Aboriginal Dance

The internet was still out this morning so I had to go to the library and get on the internet there. Around noon today our internet was fixed. Went to my aboriginal studies class. We had Aboriginals come and do a dance and teach us about their culture. There names are Paul, Carl, and Eugene. It was pretty cool. Here is a video of their welcome dance.

Here they are only wearing white paint. They wear three colors white, yellow, and red. The paints come from oka rock. They drop water on the rock and it mixes with the powder on the rock to make paint. They wear red paint for daytime spiritual dances (usually children) and white and yellow paint for spiritual dancing at night (adults). Men can only dance with men, and women can only dance with other women. Here is a picture of the 3 different rocks.

They also taught us about their weapons. The boomerang is a throwing stick. They told us that every body has a throwing stick in the beginnings of their culture (Africa, China, etc) but the Aboriginies are the only ones that created one that came back. The boomerang is designed for hunting. So you throw it and if it catches the wind it can go up to 100 kilometers and hour, 10 revolutions in a second. So you do NOT catch them when they come back because they will cut off your fingers. You just let it hit the ground first. Even though they hunt with the boomerang their primary weapon is a spear.

They also believe in 6 season (1 every 2 months). We are currently nearing the end of Banaroo (the hot season) and tribes will start getting ready for the winter season. They will prepare bookas (kangaroo pelts, as seen in the video).

Here is a series of pictures where Paul is making a knife to cut skin a kangaroo. First, you heat the end of a stick in the fire, Then you press gum powder on top of the warm stick. Next, you put the stick into the fire and the powder turns into and instant tar. Repeat this a few times until the end of the stick has a good amount of tar on it. Last, you press in a piece of sharp rock (you get this from banging rocks together until a piece breaks off).

The powder, by the way, is made of gum from the Belga plant, charcoal, and kangaroo poop. They would make this powder and export it overseas because if you throw a handful into the fire, the fire get really big for a moment. The powder is highly flammable. It was sell as gun powder.

Native aborigines are MUCH darker than these people here. The pure natives look like black people straight from Africa. Only Africans have hair that is very kinky. Aborigines have straight hair that is black or brown sometimes. These natives have either a white grandparent or a white parent of some type.

At the end, they had a few students volunteer to do a dance with them. First is the emu dance and second is the kangaroo dance. I'm not sure if they are actual dances or if they just wanted to make everyone look like fools.