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G'Day Fela - Episode 6
55 Plays11 years ago
I hope you’re ready to break the rules as we say “piss it” to boring old news stories and go a little unscripted as we discuss my undying love for the land down under. That’s right, that mystical continent on the other side of the world was once my home- and not just me, it’s the home of the Croc Hunter (well, was…), Javert, Wolverine, The Hulk/Nero/Hector, Eomer and Galadriel, The Joker, that stupid girl that married Legolas that I will hate forever and ever, and Nicole Kidman!
But seriously, I could talk about Australia for weeks on end and never tire. And good on ya for having a listen while I have a go at it fair dinkum. So I thought since my corpus of knowledge on Aussie stuff if fairly large I would go a little crazy (or “crack a fruity”) and have an unscripted discussion about my interests in Australian anthropology. Because it’s the largest component of history on the continent, the main portion of this episode is on Aboriginal anthropology and archaeology (though I do give a short background and my thoughts on convict archaeology, squeeeeeee!)
There’s a soapbox on the use of the term “aborigine,” an explanation of the biological debate over Aboriginal ancestry, a quick trip through the Dreamtime and its theoretical implications, a story about two giant dog spirits and what that has to do with survival in the Outback, a related and totally non-random story about the worst (but most exciting) day of my life, and a quick history of colonialism and why that makes me really old…
That about sums it up, though I do have to explain a few things that I mention in the episode:
1. I have since learned how to drive a standard, thank you very much.
2. I was honestly sad when Steve Irwin died, he had two little kids for goodness’ sake, I’m not heartless!
3. When I say that the majority of Aboriginal People don’t live traditional lifestyles anymore, it doesn’t mean they are completely cut off from that way of life. Many still have relatives whom they visit, and many live in small communities outside of the mainstream (not so different from our reservations). I once took a 30 hour bus trip from Alice Springs to Melbourne which took us through the middle of the Outback, and at one point about 4 hours since we’d seen any signs of life aside from kangaroos and camels (yes, there are camels in the Outback) a lone Aboriginal man signaled for the bus driver to stop- he got off the bus and proceeded to literally walk away into the sunset… in the middle of the desert. Even though it all looked like the same endless desert to us, this man (who was fully dressed in western clothing) knew the landscape of his people, and I assume he was going to meet some tribesmen or family at their campsite. Have to admit that kind of blew my mind. Also the camel thing, I didn’t know that either.
4. Did I mention my phone booth got hit by lightening and I drove through fire?
5. No, Australians don’t have biscuits (like biscuick biscuits). If you try to describe to them what this delicious savory snack is they get very confused, because to them a cookie is a biscuit. I wouldn’t go into it if I were you.
6. My accents need some work, I know
7. In the end I basically said: Hey friends, why don’t you go down and throw some shrimp on the grill down on Bondi Beach, or eat some breakfast in the bushy desert, as long as you aren’t an idiot getting drunk in some bar until you thow up everywhere and die. That’s the truth, because there’s no room for fools in Australia, and that’s all from this girl… (don’t think too hard about this, it was just a demonstration of Aussie slang)
8. People who live in Australia do, in fact, drink lots of beer and eat lots of sausages. It’s the national pastime…
McNiven OUT!
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Transcript
Jenny's Love for Australia and Study Abroad Decision
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey peeps, how's it hanging? It's Jenny and I'm back for episode six of The Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. I am so excited about this episode. Oh my god.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm going to talk about Australia today. I hope you are all ready for a kick-ass awesome episode about Australia because I love this country. A little background. In college, I wanted to study abroad for a semester. Like most people, I was thinking, oh, I'll just go to London or
00:00:52
Speaker
Paris or something like that. And then my roommate Spivey said to me, you know, I always wanted to go to Australia. Why don't we think about it and we can go together so none of us have to be alone.
00:01:05
Speaker
and we did some research and australia is like i don't know if you've never been there it's just this like crazy magical wild place in in your mind you know you think you're gonna step off the plane and you're gonna look over and there's gonna be like kangaroos hopping through the distance with air's rock in the background and you know i don't know waves on the beach and like i don't know rugged like crocodile Dundee men with
00:01:32
Speaker
hats big hats will be like riding a horse in the on the beach over to you and they will sweep you off into the outback where you will i don't know go and
00:01:45
Speaker
have stuff to eat and drink. I don't know, that story got really sad at the end. Sorry, I ran out of ideas. Anyway, so yeah, that's what you kind of think Australia's gonna be like. So we actually got so excited about it, we decided let's do it, let's go to Australia. So I went to Australia for a semester in college and it was amazing.
Studying Aboriginal Culture: Anthropology and Theater
00:02:10
Speaker
I studied at the University of Wollongong in just south of Sydney, Australia.
00:02:16
Speaker
And I studied Aboriginal anthropology and theater because that's the type of weird stuff that I do. Yeah, and I had a really great, great, great, great, great time when I was there. I backpacked across most of the country, not all, the eastern coast, and I backpacked out to the Outback, down into Melbourne, and back to Sydney, and all the way up to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and all that.
00:02:43
Speaker
So it was pretty awesome. I went with my best friend Spivey and him and I just ripped that place up. So I had a lot of crazy experiences and it only made the vision I had of Australia better once I actually got there and realized that it's a really cool place. It actually doesn't feel that much different from America when you get there.
00:03:07
Speaker
It's just it's like America with a whole bunch of weird quirks and the guys have like much sexier accents. So yeah and then everything is really pretty except for the Outback which kind of sucks. I don't know if I have time to tell the story today but the worst day of my life happened in the Outback and it's like a really
00:03:27
Speaker
long, exciting tail. Maybe I'll fit it in here somewhere. Maybe I'll just peek your excitement for it first and get to it like at the very end or something. Anyway, so I have been really interested in anthropology, relating to Australia ever since.
00:03:43
Speaker
And I've done a bit of research and work on it in my grad studies. So I figured, why not talk about it on the podcast? It's a really exciting area and one that is often overlooked as far as popular archaeology and anthropology goes.
00:03:59
Speaker
And I don't think the average person knows much about the country besides the fact that it's really far away, it's on the other side of the world, it's its own continent. Crocodile Dundee is from there, and so was the crocodile hunter before he was killed. And I don't know, they drink fosters. These people think they do, but they don't really. And...
00:04:21
Speaker
I'm not sure what else. Yeah, Aboriginal people live there. That's probably about most of the average person's knowledge about it. But it's a very complex situation. And so we're going to talk about it. So without further ado, here is Australia Day on the podcast. I think I'm going to call this one G'day, fella. Because that's what Aboriginal people say if they say fella. So yeah, let's get started. I'm so excited. I just clapped.
00:04:49
Speaker
Australian anthropology has two main components. There's basically the Aboriginal component and the European historical archaeological component.
Theories of Aboriginal Evolution and History
00:05:00
Speaker
And that has a large emphasis on convict archaeology, especially lately because it's becoming a very popular subject over there.
00:05:09
Speaker
But we're going to start with the Aboriginal anthropology because it's probably the most well known and it has the biggest focus on it, or at least it has throughout the history of the study. So Australia was first inhabited. I'm going to give you guys just a little history in case you don't know very much.
00:05:27
Speaker
about this stuff, Australia was first inhabited between about sometime between 40 and 50,000 years ago by a large group of people that came over from Southeast Asia. And quick side note to interlude, when I say people, that's a little controversial because some believe that the evolution of the Aboriginal people is an example of the multi-regional model of human development.
00:05:56
Speaker
And there's basically two different warring models, the out of Africa and the multi-regional model. And this one kind of claims that when Homo sapiens evolved, they were the result of evolution and then the interbreeding of several earlier populations of hominids, such as Homo erectus, who had spread from Africa to Europe and Asia.
00:06:20
Speaker
And some people believe the Aboriginal people are actually the ancestors of such groups or a group of Homo erectus. And so the evidence for this and other groups that kind of came from these pockets of Homo erectus and hominids in Europe and Asia comes from the physical fossil evidence.
00:06:44
Speaker
which some claim indicates similarities in morphology, which is kind of like the structure of the body within Asia and Australia, which are significantly different from those found in Europe and Africa. And that suggests major differences in the ancestry of Asian and Australian populations because they appear more similar to Homo erectus.
00:07:08
Speaker
So it's kind of like another sister group to our direct ancestors, like the Neanderthals, that interbred with populations coming out of Africa around 200,000 years ago. But these ones just lived in Asia instead of Europe. So they were more like, meat and potatoes, what's that? Give me some sushi. Yeah, not that any of that existed at that time.
00:07:31
Speaker
Anyway, so anyway, that means that their ancestry is more varied to include their erectus ancestry, like the Europeans are more varied because of their Neanderthal ancestry, or limited, I should say, limited Neanderthal ancestry. So, I mean, if you go back early enough, they all coalesce in Africa, but the hominids that had moved to different regions contributed to the lines of Homo sapiens that spread throughout them.
00:07:59
Speaker
And there is some DNA evidence to support this as well, though I must add there is still a lively debate between the out of Africa and multi-regional camps.
Linguistic and Cultural Uniqueness of Aboriginal People
00:08:10
Speaker
You know, they get together and just punch it out every now and then.
00:08:15
Speaker
Oh, and the out of Africa theory has kind of been the prevailing thought, and that's more that everyone evolved in Africa, our ancestors in Africa, we stayed there, we evolved, and then into the Homo sapiens, sapiens species, and then we left Africa and spread throughout the lands. Not that there wasn't any hominid ancestors who did,
00:08:37
Speaker
leave Africa, there were. We know that's a fact. There were, I mean, Homo erectus left Africa and I think it's Homo antecessor. We found evidence in Europe of that predating the time when Homo sapiens left Africa.
00:08:53
Speaker
It's just that those groups that left Africa, they don't think contributed at all. Like the Neanderthal we used to kind of think never really intermixed. They went out there, weren't very successful. They died out and then they were replaced by the African Homo sapiens who came out and spread around.
00:09:11
Speaker
Of course now, we do know we interbred a little bit with the Neanderthal, but nothing terribly, terribly significant. And now, so, I guess the prevailing thought now is that it's kind of a mix of the two theories, that for the most part homo sapiens evolved in Africa, but when we left there were other hominid populations out there, and we did interbreed with them a little bit, and so there was gene flow between those different groups.
00:09:36
Speaker
And that pretty much led to the development of modern humans. And that kind of explains why there are morphological and other differences in the DNA between populations in Africa, Europe, and Asia. So that's your quick evolution minute on today's podcast. And now back to the show.
00:09:58
Speaker
So let's talk about Australia's original inhabitants, the Aboriginal people. Now, we have both archaeology and anthropology to use in our study of the Aboriginal people because, yeah, we have archaeology dating back like 40,000 years that archaeologists can study, but cultural anthropologists will also go to Australia and they will observe the actual living culture.
00:10:25
Speaker
It's called ethnography. And they'll, you know, go to the outback and observe and try to understand the culture from their point of view. And it's a very complex culture. So, yeah, and they're also just unique. I guess you could call them anomalies, I guess. They don't much resemble any other population from Southeast Asia or the South Pacific apart from maybe the areas of the Torres Strait directly north of Australia.
00:10:53
Speaker
And this is believed to be because they traveled out of Africa between 64 and 75,000 years ago, and remained largely homogenous until they left Asia for better conditions in the islands to the south, after which those Southeast Asians had a huge influx of groups which later shaped their physical development.
00:11:12
Speaker
and the Australian settlers then became isolated and developed in their own right. The oldest known human specimen from Australia is called Mungoman and he dates to about 42,000 years ago. I'm not too sure about the geology of the period, but I know that there was like a significant land bridge at some point throughout the corridor between Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Australia.
00:11:36
Speaker
I think it was early in the period of human expansion, but I'm not sure. It is a popular theory that knowledge of Australia's existence came from that period because there was more easy access between the two continents. So let's talk about Aboriginal language and cultural groups.
00:11:54
Speaker
So around the time of Europeans' arrival, and the first settlement was in 1788, there were more than 250 languages spoken in Australia. Unfortunately today, there is only about 15 still actively spoken. Most Aboriginal languages and dialects are considered part of one large language group called the Pamu Nyong'en language.
00:12:15
Speaker
And the ones considered not Pemanyungen exist mostly in the way high north, where there's been actually considerable contact with neighboring groups from New Guinea and the Torres Strait. So they're probably influenced by that. But for the most part, Aboriginal languages are closely related because they evolved from the original population of settlers, which makes sense.
00:12:38
Speaker
So, pretty much the same can be said about the many cultural groups spread throughout the continent, too, which use these related languages and share many of their cultural traditions.
Impact of European Settlement on Aboriginal Communities
00:12:48
Speaker
Now, let's talk about the term aborigine. The term aborigine was coined in Europe.
00:12:58
Speaker
in the 17th century to refer to the original people of an area. Now remember, this is during the period of expansion and imperialism. So Europeans had to sort of figure out some way socially to deal with all of the indigenous peoples they were coming across as they were spreading out across the globe, taking other people's lands from them and pretty much shoving them into closets.
00:13:19
Speaker
So, they came up with the term aborigine, ab means from, and origo means origin, so aborigi became a term used to describe the indigenous peoples.
00:13:31
Speaker
And so it was used, obviously, of course, when they got to Australia to describe the Aboriginal peoples they saw there. And it was adopted in popular culture. Thanks a lot, Crocodile Dundee. And so even though there's many varied culture and groups in Australia, they all are referred to or were referred to by this one term.
00:13:54
Speaker
And to them, it really has a negative connotation because it's a relic of colonialism's attempt to group them into one and signify their difference from the white fella. So I know it doesn't sound like a big difference, but when I was there, honestly, I heard directly from Aboriginal individuals that just the small change from Aborigine to Aboriginal peoples or Indigenous Australians is not as offensive to them.
00:14:21
Speaker
So now this is the preferred terminology. It's similar to, you know, how we used to call Native or Indigenous Americans Indians back in the day. But that was offensive, so now we call them Native Americans. And so, seeing how the change has been adopted fairly quickly in America, I'm hoping Australians will follow, hop on board, and then eventually pop culture can follow and we can stop using the stupid term aborigine. That was my soapbox on the term aborigine. Don't ever use it again. If I find you, I will slap you.
00:14:51
Speaker
So, let's do a quick history. Uh, Aborigines are- oh my god, I just said it. You see? Pop culture is destroying me! Aboriginal people. We're there for like, you know, 40- 50,000 years.
00:15:05
Speaker
doing their thing and then in 1788 they met the first settlement of Europeans in Byron Bay, New South Wales. Wasn't the first time any European had seen Australia obviously during the voyages of discovery. Australia was discovered and you know people sold boats around it and pilfered their
00:15:26
Speaker
fish and stuff, but no one had ever settled and really come into close contact. So that happened in 1788. And basically just think about the story of North American contact with Native Americans and just relive that. You know, there's contact, there's disease, there's war, there's slaughter, submission, racism.
00:15:46
Speaker
Then they start to feel pretty bad about it, and they try to make it up to them, but they're still pretty much failing. They pretty much, I mean, like wiped out the entire indigenous population of Tasmania. So yeah, the Europeans did not get along well with the Aboriginal communities when they got there. There were some attempts at peace, kind of similar to the way we made peace with Native Americans so that we could use them for their turkeys in November.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so yeah, there there was large-scale wiping out of Aboriginal populations. It's very sad and it's a period in Australia's history that they are not proud of, but you can't reverse it. And I can tell you from my experiences there that it's not all hunky-dory today. There's still racism towards Aboriginal people and it still exists, even though the government is actually trying to do something to make up for it at least a little bit. So
00:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, so their contact with Native Americans, Native Aboriginals, it was long and...
00:16:51
Speaker
terrible and then it was good a little bit. But anyway, in the second half of the last century, they started actually trying to make contact and study and help some of the groups that hadn't been affected by the, I think some people would call it a genocide that happened when they first got there. It actually, in 1984, there was a group in Western Australia named the Pintupi, that's what they called themselves.
00:17:16
Speaker
that some anthropologists found and made contact with and they realized this group had never been contacted by Europeans before, ever. Never seen white people. So 1984 there was still an uncontacted tribe living in the Outback.
00:17:33
Speaker
And then let's see what else in this is a big thing in 2008 the government officially apologized to the stolen generations and Just a quick explanation This happened to some extent in America with Native American children
00:17:48
Speaker
But in Australia, the Europeans, starting in the mid-1800s, started taking Aboriginal children out of their homes and placing them to live forever with white families in church missions and in government homes in hopes that the Aboriginal race would die out, as they called it.
00:18:11
Speaker
and these aboriginal children could be assimilated into white society and eventually they would all be pretty much white and no one would have to deal with that nasty aboriginal problem anymore. And this practice actually happened up until
00:18:27
Speaker
the late 1970s. So they were taking Aboriginal children for a very long time until quite recently. And that 1970s number is what I found through internet sources. When I was there in my anthropology class, I was told the latest stolen children were taken in 1981, which God, I can't believe I'm going to reveal this, makes them the same age as me. Oh, forget you ever heard that.
00:18:58
Speaker
Anyway, so yeah, the Stolen Generations thing was really crappy and so they finally apologized for it. Kudos to you, Australian government. Yeah, doesn't really make up for it, but...
00:19:13
Speaker
whatever helps. They're also trying, there's a lot of programs in place now to try and salvage some of the Australian or Aboriginal languages to reconstruct Aboriginal cultures and allow Aboriginal people who were raised by white society to be re-entered into them and to relearn the cultural traditions that they should have had they been raised by their people the way that they should have been.
00:19:38
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about Aboriginal traditional cultural belief systems.
Cultural Significance of Dreamtime and Kinship Systems
00:19:45
Speaker
And since there are a lot of different Aboriginal tribes and different cultural groups, they're not all the same, but you can kind of, they do share a lot of traits. So you can kind of group some of this into an overview of such.
00:20:03
Speaker
Most traditional Aboriginal cultures are animus, so I guess you can't really call them gods but they have ancestral spirits that they believe are very essential to their existence today and most of them are animals, not actual people.
00:20:20
Speaker
So not like a god, G-O-D, big guy with a beard sitting up in the clouds. To them it's like, oh it's like a giant kangaroo and a giant dingo got together and they scuffled and when they were fighting they formed this mountain over there. That's not an aboriginal accent at all, so I don't know what that was. So yeah, those are the more the type of traditions that they believe in.
00:20:44
Speaker
their worldview is shaped by most of the creation myths found in the dream time and you might have heard of the dream time it's a very complex concept to get around but it basically is a series of knowledge about the
00:21:01
Speaker
and the old like way back in time it was like an epic before modern aboriginal people where their spiritual ancestors all these old you know their gods kind of if you could call them that were first creating the world and traveling across the land and they created the landscape and they named everything and they put everything where it was
00:21:24
Speaker
and they made order out of chaos, out of the nothing. Sort of a very traditional creation story, but this is their version of it.
00:21:32
Speaker
And for anthropologists, the dreaming represents an amazing system, which combines cultural materialism with mythology and ritual practice. Now, what the crap did that mean? You ask yourself. I know. I'm going to explain it, OK? Cultural materialism and neo-evolutionism are both anthropological theories. They're kind of like overarching theories as to how certain practices work.
00:22:00
Speaker
And they explain how technological, social, and symbolic systems develop within a culture. And just, you know, this isn't like every single anthropologist believes that this is how this happens. It's just two different, like, one school of thought as to how cultural development happens. And not all anthropologists subscribe to it. It's actually kind of old. These ideas sort of came out of the 30s and 40s.
00:22:25
Speaker
So, but it does kind of play into this, at least I think it does. That's what I've talked about in a lot of my research. So, it explains how the different systems of a culture develop. And at the basis of all of them and their related factors is the relationship of a people to their physical environment.
00:22:44
Speaker
and their ability to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, and water within it. First and foremost, they have to adapt strategies for meeting those needs. Those strategies will all be different depending on their environment. You're not going to have the same strategy for survival in, I don't know, France as you are in Mongolia. You're in a different place, you have different needs, and so you have different strategies for dealing with them.
00:23:13
Speaker
and pretty much all other aspects of their society will develop around these needs and the strategies to deal with them. Even the realm of symbolic, spiritual, artistic, all of those understandings and systems, they all stem in this one perspective. They all stem from their basic need and relationship with the environment.
00:23:39
Speaker
So, and in the dream time, this is evident because of the complex ways the mythology is used to teach the people about how to survive in one of the harshest environments in the world. So it's so necessary.
00:23:52
Speaker
So, underneath the symbolism of the Dreamtime Stories and their ritual performance, which is through song, dance, art, all of that, is an underlying order which provides the blueprints for their survival. I know, it's really cool, right? Yeah! So, I've got a great example of how this works.
00:24:14
Speaker
I'm going to try my best to pronounce this stuff. I am not, I don't speak Aboriginal languages. I've been there and I've heard them spoken, so I'm going to try it. So I've got an example in the story of the tale of the two dogs, which is told by the Walpiri of Northwestern Australia. And this is an example just of like a dream time story. So, and in their native language, it's called Jantu Jarukulu and Maliki Jarukuru.
00:24:44
Speaker
I think that's correct. The Aboriginal languages are crazy hard. There's like a million letters in every word and like two of them are vowels. So anyway, it tells the story of two dogs that journey throughout their land and on their way they describe the landscape and they give the location of important watering holes, caves, rock formations and things like that.
00:25:06
Speaker
They also explain how to light a fire, how to dig for water, and how to build a shelter. So it's kind of the type of story that would be told to Aboriginal children during a corroboree, which is a European word for the kind of ceremonies they have where they interact with the dream time through telling stories and performance.
00:25:27
Speaker
And during his telling, this is how the performance is actually symbolic as well. During the telling of the story, they might learn a dance that represents some of these acts like starting a fire or chasing a snake or something like that. Part of it might also be like drawn on the cave walls.
00:25:45
Speaker
like you know we have rock art is a huge part of aboriginal archaeology and a lot of that stuff gets there through the telling of stories and a lot of these symbols and pictures are painted onto cave walls to demonstrate the importance of these places and features like and demonstrate where they are and it helps tell the story as well so symbolically they those characters represent
00:26:12
Speaker
They're animal ancestors, the dogs, the dog characters, not the symbol on the cave characters. Those are different type of characters. So yeah, the dogs, which in the Dreamtime, they're probably like giant dogs, like giant
00:26:26
Speaker
ancestry spirit dogs so yeah they represent the animal ancestors of the people and the story shows how their ancestors made the landscape and also learned how to use it and in reality people hearing the story are also learning about how to use the landscape and survive in that region which is why it's so important that the dream time stories be passed down from generation to generation through the performance and the camaraderie and the rituals and all that
00:26:56
Speaker
So, the performance is just a vehicle for the telling of the stories and the relating of these symbolic meanings. I know it's kind of deep and heady, but I just love it.
00:27:07
Speaker
So yeah, Dreamtime stories are not universal to all Aboriginal people across the entire continent. And just in case you didn't know, it's like the size of America or North America. It's a huge place, big place. No one who lives in Western Australia and Perth knows the same story as someone who lives in Brisbane, you know? Like that's completely different people, completely different stories.
00:27:33
Speaker
And they're regionally specific, obviously, because they reflect the reality of living in that specific place. So the people of that region own those stories. Should a traveler want to come into their lands, they're often required to show the owners the respect of knowing and repeating their stories through songs, which are often called song lines.
00:27:56
Speaker
And it's a large way that shared cultural practices have developed between all these different peoples. And by doing so, the power that lies in a people's spiritual ownership over a land is demonstrated. But should an individual on a walkabout not properly sing the land and give its custodians proper respect, bad things can happen to them. They're not an entirely peaceful people. I know they kind of come off that way in, like, in Crocodile Dundee, I almost call them Indiana Jones.
00:28:26
Speaker
in Crocodile Dundee and all that. But it's not entirely the case. They can be violent if you don't respect their authority. Also, not surprisingly, the principal characters in a region's Dreamtime stories and its symbolic representations of them, such as symbols on rock walls and stuff like that, are a reflection of those familiar to the area.
00:28:54
Speaker
So, like, if you live in Queensland, which is in the northeastern part of the country, very pretty, by the way, you'll hear a lot of more stories about crocodiles because they're so much more prevalent there. That's where the croc hunter lived, okay? I went to his zoo. This was actually before he died. So sad.
00:29:11
Speaker
I went to his zoo and he was supposed to be there that day, but oh wow. Surprise, surprise. Mr. Crocodile Hunter Man had a phone call about a croc in need and he had to go and save it. So I'm still a little bitter about that. Steve. But anyway.
00:29:28
Speaker
So yeah, a lot of crocodiles in Queensland. So that's what there's, a lot of their stories feature crocodiles and their ancestral spirit guides are more crocodiles. In New South Wales, where I lived, the totem animals, they're called, of a tribe. A tribe has, can have like a, like one totem spirit guide that who's like their man. And it's more likely in like the Southeast of the continent to be a kangaroo or a koala. Oh, they're so cute and soft. I love them.
00:29:55
Speaker
rather than like a snake like a lot of central Australian stories have because those are specific to the region.
00:30:04
Speaker
Um, not that there aren't kangaroos in central Australia. Oh my God, there's lots of kangaroos. I saw them. I saw lots and lots and lots of them. I saw my bus hit lots and lots and lots of them, but I'm not going to talk about that because it is kind of sad. So anyway, the point is that the environment is actively represented in the symbolic world of the Dreamtime for the Aboriginal people. Um, Dreamtime and ritual performance also translate what's called cultural schema to the tribe.
00:30:34
Speaker
And I'll explain this, it's a really interesting concept. Cultural schema, it's kind of like a pre-organized role-playing game, kind of.
00:30:43
Speaker
where certain key scenarios are played out through story and allegory to the people, which instruct them on how to deal with social situations, social issues, and the contradictions that they might face in the world. These type of stories and performances can guide them through confusing social phenomena, which in this case mostly center around their insane kinship system. It's crazy.
00:31:13
Speaker
In case you don't know what kinship is, it's basically just your family groupings and how people consider themselves and how they are related to each other. So yeah, their kinship system is nuts. So along with their seasonal hunting and gathering needs, the kinship system actually requires that they travel around a lot to visit and join in ritual traditions with their vast web of relatives and potential mates.
00:31:39
Speaker
they can't marry someone like from their own village it has to be like they have to marry like their 18th cousin once removed on their mother's aunt's sister's side or something like that it's weird uh not to make fun of it it makes sense to them so go go you guys marry your 16th eighth cousin once removed so yeah
00:32:00
Speaker
actually, well, a materialist might actually argue that it's because they need to travel in seasonal rounds to take advantage of different food sources throughout the year that they actually developed such a complex system of social relations that require them to travel around throughout the year. The quandary, it just depends on whether you're into the ideational, which is kind of like the, it's all in their head, they may, you know, it's
00:32:24
Speaker
symbolic world or the material theory on cultural development. So yeah, it depends. Whatever. It's in-depth theoretical stuff, and I'm sure a lot of you aren't very interested in that. But if you are, send me an email. I'd love to explain some of it to you. You can email me at glad2gettingdirty at gmail.com.
00:32:46
Speaker
So yeah, gosh, there's just so much to talk about with Aboriginal stuff. I'm just... I don't have time to talk about anything else. But it's because it's so fascinating. Come on, you know? Oh yeah, and I probably should have mentioned at the beginning of the episode that this is not a normal episode because I'm not talking about news stories today. No shorty news. Sorry. Because I could just talk about all this all day long forever because it's so fascinating and I like it so much.
00:33:15
Speaker
So, I mean, there are new stories going on about Australian stuff, but I would rather just kind of give you guys an explanation of what's going on and my views on it and all that, so. So yeah, I mean, I guess the main point in Aboriginal anthropology and archaeology is that we want to study these Aboriginal peoples, peoples with an S, because there's
00:33:38
Speaker
They're varied. We want to understand their variants. We understand the connections they do share with each other and
00:33:47
Speaker
how all of this comes down to the systems with which their cultures function as far as their hunting gathering lifestyle, which they still do not, I mean, okay. The majority of Aboriginal people in Australia, unfortunately today, do not live in the outback being hunting hunter-gatherers on a daily basis. They've assimilated for a large
00:34:13
Speaker
part with european culture so they a lot of them do live in on the coast in cities and um are more a part of that you know traditional not traditional that australian culture that we think of today but there are still
00:34:30
Speaker
you know parts of them that do live in the Outback or wherever else in the country they live and do practice traditional hunting and gathering. They do retain their traditional spirituality and practice the dream time rituals and performance and tell the stories and
00:34:51
Speaker
travel around throughout the year to take advantage of the different resources that are abundant throughout the different types of the year. And so, yeah, it's important to understand them, how they're different, how they relate to each other, and what all of their stories mean and what they're, how, you know, God, it's just, it's hard to explain.
Adventures and Experiences at Uluru and the Outback
00:35:13
Speaker
When I was in the Outback, I went to Ayers Rock, which is actually, it's actually called Uluru by the people there.
00:35:20
Speaker
and I hiked around it. It's nine kilometers at the base, which is crazy and it's just totally amazing. I went there at sunrise and you walk around it and physically it's beautiful, but then you get to a little section of it that has like an overpass and you go inside and there are rock paintings there that are 15,000 years old, you know? It's insane.
00:35:47
Speaker
The people used to gather there and they would be together and they would celebrate their heritage and they would tell their stories and dance and sing and play instruments. They'd play the didgeridoo. They'd teach their children these stories and they would paint them on the walls to demonstrate how to live and how to be
00:36:08
Speaker
from, you know, their people. And where to find food and water and, you know, where all the spiritual places that were important to them were. It's really amazing. And then you get to one part and there's like this whole story that I know the local Aboriginal tribe believes about how some of their ancestral animal spirits had a battle. I think it's the Battle of Kuniwa and Liru, something like that.
00:36:35
Speaker
and that's how the scars on the rock became. There's like big cracks in the stone on Uluru and the local tribe believes it because back in the dream time, epics ago, there was an epic battle between their ancestral spirits and two of them went at it and they were sending lightning bolts out of their hands at each other and they struck the land and the rock and that's how the cracks in the rock got there. It's so cool.
00:37:04
Speaker
Anyway, if you ever get the chance to travel to Australia, I highly recommend it because it's really fun. It really is the land of adventure. Oh my gosh, except, okay, I'm going to tell you my story.
00:37:16
Speaker
except if you got stuck in the outback with no car and no bus ticket and no way to get to where you need to go and you are literally in the outback in the middle of a lightning storm driving a stick shift which you don't actually know how to drive and you're being hit by lightning and then all of a sudden you're driving and you're in the middle of the outback and there's nothing there and all of a sudden you're driving through a fire.
00:37:42
Speaker
both sides of the road on fire crazy you drove through the fire and then
00:37:50
Speaker
There was more lightning and you got to the town finally even though you'd driven a stick shift for like six hours and you don't know how to drive stick shift. And then your hostel has turned you out because you are late and you have nowhere to stay and so you're walking the streets of Alice Springs and you feel really scared because there are people there who look really shady and you can't find shelter and all of a sudden you duck into a phone booth to get away from the lightning and the phone booth gets hit by lightning!
00:38:19
Speaker
Okay? And then finally, out of the depths of your despair, you walk around a corner and you see a KFC. And it's the most glorious thing you've ever seen, the lights of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the middle of the outback, calling you home, saying, come in to me, come in from the rain and the lightning and have some chicken.
00:38:50
Speaker
Anyway, I'm not saying that these things happen to normal people, they just happen to me. So. That was my terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad day stuck in the outback.
00:39:04
Speaker
You know what? It sounds really harrowing and crazy. I hated it at the time. I was like bawling at the end of the day, sitting in KFC. But when you look at it now, it's like super exciting and thrilling. And I'm kind of excited. Glad that it happened to me. Oh yeah. And at the end of the night, we finally ended up being able to get a hostel room because some jerk didn't show up. So crazy things happen to you in the outback. It's true. And then there's snakes. So there's that.
Convict History and Australia's Pop Culture Contributions
00:39:34
Speaker
Anyway, this podcast is going to be pretty long, so I don't have that long to talk about the historical archaeology of Australia, which I really wanted to do. So yeah, I mean, it's not a very long period if you think about it. Europeans didn't settle in Australia until 1788, okay? America was already a country. We had just fought a revolution.
00:40:02
Speaker
Australia hadn't even been landed on yet by the Europeans, okay? So it's not a very long period of history, but Europeans came and they were like, hey, look at this land. It's really great for the first, like, hundred miles, because it's all green and on the ocean and it's beautiful. And then like three hours in, it just turns into freaking red desert.
00:40:26
Speaker
Crap. And it's hot. And it sucks. But they loved that first 100 miles of it or so. So they settled there. And they brought people. They were like, come, let us people. Well, I should do it in like a British accent. I don't know. What do I say to get into my British accent? After many a year, it became necessary to bury the Duke's student again. OK, now I can do it. OK.
00:40:53
Speaker
So yes, they brought people back to Australia to people it and to start anew. And so they thought we need to build this country up. What are we going to do in order to build infrastructure? We need something. We need people that we can control. Oh, wait a second. Do we have the humongous useless convict population back in England, Ireland and Scotland? Oh yes, we do. Oh my goodness. What a relief. Why don't we just send for them and we can make them do all the work.
00:41:23
Speaker
Does that sound good to everybody else? Alright! So yeah, they brought the convicts and they sent a lot of people, not just men, there were also convict women that came, were shipped from their sentences in the UK to Australia and
00:41:42
Speaker
They kind of inadvertently peopled the country. It's a very interesting aspect, I think. They were brought there against their will as a labor class in order to build up the infrastructure of the country for the rich European socialites. And they had to bring a lot of them in order to do this. They were not free. They were under the control of the
00:42:02
Speaker
white upper class there, but they peopled the country nevertheless. They had to adapt to it. They had to make new strategies for survival and cultural continuity and these strategies became what Australian culture is today. So it's pretty cool. I know in Australia it's kind of like
00:42:23
Speaker
People are proud now of their convict ancestry, but they didn't used to be. They used to be swept under the table, like, oh, I'm not related to those convicts. I'm not related to those convicts. No. I can't do a good Australian accent. I could do it when I was there, but maybe I have to say a couple of words. Yeah. Yeah, we don't like those convicts. That's terrible. I'm going to just not do that.
00:42:52
Speaker
So yeah, they were kind of ashamed of it for a long time, but I think now people are finally coming to terms with the fact that you didn't have to be an axe murderer to be convicted and sent to Australia as a convict. You know, you could be like a petty thief or something and end up over there.
00:43:08
Speaker
But it was a hard life, it was really hard. And now there's a lot of archaeologists who are really into convict archaeology, these type of sites where convicts lived and built up the nation. And there's actually a whole class of offspring of the upper class European with the lowly convict woman. Because they used to send them, they lived in these houses where they all lived and then the rich, you know, it's similar to the
00:43:38
Speaker
Offspring of slave owners and slave women in America, but they it happened over there, too So I don't know and the weird thing is that it happened so recently in their history That you only have to go back like three or four generations, and then you're like oh wait Yeah, that was my ancestor. They were so they were a convict and oh yeah that other one was their boss so figure that one out pretty quickly and
00:44:03
Speaker
Anyway, so yeah, the conduct archaeology is interesting, I think, because it's kind of like, in imperialism studies, how we study contact between the
00:44:15
Speaker
the people who first come to the country and the natives are indigenous of that country. And we're very focused on how the culture changed with those indigenous groups. But a lot of the times the Europeans didn't come alone. A lot of the times they brought labor classes with them. It happened in America with the African Americans, or Africans at the time, I guess. It happened in Australia with the convicts. It happened in Asia.
00:44:42
Speaker
it happened all over the place and sometimes these labor groups are kind of overlooked and they had a very unique position because they had to adapt to their new environments but they had to do it within the strictures of the control that they didn't have because they were under the
00:45:00
Speaker
heavy foot of their captors So I think it's really cool anyway So yeah, and just a shout out I guess to Australian pop culture Paul Dundee, thank you for everything you've done To mislead most people into thinking what Australia is actually like I don't think I really met anyone over there who reminded me of crocodile Dundee um
00:45:29
Speaker
Nope, I didn't see a lot of really big knives. Although he did give us some good memes, you know? That's not a knife. Now that's a knife. You know, that type of thing. So thank you for that. Thank you for all of Australia's great actors. You know, Nicole Kidman. Awesome. Hugh Jackman. Double awesome.
00:45:55
Speaker
There's a lot of them. And Australia has really contributed some great things. And in the last hundred years, the Aboriginal people have also contributed a lot to the national culture and to world culture. They fought in World War I and II. They have won medals in the Olympics. They're popular songwriters and movie actors and writers. And they've really achieved some amazing things. So good for them.
00:46:24
Speaker
So yeah, let's let's bid adieu to our conversation about Australia the land down under that big Exciting beautiful place that I used to call home So with that I think I will bid you adieu maybe at some point I'll have like Australia episode part 2 the Redux version and
00:46:50
Speaker
episode 2.0 and we can talk a little bit more about convict archaeology and some of the other stuff that's going on so anyway man I'm sorry guys this episode just I got so into it I didn't have time to put any sound effects in and I didn't really sing anything and I didn't have shorty news I don't even know what's going on with me today I just don't get me started talking about Oz because I will not shut up
Reflections on Personal Experiences in Australia
00:47:19
Speaker
Well, if you are interested in seeing a little bit of my journey in Australia, I'm going to put a blog post up about it with some pictures from my time over there and maybe some stories and things like that. Maybe I'll write a little bit more than usual because it's just such a cool time in my life. I turned 21 in Australia. Can you believe it?
00:47:39
Speaker
Which is weird because the drinking age is 18 there, so I got on the plane, you know, a 20 year old and I got over there and I was already, like, it didn't matter if I turned 21 because I could drink already. Not that I didn't have an amazing 21st birthday. I might put a picture of that up too. It is pretty embarrassing. I mean, like, just picture this. At the time, I think I weighed maybe
00:48:04
Speaker
100 pounds, and I drank 21 drinks. I'm not lying. That was crazy. But anyway, the backpacking, the scuba diving, the skydiving I did, the sleeping under the stars in the outback, even though I was at risk of being killed by many deadly snakes and reptiles, it was all worth it because I was really living over there, you know?
00:48:29
Speaker
It's worth it. Anyway, that does it for this episode. Check out my website, jennifermcniven.com, for a bunch of pics and cool anecdotes and stories and stuff about Oz. The land down under where all of my Aussie
00:48:47
Speaker
Aussie friends still live. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi, oi. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi, oi. That's my Aussie chant. So anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about next time. I'm hoping to have an episode out in maybe two weeks from now. And so stay tuned for another episode of The Struggling Archaeologist's Guide of Getting Dirty.
00:49:06
Speaker
And next time you're in the land of Oz, why don't you go down and toss another shrimp on the barbie down in Bondi? Or some brekkie in the bush? As long as you want a bludger chundering on some boozer till you come a gutster and cock it. I reckon that's the dinky-dee, cause there ain't room for no drongos down under. And that's all from this Sheila. That was my attempt at Ozzy slang. I hope you enjoyed it for a translation. See my website.
00:49:33
Speaker
And instead of peace and love, how about beer and sausages for all my Aussie mates down there? G'day folks!
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, Australia is awesome. They have an entire line of Simpsons themed snacks in the vending machines. I'm serious. Homer's burger rings, Bart's chicken twists? Why don't we have this in America? Oh, but you know what they don't have? Peanut butter and chocolate or biscuits. Like KFC biscuits. Yeah. No Reese's peanut butter cups? Nevermind, I'm never going back. McNiven out!