There has been a wide variety of traditional
Aboriginal cultures and languages in
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
.
Eugene Stockton shows that there have been over 360 million Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, but a total of only 40 million migrant Australians.
Traditional cultures
Broadly it has been found that traditional Aboriginal cultures can be linked to major
drainage basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...
s and to the IBRA system of
Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia. Thus the
Noongar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
people, occupying the
South Western Coastal Division Number VI, circumcising cultures of the
Yamatji people are associated with the Indian Ocean Division Number VII, the Kimberley peoples with the
Timor Sea
The Timor Sea ( id, Laut Timor, pt, Mar de Timor, tet, Tasi Mane or ) is a relatively shallow sea bounded to the north by the island of Timor, to the east by the Arafura Sea, and to the south by Australia.
The sea contains a number of reefs ...
Division Number VIII and the Desert Groups of the Interior are associated with the
Western Plateau
The Western Plateau is Australia's largest drainage division and is composed predominantly of the remains of the ancient rock shield of Gondwana. It covers two thirds of the continent; of arid land, including large parts of Western Australia, ...
Division Number VIII. Within these broad areas of cultural similarity smaller traditional cultures were closely adapted to the requirements of a
bioregion
A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...
, as it was from these sites that Aboriginal people drew their sustenance. Thus for example, the
Binjareb people took their name from Binjar, a
Noongar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
word meaning ''wetland'' and made extensive use of these and the surrounding tuart banksia woodlands of the
Swan Coastal Plain. Throughout Western Australia, Aboriginal people were not just passive recipients of the bounty of these natural environments, but actively took a role in the creation and maintenance of these biogeographic regions, through hunting practices,
firestick farming
Fire-stick farming, also known as cultural burning and cool burning, is the practice of Aboriginal Australians regularly using fire to burn vegetation, which has been practised for thousands of years. There are a number of purposes for doing this ...
,
[Jones, R. 1969. Fire-stick Farming. Australian Natural History, 16:224] fish trapping and other means that broadly maintained the flora and fauna of their region.
Post-contact cultures
Aboriginal traditional cultures have been greatly impacted since the settlement of Australia by Europeans. During the late 19th and early 20th century it was assumed that Australian Aborigines were a dying race, and would eventually disappear. Aboriginal populations in Western Australia did decline until the 1930s, after which time numbers have increased. Today, all Aboriginal cultures have been impacted by degrees of
marginalisation and exclusion from participation in the dominant culture of Australia.This has resulted in higher than average rates of
infant mortality, and lower rates of
life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...
, education and employment.
See also
*
Aboriginal history of Western Australia
The history of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western Australia has been dated as existing for 50-70 thousand years before European contact. This article only deals with documented history from non indigenous sources since European settlement in ...
References
{{reflist
Indigenous Australians in Western Australia
Culture of Western Australia