A Brief Talk About Indigenous People and Arts of Australia

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4.1. Body decorating

The body decorating of Australian indigenous people includes body painting, scar decoration and wears decorations. As for body painting, red, white and yellow are the main colors they use and every color has its own unique symbolizing meaning. For example, when they are hunting for the prey, they usually paint their bodies with yellow color, which assembles the dirt. The body painting is temporary while the scar decoration is permanent. Generally, they will cut their chest, stomach, back and arms with shells and stones. The placement and pattern of the scar usually indicate which tribe they are from or which marriage rank they are in. In fact, the decorations in Australian indigenous tribes are quite abundant, because the intelligent people can make everything they find into decorations such as rings, necklace bracelet and headband. For instance, they use plants into a headband, wear the colorful earth on the head, and hang a tail of animal in the back. People in some tribes like put a white shell on the forehead.

4.2. Painting

Painting is a primary way of performance of Australian indigenous arts. Most of the paintings are consisted of dots, line and circles. These pictures contain different kinds of stories, including some natural phenomena, the divinities or the “dreamtime” complex. According to the material they paint on, it can be divided into two parts, that is, rock paintings and bark paintings.

Rock paintings created by the Australian indigenous people are the most abundant and biggest in the world. According to the official data, the areas where rock paintings are protected well are Cape York in the north-east, Kimberly Plateau in the western of Australia, Pilbera in the middle and Arnhem Land in the north. The rock painting shows the mental world of the indigenous, which is about their religion and the concept of death. Usually, the places where many rock paintings are found are the important positions where the tribes hold their rituals. At the same time, the meaning of the rock paintings is related to the witchcraft, telling the inner demands, reflecting their daily life and recording their pleasures and sorrows.

Bark paintings is explained by some experts that it was innovated in the north of the Australia. In the idle raining seasons, the indigenous were only stayed in their wet shelters and decorated the inside of their houses. Ordinarily, the bark of eucalyptus is the most common used material, because eucalyptus is the most familiar tree in Australia, which has tall, straight trunk and rough surface to make painting easily. Specially, the indigenous in Arnhem Land are skilled at X-ray perspective paintings. Against the red or origin background, the indigenous draw not only the external form of people and animals, but also the organs and bones of them. They think life is not just the body of the creature, more significantly, the real and lively state. The indigenous show their respect to life via this way.

4.3. Stonecutting

Stonecutting is a traditional skill the indigenous success from their ancestor and nearly all the Australian indigenous master such a craving art. To finish a stonecutting follow these several steps. Firstly, they draw the outline of the object or creature. And then they crave a series of dots and flutes according to the outline, and make it into a continuous cell type pattern. The most ancient and outstanding stonecutting is located in the Koonalda cave in southern of Australia and most of the art works in the cave were craved by the ancient artists about 20,000 years ago.

4.4. Weaving

The way of Australian indigenous people’s weaving is called “buyu”, and it is descended from several thousand years ago. Traditional weaving art works include sail of the canoe, fishing net, rope, baskets and feather product. However, the most important weaving product is “Ranga”, which is often used in ritual or other salute occasions. The indigenous people use weaving rope to tie up the bark and make it into the image of a bird or other animals. What’s more, in some area, people will replace scarf with Woniga. Woniga is a weaving work used for decorations and it is about 16 inches long.

5. The new development of indigenous policy and arts

The mysterious and profound indigenous arts add colors and inject energy to Australian culture, and at the same time, it continues development in the modern times with the inspiration of Australian government. The government commits to promoting and supporting the indigenous culture. Take the new-built parliament house for an example. The pattern that was made up for 100,000 granite tablets is designed by the indigenous artist, Michael Jake Mara Nelson. Moreover, the indigenous traditional performance can be seen in the busy street in Sydney. Numerous handmade art work are exhibited in the famous museums in Australia. All of this shows how the government values the indigenous culture.

In 2013, Australian Arts minister Simon Crean released a new cultural policy, Creative Australia, which represents a refreshing change and better chance for the development of Australian indigenous Art. The policy not only celebrates Australia’s strong, diverse and inclusive culture, but also describes the essential role arts and culture play in the life of every Australian and how creativity is central to Australia’s economic and social success: a creative nation is a productive nation.Significantly, this policy also enthusiastically upholds the fundamental place that Indigenous culture holds in the Australian story and the deep responsibility that bears upon our nation to nurture and promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s cultural expression.

As we can see, the destiny of Indigenous people and their arts are closely connected. Although they have suffered from too much misery and tests, but they finally win their living space, and more importantly, their self-respect. In the new modern times, indigenous people become more initiative to fight for their own rights, such as discourse rights, expression rights, etc. in addition, the contemporary indigenous artists begin to learn modern foreign elements and integrate them into their art, which brings a new born to the traditional indigenous art.

Last but not least, as increasing Australians realize the value of the indigenous arts, more resources and fund are invested to them, which is beneficial to the long-term development of indigenous arts. Therefore, the Australian indigenous art, which witnesses the long history river from the “dreamtime”,