What have aboriginals done for Australia?

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Dan

They know more about the land of Australia in general than everyone else. After all, they were here way longer than we were.

Durda

Depends in what way you mean.

They did not exploit the land so it was intact when Europeans arrived so new arrivals could get rich by clearing old growth forests of valuable timber and make riches from gold mining.

Then when mining was unstoppable they gave permission for mining of their lands for the benefit of Australian economy even though the mines have not given back much into the local communties by way of support through employment or creation of multi-use infrastructure.

The have given to the world the best art that has ever come out of Australia.

They have excelled at sport and have brought home many gold medals for Australia and championships leaders in rugby.

Areas under their control have not been polluted so at least part of Australia remains in pristine condition. Even though they are then hampered to grow their community in any sort of sustainbale way by the governments slamming national park status on their land....due to them keeping is sp pristine!

They bring to Australians the only real history we have which is appreciated by many internationaly of not domestic so valuable tourism industry participants.

They could have done a lot, lot more for Australia with their wisdom of this ancient land...if only we had listened!

molly

Many of them fought in the armed service in both world wars without even being classed as Australian citizens,
They didn't cut down all the trees causing the desalination we have now and knew how to conserve the land as opposed to raping it and then then moving on to the next patch.
They were the grassroots workers that worked and helped build the stations and farms outback until they had the audacity to expect fair wages for their work.

holly

Indigenous ecological knowledge for land management
http://savanna.ntu.edu.au/research/projects/kimberley_ecological_knowledge.html

Hipto

Lived there before whitey. Long before.

Sunny 1st

I'll have to think on that one. I guess... they make us more aware of the connection to the land? And that material possessions aren't everything.

aflumpire

in a positive sense....nothing (that is well known)

but its easy to counteract that as they have not done many negitive things either.....

petedavo

Fire burnt the land turning it into a desert and hot dry eucalypt forest from a once lush green land inhabited with super sized marsupials. Their dingoes killed off the Thylacine and some other creatures on the mainland.

They learnt a lot from this and their dream time stories tell them about respecting the land and creatures that they depended on for food, because they almost destroyed it.

Now it is up to us to learn those lessons too.

Katy Can But Doesn't

Given us a guilty conscience for things our ancestors did and for things the government did.

You can never have enough guilt.

EDIT: Molly, for your information Aboriginals raped the land like every other race. They quite possible were responsible for the extinction of several large mammals, like the Diprotodon, (a Mammoth like creature). They also completely exhausted the resources of an area before moving on, evidence can be seen in the large mounds (too large to be considered as piles) of shells found by early settlers. This is not to say that they were at all worse than the white man, but after all they are human.

swenson0

Not much

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