Saturday 30 April 2016

Research Abstract; Design and Education; Indigenous Cultural Survival




Indigenous Australians are not traditionally considered sedentary; rather aboriginal culture defines its people as responsible for the land such that they are obliged to continually traverse it in an almost cyclic nature – not unlike nomads. This new manner of habitation, forced sedentism, is a result of systematic social, political, economic, and even physical pressure imposed by Western society post European colonisation. However, having been separated from their land and denied cultural freedom, sedentary communities such as the Wakathuni community in the Pilbara region present an opportunity for cultural survival. Since they represent a concentrated centre of cultural connections otherwise not found in modern Australia.