Preserving Indigenous Culture In Alice Springs, Northern Territory Of Australia Is An Essay.

The Indigenous Australians in Northern Territory of Australia

Question:

Discuss about the perspective of an Indigenous Aboriginal Australian.

The essay provides an overview about the perspective of an Indigenous (Aboriginal) Australian who has lived in the Northern Territories and is engaged in movement to preserve indigenous culture in hometown. The indigenous Australians have settled in the Northern Territory of Australia for near about 40,000 years. The second biggest indigenous community is Arrernte people residing in Arrernte land. The town chosen for this study is Alice Springs. This is the third biggest town situated in the Northern Territory of this nation.  This region has been renowned for harsh and remote environment. Due to this, this region has been less affected by the European culture as compared with other regions of Australia. The culture of indigenous Australians still flourishes in several parts of this region, thereby creating traditional environment mainly for the visitors to explore (Dockery 2012). Indigenous (Aboriginal) communities are considered as the vital element of this Northern territory.

One of the main challenges facing this nation in recent decades has been raising the standard of living of Indigenous Australians mainly in the remote communities of the Alice Spring region. There are huge numbers of Australians residing in this communities characterized by poor health, poverty, crime rates etc. Several people have been also caught in destructive welfare dependency cycle, youth suicide mainly that have exacted suffering on Indigenous people (Altman 2006). One of the indigenous Australian who has resided in Alice Springs has engaged in preserving their languages in order to maintain their cultural identity (Pechová 2012). This is because language being the basic marker of the indigenous Australians, it helps in identifying as well as communicating with each other easily. However, engaging in this movement helps them in promoting social interaction. Moreover, the government schools situated in this Alice Spring town also provides education to the students from remote locations to speak indigenous language as first language. This Australian has also engaged with the movement of implementing language specific programs in the schools as well as communities in order to keep their people united. Furthermore, most of these programs such as Indigenous Education Strategic initiatives program ( IESIP), Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness ( ASSPA) program and so on  were mainly funded from the existing budget of the schools. On the contrary, in some of the regions of young indigenous people rejects speaking their language, which in turn isolates their community from others.

Challenges Facing Indigenous Australians

As art styles has been one of the pillars of the Indigenous cultures, this individual living in this town has engaged in the movement to preserve this culture, self-esteem and diversity. Historical evidences reflect that the indigenous people of this town have evolved as extremely varied spectrum of artistry. According to the perspective of this Australian living in this town, preserving art has been essential owing to several reasons (Alford and Muir 2004). Firstly, this has been utilized as mark territory and recording history. In addition, one of the vital reasons of engaging in this movement is to keep their traditional community alive. Apart from this, this indigenous individual has also engaged in the movement in keeping their traditional method of painting unchanged (Bandias, Fuller and Holmes 2012). The main reason behind this movement is to share their history through paintings, sculptures, which are similar to that of their ancestors. Regardless of several problems that occurred from engagement of this movement, the aboriginal people tries to preserve this culture in order to preserve their self-esteem and maintain identity (Balíková 2005).

Contemporary Aboriginal dance has been considered as one of the cultures of the Indigenous Australians as it embraces traditional stories as well as ritual and also helps in interpreting their identity. The indigenous people living in Alice Springs who engaged in the movement of preserving this culture in his hometown has stated that ritual dances were mainly performed for bringing their families ad well as communities together for celebration (Altman 2006). In addition, their dance has also been considered as traditional ceremony since it documents about the British invasion story as well as changes it has created. Moreover, the British tunes, words and actions were also sometimes introduced in their traditional dances. In the present years, the diversity of their culture is also expressed through their dance. In addition, the Aboriginal dance theatre that was formed in the year 1970 also provides training to the students from this community in various dance styles. This in turn also helps in promoting the cultural exchange and keep physical as well mental health better (Biddle 2011).

The ceremonies also play vital part of the cultures of Aboriginal people in Australia. The indigenous Australian who has resided in Alice Spring town is also engaged in several movements of preserving these ceremonies as it has huge significance in educating the youth people. For example, in different ceremonies these people usually wear headdress along with distinguishing body painting for indicating the kind of ceremony that is being performed.

Preserving Indigenous Language

The Australian residing in this town also highlights that aboriginal people cultural and economic interest is also to harvest wild resources. However, these people adopt innovative approaches for preserving their culture as all these resources are mainly utilized for their personal consumption. In addition, non- commercial utilization of these wild resources by aboriginal people usually comprises of some productive activities, which are usually based on the cultural continuity since pre-colonial period (Gray and Altman 2006). Some of the uses includes- fishing, hunting, gathering and several other activities namely biodiversity maintenance, land as well as habitat management, species management and so on. The valuation of economic benefits to indigenous people occurring from utilization of the wild resources has been relatively simple. Conceptually, economic valuation of services or products is usually estimated in account of what customers are keen to pay for specific product less the supply cost. The figure below reflects that customers keen in paying for commodity is reflected by marginal benefit (MB) curve while supply cost is reflected by marginal cost (MC) curve. As suggested by economic theory that the product is produced as well as consumed in the unregulated market until MC become equivalent to MB. Economic value is thereby generated by consumption of output as shown by Q. However, the economic value attained from non-commercial resource harvesting by aboriginal people can be explained as difference between consumption value and production cost. As doing harvesting helps to gain economic surplus, they have engaged in the movement to preserve this specific culture of harvesting resources until MB=MC.

Figure 1: Economic surplus from harvesting resources

Sources: (Gray and Altman 2006)

The past Indigenous Australian culture in this specific town has led to lack of opportunities of employment for aboriginal youth, who are mainly aged between 22 and 26 year. Historical employment data reflects that near about 11-16000 adults as well as youth living in this territory were either not employed or not participating in labor force . In fact, the indigenous people unemployment rate was three times more than unemployment rate of non- Indigenous people. Furthermore, the low rate of employment associated with uneven number of these aboriginal Australians employed in low wage occupations signifies that the standard of living of indigenous population has been lower as compared to non-indigenous population (Dalley and Martin 2015).

The Australian government should provide fund for the ranger programs relating to preservation of culture of indigenous people in order to improve their cultural preservation. In fact, they should double their total funding for the programs for reinforcing culture.

Conclusion

From the above essay, it can be concluded that Aboriginal people have varied relationships with the environment of Australia. This relationship mainly depends on cultural practices that pass down through their generation.  The indigenous Australian tries to preserve their indigenous culture in order to place their identity before non- indigenous Australians. In the present era, continuing practices of culture of aboriginal people reflects relationship diversity that they have with this nation’s environment.

References

Alford, K., Muir, J. (2004). Dealing with unfinished Indigenous business: The need for historical reflection. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 63, 101–107. 

Altman, J 2006, 'The future of Indigenous Australia', Arena Magazine, vol. August-September, no. 84, pp. 8-10.

Balíková, J., 2005. Preserving and Restoring Identity in Traditional and Communities of Aboriginal Australians; Assimilation Programs and Issues (Doctoral dissertation, Masarykova univerzita, Filozofická fakulta).

Bandias, S., Fuller, D. and Holmes, S., 2012. Aboriginal Economic and Human Development in the Northern Territory of Australia: To Work or Not to Work. A Clash of Non?Indigenous Beliefs. Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy, 31(1), pp.50-62.

Biddle, N. 2011. ‘Physical and mental health’, Measures of Indigenous Wellbeing and Their Determinants Across the Lifecourse, 2011 CAEPR Lecture Series (Lecture 3), ANU, Canberra.

Dalley, C. and Martin, R.J., 2015. Dichotomous identities? Indigenous and non?Indigenous people and the intercultural in Australia. The Australian journal of anthropology, 26(1), pp.1-23.

Dockery, A.M., 2012. Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey analysis for Indigenous policy in Australia: Social science perspectives, pp.281-306.

Gray, M. and Altman, J., 2006. The economic value of harvesting wild resources to the Indigenous community of the Wallis Lake Catchment, NSW. Family Matters, (75), p.24.

Keogh, T., 2014. Psychoanalytic Reflections on An Experience of Australian Aboriginal Culture. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 11(3), pp.246-264.

Pechová, M., 2012. Current relations between Aborigines and dominant Australian culture.

Woodward, E., Jackson, S., Finn, M. and McTaggart, P.M., 2012. Utilising Indigenous seasonal knowledge to understand aquatic resource use and inform water resource management in northern Australia. Ecological Management & Restoration, 13(1), pp.58-64.