My Life as an Australian Aborigine
As told by Janet Strange
MY CHILDHOOD memories are of living with my mother on the waterless Nullarbor Plain of South Australia. To white people the Nullarbor, meaning “no tree,” is inhospitable. But to me it was home.
I was the youngest of four daughters. My tribal name is Nabonangu, but the local church missionary called me Janet. Daily we children would go with mother in search of food. We gathered wild berries and hunted small animals. In fact, we could chase a lizard up a tree, literally “walking” up bent double, with our fingers clutching the bark and our toes dug in. With ease, we could mimic animal or bird calls and could track a lizard.
Tracking was taught by my mother’s releasing a lizard and having us follow its tracks. I was good at this, and could even tell if an animal was in a hurry. But I was not so good as Mum. I remember visiting another camp and hearing her remark, “So and So is here.” She knew this from that one’s tracks among many others, but I could see no difference.
Water was always a problem. But we survived by remembering water holes and soaks, by shaking dew from trees, by collecting water gathered in the forks of trees or by tapping the roots of the Casuarina tree.
We cultivated our land, but in a way different from the white man. We endeavored to live with the land; they seemed to live off it. I was taught to preserve, never to destroy. We would not fell a tree or break a branch without good cause, and we sought the propagation of every living species, guarding against their extinction. As an example, in seasons of shortage some tribes would scatter seeds for the wild turkey.
Aboriginal tribes were always on the trek, covering vast circuits and being governed by climate, weather, seasons, game migrations, the seeding of plants and the fruiting of trees. Our lives depended on keeping on the move. On trek the men took the lead, with the aged, the women and the children in the rear.
Mothers would breast-feed their young for up to six years. In times of serious drought, in some tribes an expectant mother might force an abortion with certain herbs, for, unlike those of other races, she had no access to milch animals for an alternative milk supply. For the same reason, if a mother died, her babe might be put to death. This might be done also in the case of malformed babes or one of twins. Sadly so.
Aboriginal children were hardy—they had to be to survive. As soon as they were old enough, they were assigned tasks. Each member of the tribe carried something—the girls carrying babies and the boys toting spears and digging-sticks.
The “Civilizing” of My People
Around the age of five, changes began to take place in my life. The government had selected our tribal land for nuclear testing and made our tribe move farther south. During the years that followed, we became more and more dependent on handouts of tea, flour, sugar and vegetables distributed through church missions. Efforts were made to “civilize” and educate many of the children, and particularly the part-Aboriginal children, those who had white fathers. I was one of these.
Alert to these circumstances, my mother wanted me to receive some education, but not at the mission schools. The reason for this preference was that children would be taken from their parents and put into these schools to learn to read and write and to be indoctrinated into the creeds of a certain religion. Because it was felt that parental contact and influence hindered that policy, children were often taken away. That happened to my older sister, and mother did not want it to happen to me. At times, such children would escape from the mission, and men would come in search of them, or would get the police to do so. Hence, whenever a stranger came into the camp, Mum would make me lie hidden beneath a blanket, where I hardly dared to breathe until his purpose was known.
It was to get around this problem that Mum fostered me to a kindly-natured white woman who had cared for other Aboriginal children. She had taught them to read and write and had encouraged parental contact. When I was 12, however, this elderly lady died. Mum wept.
Mum did not want to undo the good done so far, and therefore allowed me to go to another white family, in Port Augusta. This family was well known by our people. When I arrived, the lady in this family was studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I would sit and listen, and I started accompanying the lady to meetings held at the Kingdom Hall. Later, I began to study the Bible myself, and, still later, we became Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In time, I became a welfare worker among Aboriginal people. A higher education at the Institute of Technology was offered to me, but I did not accept it. By then I had a different kind of ‘welfare work’ in mind. As a dedicated servant of Jehovah, I became a full-time teacher of the Bible. In this work I moved from place to place, on trek now in a much better way. Because of my knowledge of Aborigines, their languages and problems, I concentrated on meeting these.
“Dreamtime”
Most of what I have told you so far is from personal memory. But Aborigines have another memory, a sort of tribal memory that some call “dreamtime.” This embraces tribal history, customs and folklore. There is a saying, “He who loses his dreaming is himself lost.”
This “dreaming” often includes stories of an ancient ancestor who is believed to have traveled through the land forming the physical features of the country. This helps to explain why an Aborigine may be quite lost outside his territory or “country.” He loves his “country” and feels relaxed and happy when he is there, because only there, he believes, is he really at one with his ancestors. The “dreaming” is transmitted from one generation to the next by song, dance and demonstration at special gatherings called corrobories. Beliefs like these are held deeply by many Aborigines down to this day.
Our Languages
In spite of having some 300 different languages (fragmented, they say, from one original), Aboriginal tribes can communicate quite well. Some have reduced their language to what has been called hieroglyphic geometric writing. Our grammar is complex.
One anthropologist writes: “They have the verb ‘to be’ in a sense to which we whites can lay no claim. It unites the perfection of the Latin and Saxon verb with those of the Celtic and goes beyond the powers of either.” He then goes on to say of our sign language: “It has developed to the point where it has become a viable alternative to spoken language, a sophisticated subtlety of intellectual development comparatively rare in patterns of human communication.” We talk in signs between tribes, and when hunting, because silence is important then.
A Sad Story
Besides learning from experience, tuition and tribal “dreamtime,” I had now acquired a new mode of education—a love of reading. It was from books that I learned the history of my people’s early experiences with the white man, and it was not nice reading. It told of Captain Cook’s arriving in 1770 and, from his ship in Botany Bay, sighting smoke rising from shore. The lone smoke signal represented an estimated 300,000 Aborigines then living a full and relatively happy life. Their number now, after 200 years, is down to 50,000 full and 150,000 part Aborigines. The others? That is part of the sad story.
The word “civilized” denotes being civil, courteous, opposed to violence and crime. We were, I feel, civilized. Each tribe had its territories and respected the boundaries of others. We cared for our land, never exploiting it. Periodically, tribes met to trade, exchange information and arrange marriages.
But those early settlers did not view us as being civilized. With the gun and their inadequate understanding of the Bible, they sought to thrust upon us their own concept of civilization, which involved owning, fencing and farming the land—something quite foreign to the Aborigines. However, the Aborigines had good reason for their own methods, as indicated by Mrs. M. Bennet, a member of the Council of Aboriginal Rights, who wrote:
“There are no indigenous animals that can be domesticated, and there are no indigenous plants that can be cultivated for food. You cannot ‘herd’ kangaroos nor plough with them. You cannot in fertile Queensland bring and bury a pine seedling to give you a crop of nuts in your lifetime, nor in Central Australia cultivate nardoo with a five-inch rainfall of doubtful occurrence. Under these limitations, it was impossible for people to be pastoralists, agriculturists or city builders.”
Since the newly arrived boat people violated our tribal laws on trespass, we resisted. Now from coast to coast and sea to sea, atrocities started to abound. Guns confronted spears, and a race was almost completely wiped out.
And so the land was taken over. In the name of progress, development and civilization, our forests fell to the woodman’s ax, and essential rainfall lessened. Sharp-hooved exotic animals, cattle and sheep by the millions, displaced soft-pawed kangaroos, chopping the fragile topsoil and contributing to formation of sand dunes. Chemical farming boosted cash crops but damaged the ecology. Animals unique to Australia and the world have been brought to near or complete extinction. Enormous iron, bauxite and other mines scar the landscape, while their treatment plants pollute land, water and air.
Through all of this, the original inhabitants have been herded into mission and other settlements, or live in shanty dwellings on the outskirts of towns. As what might be termed final indignities, we are now allowed to enter pubs where the owners permit us to drink our government allowances, and a law has now recognized us as citizens in a land that we inhabited long before those who made this law.
A Future That Offers Hope
To an extent, religion has played a part in the developments just mentioned as the settlers sought to “civilize” and supposedly Christianize my people. So can you understand my feelings when I read in my Bible that in “Babylon the Great,” the world empire of false religion, “was found the blood . . . of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth”? (Revelation 18:2, 24) Or can you comprehend my reactions as I go on to read of her near end at the hands of Christ Jesus, or my joy at learning how his kingdom will result in righteous, loving rule over the earth? Do you wonder why I am eager to share this happy news with others of my people?—Revelation 18:20.
Today my people seem to be rootless and without purpose. Overdrinking, quarrels and fights are frequent. We no longer belong to the past, nor have we a satisfying place in the present. But the future holds hope for many of us—the hope of seeing soon the “revealing of the sons of God,” when all human creation—whites and Aborigines, as well as people of all races—”will be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God” under the rule of God’s kingdom.—Romans 8:18-21.
My desire is to reach fellow Aborigines with this grand hope. As an Aborigine, I feel suited for this because, understandably, Aborigines are slow to trust whites. In past years, many self-sacrificing white servants of Jehovah such as Des Paterson, Colin Maples and Ben Brickell traveled vast distances to take this hope to my people. There are stories of much personal privation experienced in this activity, and also of appreciative groups assembling to hear the message of God’s kingdom. My desire, and that of my husband, is to continue the work started years ago.
All over the country some of my people are grasping the importance of the Kingdom message and are responding to it. They are discerning that a view held in common by whites, Aborigines and most other people on earth is erroneous. It is that Australia belongs to Aborigines by right of original discovery or to the whites by right of conquest. Neither is true. It belongs to Jehovah God by right of creation.—Revelation 4:11.
Jehovah is the One to say who owns Australia and all the rest of the earth. I am happy that our Aborigines are represented among those who appreciate this truth.
[Blurb on page 21]
We endeavored to live with the land; the white man seemed to live off it
[Blurb on page 21]
We talk in signs between tribes and when hunting
[Blurb on page 22]
Atrocities started to abound. Guns confronted spears, and a race was almost completely wiped out
[Blurb on page 23]
Australia belongs to Aborigines by right of discovery? Or to whites by right of conquest? Neither. It belongs to Jehovah God by right of creation
[Pictures on page 20]
Animals Native to Australia
Kangaroo
Platypus
Wombat
Koala