Aboriginal drama

Lily sent us an email all about what she had found out about the Aboriginies when she visited the Red Centre in Australia. We wanted to share her story with you.

For thousands of years the Aboriginies lived as hunter gatherers. They hunted animals and gathered bush tucker and lived happy healthy lives.

They used animal skins and plants to make their homes and clothes.

They shared stories in the evenings with their children and grand children. These stories had been passed down like this for thousands of years.

The older people taught the younger people the skills they needed to live happily in their home land.

In the evenings the Aboriginal people spent time together eating, sharing stories, making music and dancing.

They shared their food and their stories.

When they had taken enough from the land, they packed up their few belongings and moved on. They wanted to make sure that they did not take too much from any place, that the land had a chance to renew it's fruits and the animals had a chance to reproduce. The Aboriginal people understood about the land and respected it. They only took what they needed.

Then the white people came. The Aboriginies were surprised, for they had never seen white people before. The white people did not understand how the Aboriginies lived and thought that they were not as good as them. They did not like how the Aboriginal people dressed so that told them that they must change.

Some of the Aboriginies fought back and said no, they did not want to change. But they only had spears and the white people had guns. Many were killed. Others were made to live in one place, to build houses and to work for the white people. The Aboriginies were not used to this. They liked their freedom. They were unhappy.

Then one day, some of them decided that they could not live like white people, so they went walkabout back into the bush.

Now, white people have more respect for the Aboriginal people. We are beginning to understand that we can learn a lot from them, that they are more clever about looking after our Earth than we are.