Aboriginal Culture Poverty

Introduction to Culture. Poverty is not only a critical problem that affects personal income, housing, or education, but it can even destroy an entire population if not solved. The Aboriginals of Australia are one of the many cultures that is currently losing its identity to impoverish conditions. Within the 50,000 years of existence in the Australian outback, the once prosperous clans of tribesman have dwindled from the reining populace on the continent, to less than a percent of Australians census. These people live by the lifestyle of the land, traditionally by nomadic hunting and gathering. Living by the way of the land, the Aboriginals held all the known land as sacred, and ancient, sacred sites are still held dearly to the natives (Indigenous

Once the British naval officer James Cook landed on the continent, the population has been subject to massacres, disease, alcoholism, forced integration, and overall surrender. Lack of information into the Aboriginal culture has emerged until recent years. Nevertheless, the leading issues are more of development discourse and aid practice offshore generally focuses on failed states, problems of governance and policy failure, while excluding any focus on the indigenous population (Altman, 2007). This resulted in an impoverish state of the Aboriginals, with effects such as: inadequacy in a cash economy, lack of natural rights, poor education, low life expectancy, and impoverish living conditions; which have become key factors into the devastation of the native population from being once the oldest, greatest standing cultures in Australia, to a near extinct indigenous population. These factors are dependent on the position that the dominating culture as positioned the indigenous populations, under the poverty

Australia is currently one of the richest countries in per capita and absolute terms, being a first world, capitalist economy (Finkel, 2013). While the Aboriginals did not originally rely any type of economy, they currently struggle with the issues that Britain, the dominating culture, introduced after colonization of Australia. Low income rates and subjugation of being under the poverty line are the main issues that Britain introduced (Taylor, n.d.). Poverty does not necessitate on a quantitative data of gross income, but by the data of other that are as a result of an impoverish state. The typical effects of poverty includes: unsatisfactory conditions in housing, health issues, and the inability to provide an adequate income for the market economy. Before the dominating culture, the Aboriginals sustained themselves in fairly isolated communities, where they lived off hunting and gathering, and living in inadequate, low cost housing. Nevertheless, ever since the arrival of the British, there has yet to be a formal, or informal, treaty with the Aboriginals or Torres Strait Islander population (United Nations Human Rights Indigenous Peoples, 2012). The British issued the terra nullius, which essentially established the indigenous population null and void in regards to law. This meant that any of civil rights, land rights, or even government protection ceased to exist, which over time lead to a