new perspective on the Native American culture in America. Colin talked a lot about how there is a huge gap still today between the white Austrlaians and the Aboriginal people. He said we are all human and all Australian, why should we be treated any different. This situation and what we all heard from Colin is hard to describe the impact on us that we heard from Colin. It was an intense conversation and he told us that no question was too touchy of a subject. He wants his story to be known and the Aboriginal people's story to be heard. He stated that it is great that we are there listening to him, but Australian students never come to listen to him. They don't teach a lot of this stuff in Australian history books, nor talk about it all together. The two cultures do not collide and stay away from each other.

WE ARE ALL HUMAN. 

Later that day, we finally got to go on our camel ride.

Meet Tiny, My camel.

Cable Beach--Best.Beach.Ever.

My Australian Family

Me on Cable Beach

Day One: Off to Broome

I woke up at 3:45 in the morning only an hour after I went to bed. By the time the plane took off, everyone was pretty passed out. I was confused when we landed because we weren't in Broome yet. It was just a stop over to drop some people off and fill up with gas. I had never had a stop over on an air plane before where I just stay on the plane and then it leaves again. We sat on the plane filling up for gas and what not for about an hour. It was a tiny airport in the middle of the outback. It seemed like some sort of base because I have no idea what else they would use it for. No one minded the stop over because that meant it was more time for us to sleep. Once we got to the airport, the previous group was already there, but they kept us separate so that we wouldn't hear about their experiences. We got on a bus that took us to the UNDA campus in Broome. There are only about 200 students at this university and it is a really tropical place with palm trees and buildings built for the tropic so it didn't seem like a normal university. That is were we stayed for the night-in dorms on campus. We dropped our stuff off there and then off we went for the first of our adventures. They first took us to the Broome mall where we got a bite to eat and then we went to the Broome cemetery. The cemetery was full of Japanese graves. After the cemetery visit, we went to Cable Beach to hopefully ride some camels, but they ended up canceling on us because it was raining pretty hard core. we were bummed, but not too bummed because we got to act like we were little kids again and run around in the rain. It was the most fun I have had in a while. After, we went back to UNDA, got cleaned up, and called it an early night because we were to have an early morning the next morning.

The group playing in the rain

The ladies on cable beach at sunset

The group after playing in the rain

Playing in the ocean when it was raining.

The ladies at sunset

I got pushed into the water

gave up staying dry and decided to push more people in

Japanese graveyard

Lez and Heather playing in the rain

before we got really wet

acting like camels since the camels stood us up.

That is it from day one of Broome. Not too much deep culture stuff went on the first day, but tune in for the second day where we start to get talking about deep issues.

Broome!

I will be out of comission until Sunday. I am heading off to Broome then into the Kimberly. I have no expectations, just looking forward to it. No electronics for the next few days!

Cheers<3

dilly dallying around Freo

The beach visits have been getting fewer and fewer and the homework load has been piling up high. I finally finished my research paper this week. It was on the Stolen Generations of Australia. All the way up until 1969, the government was the legal parents of all Aboriginal children and they took the children from their parents without the parents consent in hopes of making Australia into a 'White Australia. It was an interesting paper, but very stressful. I am not very good at writing research papers and also when I was working in the computer lab with 3 other girls, the computers decided to stop working. We lost a lot of our work the day before the paper was due so we had to get an extension. I am so relieved to have that done.

Friday, we had 3 birthdays that needed celebrating. We rented out a room at a bar called the Orient. We were able to actually play American drinking games like beer pong for a change. Playing those games is illegal in bars here. I am not sure why. We have been craving our American drinking games and it brought a little piece of home back to us. Since we are students at UNDA, we got to rent out this room for free, got a free birthday cake, free tshirt, and free pool all night. It is a nice little deal we have going on. In exchange, the orient makes a lot of money off of us at the bar.

Yesterday I went to a real AFL(Australia Football League) game. It was awesome! I can't believe this sport is so big here and I have never heard of it. The stadium sits close to what the metrodome sits and the field is 210 meters in length and about 110 meters in width. It is about twice the size of a NFL field length wise and twice the width too. The midfielders in this game run about 15 miles a game; it is insane. The men are all pure muscle and have such good stamina. They have a player on their team that is like 7 feet. This game is about a lot of physical contact, running, tackling, and fast pace. I can't believe this sport had never got any publicity in any other country. It seems like a whole underground world.  

He had great hair, one of my favorite players.

Kicking a goal!

The goal in the middle is worth 6 points and the outsides are worth 1.

We had awesome seats! We were so close to the players. We knew a guy that has an internship with the Dockers so he got us the seats.

Little kids for the half time show

Heather and I at the game.

In the distance behind the goal, there are HUGE pom-poms. You can't see them that well, but they were historical.

Number 31 in the middle is almost 7 feet. He is HUGE.

This was the train after the game. This must be a fire hazard. We crammed so many people into the train. I wasn't even able to move my arms.