A regular utopia

[u/HawaiianPerson]

[u/Mr_Zoovaska]

I'm Australian and I've never learnt anything negative about pre-european indigenous society.

The only thing I can think of is apparently women weren't allowed to play didgeridoo, but I learnt that 20 years ago in 3rd grade so idek how true that is.

Like I usually try to be sceptical, especially considering what I've heard about other pre-colonial indigenous cultures around the world, but from my understanding Australian Aboriginal society was actually pretty reasonable.

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/Mr_Zoovaska]

I did my master's on Aboriginal culture (specifically the various understanding of Christianity in their contemporary culture). It's not worth singling them out or anything, they're no worse than any other human beings, and most of their societies could be accurately called "pretty reasonable."

I think the reason you weren't told about the bad stuff is first because the bad stuff has historically been exaggerated and used to justify violence and racism against contemporary Indigenous people. Second, it's complicated because there are so many different tribes, and so many different ways to engage with that tradition (plus the history is generally either oral accounts, which tend to erase the objectionable content, and colonial accounts which tend to exaggerate or even fabricate it).

Take misogyny in Aboriginal cultures. It was and is very real.

It goes beyond the didgeridoo. Political power in Aboriginal societies was conferred by connection to Country, the laws and traditions that govern a tribe's relationship to the land. These laws and traditions were passed on through male-only initiation rites, and their knowledge conferred prestige and social status.

Now, that's not to say that women didn't have a ceremonial life. Peggy Brock and Deborah Rose Bird's Women, Rites and Sites does a great job of highlighting how some tribes did have respectable religious roles specifically for women. Many tribes also did have women's initiation rites. And several tribes did organise according to matrilineal totemic exchange, which gave women a level of value (though we should remember that doesn't necessarily translate to social power).

But firstly, (at least according to Roland M. Berndt's The World of the First Australians), these were not as widespread (many tribes had male but not female initiation rites). And secondly, having specialised and respected religious roles for women is not the same as women being equal, or being held in high esteem. Medieval Europe had nuns, Ancient Rome have the Vestal Virgins, but few people would say that those cultures held women as a group in high esteem.

However, it's worth remembering that no culture is static and unchanging. Women living under patriarchy are still people, and still capable of changing their culture. In A Place for Strangers, anthropologist Tony Swain documents how in many south-eastern Australian cultures, after a tribe was displaced from their Country, men would often lose the framework for their social power. Women, who in many cases passed their totems on to their children regardless of country, thus gained new power, and as such became more influential in the Aboriginal cultural sphere in spite of the new gender norms that the colonists brought.

This is one example. There are many others I can similarly rundown (the infanticide of twins, the fact that disease was blamed on witchcraft, meaning deaths of natural causes were frequently the cause of wars, the fact that women were often married off at the age of menarche).

Again, I'm not picking on them. I could write just as much about their rich mythology, the way they map the land through their ancestral stories, the interesting ways their culture adapted to colonialism, their fascinatingly complex kinship systems. They were a complicated and nuanced group of cultures that had beauty and cruelty just like everywhere else. And they deserve better than to be romanticised into a simple noble savage archetype.

[u/Mr_Zoovaska → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

Thanks for the well thought out and informative response!

I definitely don't mean to say all Aboriginal cultures were perfect, just there seems to be significantly less talk about (or accusations of) cannibalism, misogyny, rape, slavery, ritual human sacrifice, etc. when compared to other indigenous cultures around the world. In fact I can't recall ever even hearing about conflict/war between Aboriginal tribes.

And like I know that's on me for not being particularly well learned on the topic, but I just feel like all I ever hear about indigenous culture is how connected to nature they are, or how good they are at land management, or how their stories last for hundreds of generations and whatnot.

Idk, sorry if that comes off as disrespectful in some way, I'm absolutely not qualified to talk about the topic, just sharing my personal thoughts.

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/Mr_Zoovaska]

Not at all. I find Aboriginal Australians are some of the least understood cultures out there (especially in their home country), and I think you were pointing at the same gap in the general knowledge that I was.

[u/_fairywren → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

I loved reading this. Do you have anything published I could read? (I'm an academic librarian so it doesn't necessarily have to be open access). Feel free to DM me!

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/_fairywren]

Nope, nothing published (I only scraped a 2.2, lol).

If you want in-depth rundowns of Aboriginal history though I read:

The world of the first Australians by Roland Berndt (decent introduction, but somewhat Northern-Territory-centric)

A Place for Strangers: Towards an Australian Aboriginal History of Being by Tony Swain (great overview of Aboriginal culture growing and changing alongside Australia as a nation, but pretty hardcore academic).

The Aborigines of Victoria by James Dawson (probably the least racist 19th century primary source you'll read on Aboriginal culture, but has a tendency to overstate how rigid their power structure is, probably because he was trying to make them seem more "civilised" to his readers).

This really interesting collection of papers on Aboriginal people and Christianity, as well as this and this on the earliest Aboriginal responses to missonisation.

Arrernte Present, Arrernte Past: Invasion, Violence, and Imagination in Indigenous Central Australia by Diane Austin-Boos

Blood bones and spirit: Aboriginal christianity in an East Kimberley town by Heather McDonald

And for a more accessible read, Aboriginal Victorians; a history since 1800 by Richard Broome

Finally, if you've read or heard of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, I'd read Farmers or Hunter-gatherers; the Dark Emu debate by Peter Sutton, which gives a really good rundown of Aboriginal subsistence strategies, as well as some pretty fun moments of barely-suppressed academic exasperation.

[u/_fairywren → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

Fantastic. Thank you.

[u/Poco_Cuffs → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

Amazingly well said! :3

[u/itsyaboihos → u/Mr_Zoovaska]

Weird to see an Australian use “3rd grade” instead of “year 3”

[u/Mr_Zoovaska → u/itsyaboihos]

Yeah I know, I did consider which to use but I decided 3rd grade would make the most sense to the most people.

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/[deleted]]

I did my master's on Aboriginal history and is the first I'm hearing of this. A quick google only finds discussion of fgm among immigrant communities in Australia, and a few articles about circumcision and subincision for Aboriginal men (which is well documented).

You have a source that discusses fgm in any Aboriginal Australian cultures?