AustraliaQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect. For five weeks a team of scientists and explorers will examine the ancient culture of the Aborigines and attempt to determine how it affects their modern existence.

Warfare in Aboriginal history

The hills called Three Brothers, part of a traditional Aboriginal story of the land, also serve as a boundary marker recognized in the past by neighboring tribes

Ever wonder why people fight?

Today I asked Reg Dodd, our newest AustraliaQuest team member, if Aborigines fought.

"Why would we have fought?" He replied, looking at me as if I asked a dumb question. "We knew our land and knew the boundaries. When someone came in from another group, they'd have to make a signal to let you know first. Kind of like knocking first before you enter someone's home. You came with respect and left with respect."

Warfare is unfortunately part of every culture -- including Aboriginal peoples. They fought when disputes arose, perhaps over marriage partners or insults. They fought hand-to-hand with simple clubs, stone-tipped spears, and wooden shields. One early European settler described a skirmish between two groups along Australia's southeast coast as a bloody affair, where women weren't spared and the wounded were clubbed to death. But warfare was generally small in scale.

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Traditionally, Aboriginal elders like Reg helped avoid fights by judging disputes. Laws passed on by Dreamtime Ancestors gave people rules to live by, from who married whom to who could hunt and gather on what land. The stories passed down the rules people needed in order to live peacefully. These same stories established who owned the land.

As we made our way across a hill overlooking Reg's birthplace, he waved his hand off to the east. "Everything we need is right here. We know this land, where to find lizards and bush tucker, the waterholes. Unless you know the land it's useless."

It struck me that land grabbing has led to most of the wars in Western history. Farming societies always required land to grow crops or graze animals. More food meant more people who needed more land. As populations expanded, invasions increased and empires grew. Technology allowed us to kill more people quicker. But as hunter-gatherers, Aboriginal peoples kept their populations low and required less land. They were part of the environment and kept within limits imposed by nature. When fighting did erupt, simple technology meant that fewer people died.

John tests out a traditional Aboriginal shield and club

Real violence came to Australia with the arrival of the first European settlers. As in America, these settlers saw what they thought was virgin land and took what they wanted. They called the homelands of Aboriginal peoples terra nullius, or "empty land," and claimed it as their own. On the island of Tasmania, the Aboriginal inhabitants were decimated, cleared off the land in 1830 by the "Black Line," a human barrier of white settlers who moved across the island, rounding up all the Aboriginal peoples in their way.

Australian history, like our own history, is full of such horror stories. Reg himself has experienced racism in his life. He feels it all the time, yet he feels no bitterness toward white Australians. In fact, he feels bad for them. "White Australians have been deceived from the start. They've been told lies, that the land wasn't occupied, that it was theirs."

Today Reg and the rest of us live in a time when global culture is spreading and nuclear war can bring down the whole of human achievement in one big bang. The stakes are higher than ever and the need to maintain peace is more crucial.

Before we said farewell I asked Reg a final question: "Do you think Western society will survive another 50,000 years?"

He shot me a look somewhere between sadness and disappointment. "You wouldn't think so by the way we're going."

Diggin' it, John

AustraliaQuest
Classroom Connect