Look at the images below to hear Sally talk about land and sea. At the end of the video select the next button or use the left menu to do a quiz about Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander traditions. | ||
Hi, I'm Sally and I'm here with some of my friends to introduce you to some of the traditional aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
Traditional culture for our people is very rich and powerful and it teaches us about how we are to live.
To Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the land and the sea are very important.
The natural world is our Mother and gives us life.
For each person their own land is the link to their Dreaming and is important for spiritual reasons as well as for economic and social reasons.
Everyone has a responsibility to look after the land which they come from.
Traditionally our people lived off the land and the sea, in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Knowledge about how to look after the land was passed on from one generation to the next.
If you listen to Jack talking about the Dreaming, you'll start to understand our spiritual relationship with the land and sea.
You might have heard of sacred sites for instance.
These are places that are important to us because they are part of the Dreaming and have been handed down to us by the ancestral spirits.
The Torres Strait Islander people lived a less nomadic life than Aboriginal people and grew a lot of their own foods in gardens.
They lived on seafood such as dugong, turtle, fish and shellfish and grew yam and taro.
They were skilled navigators and understood the ways of the sea.
The arrival of European settlers caused a massive disruption to traditional lifestyle.
They took over the productive land and the water supplies. They brought lots of different animals with them and they cleared great tracts of land, causing changes in the natural ecology.
Aboriginal people had to move from their traditional land.
Many Islanders were moved from their homes and taken to the mainland to be labourers.
You can find out more about this in the History section from the main menu.
Today Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in many different situations, some still living traditional lifestyles in remote communities and many living in urban or rural communities.
But for all our people the land and the sea and the Dreaming stories are still a central part of our lives.