Indigenous Australians
.jpg)
Yesterday we saw some cave paintings and other art by Australian Aboriginal people. If you got the impression from the art that Aboriginal men didn't wear much clothing, you are correct, and that continued into modern times, as documented in today's photos.
Not all Aboriginal people were naked. Remember, Australia is an entire continent. At the time that Europeans arrived, there were over 250 different Aboriginal groups, each speaking a different language and with different customs. Nevertheless, nudity was common and was not considered shocking or shameful.
Above, an Aboriginal man named Cunninghun from the Armidale district in New South Wales, photographed in the 1890s by Charles H. Kerry.
By the way, the term "aborigine" is now considered culturally insensitive, because it has racist connotations from Australia's past, but to call a person "Aboriginal" or an "Indigenous Australian" is OK.
%20Aboriginal%20family%20standing%20in%20front%20of%20a%20bark%20shelter,%20Queensland%20(Handley%20&%20Atkinson%20Photographers).jpg)
This 1900 photo by Handley & Atkinson Photographers shows an Aboriginal family standing in front of a bark shelter in Queensland.
Two Worrorra men with impressive full body scarification at the Kunmunya Mission in Western Australia, photographed in 1924 by Auber Octavius Neville. Unfortunately, the photo has been censored.
Neville, the "Chief Protector Of Aborigines," is infamous for his policy of removing Indigenous Australian children from their families to be raised in white culture.
The scars are not from fighting or other wounds. Scarification was done as a ritual for certain events such as puberty, marriage, birth of a child, or death of relatives.
.jpg)
Here's an Aboriginal man with a spear thrower and spear in the Warburton Range in Western Australia, photographed by Michael Terry in 1931.
The spear thrower or woomera is not part of the spear. It is a wooden device that hooks onto the back end of the spear and acts like an extension of the arm, enabling the spear to be thrown with much greater speed and force.
.jpg)
An Aboriginal man at Yingurrdu Soak in the Northern Territory, photographed by Michael Terry in 1932.
.jpg)
The director at Yingurrdu in the Northern Territory having a conversation with Aboriginal men and boys, photographed by Michael Terry in 1932.
%20(brightened).jpg)
A fourth photo by Michael Terry shows an Aboriginal man with body scarring holding spears in Western Australia in 1932.
.jpg)
An Aboriginal man in a bark canoe spearing fish in North Queensland, photographed by A.H.E. Mattingley in 1934.
.jpg)
A North Queensland Aboriginal man spearing fish, photographed by A.H.E. Mattingley in 1934.
.jpg)
An Aboriginal man throws a boomerang in the Devil's Marbles area in the Northern Territory north of Alice Springs, photographed by Roy Dunstan in 1936-1938.
Note that the man is circumcised. Circumcision was practiced by many Indigenous Australian groups long before Europeans arrived in Australia. It was not done as infant circumcision, but as a puberty rite performed on boys at about age 12.
%20(brightened).jpg)
We end with a 1940 photo by Charles P. Mountford of an Aboriginal hunter carrying spears, a woomera, and the kangaroo that he hunted. Hunting and fishing naked was apparently still common practice for Aboriginal men in the 1930s and 1940s.
8 comments:
Glad you covered the circumcision - i was going to ask.
A very good post. Like every where else that we white men have gone, we have managed to convince indigenous people to wear some clothes, at least over the male genitals. I once had a neighbor who was a missionary in Brazil. He showed us films of his trek in to meet a remote tribe. It showed several men carrying large packs.......those bundles were, you guessed it, CLOTHES!!! Of all the things that the tribe could have used, these men wanted them to cover up. Of course, there were NO pictures of naked people! This neighbor man even had a problem saying the word naked, he stuttered trying to say that. So SICK!!!!
Oh, that wasn't Brazil, it was Peru.
Great post. I noticed that the top image of Cunninghun had a date of 1957. Was that a reprint date?
Aboriginal circumcision is regional in Australia. The kakadu/Arnhem land for instance doesn't have it, but it is present isn dryer more central parts of Australia, but not on the sourthern/eastern areas. So basically alone water lines. In central parts, water was scarce enough that if a woman had twins, one would be killed because there wasn't enough water to support 2 kids. Much aboriginal art consists of concentric circles, and these denote phases of life. To get from outer to more inner circle, you needed to go through some ritual. So in some tribles, circumcision was one such step, usually one of the ealrier ones. Unless you have undergone that ritual, you are not allowed to learn knowledge known only to people un the more inner circles. And the tribe leader being at centre had full knowledge. This is why the "lost" generation was so important because by taking aboriginal kids to towns, they missed out on rituals and even if they returned, they would not be allowed to learn about their tribe's culture/knowledge and eventually when the chief died, there was loss of a whole tribe's culture/knowledge.
@SickoRicko - Rick, good question. The Cunninghun photo is in the National Library of Australia collection. They say the photo's date is between 1893 and 1897. They also say "Title devised by cataloguer from acquisition documentation." I looked at some other photos by Kerry in their collection, and they had similar titles at the bottom of the photos, each starting with a 4-digit number (except the other numbers I saw were in the 2000s). So my guess is that 1957 is the photograph number, not a date.
Mesoamericans also used "spear throwers' called atlatls
I notice that there are questions and comments about circumcision in Aboriginal tribes, in some tribes it goes WAY beyond that. Part of their custom was subcincision which is DEFINITELY deforming. Certainly a strange practice!
Post a Comment