https://youtu.be/fh1xNjguKEM
FIRST NATIONS HABITATS BEFORE INVASION
First
Nations people from the hundreds of different nations managed their
lands, food, water and habitats to meet their needs - working with their
environment to maintain health, comfort and sustainability.
Researchers
in recent years, including Bruce Pascoe, have described how many First
Nations nations/tribes lived in villages or towns, while many others
lived in villages seasonally.
Once
the surviving peoples from the massacres were displaced from 'country'
by European colonists, many were forced into exclusively hunting and
gathering, therefore building shelters that served the purpose of this
transient lifestyle. This was not completely foreign to them because
most tribes often travelled around their lands seasonally, and through
other tribes lands for regional gatherings.
In
reference to the bottom image represented here we provide some
observations made by a land party from the Vlamingh Expedition in
Western Australia before it was settled by Europeans, he reported to see
five huts close together at Wittecarra Creek, near to the mouth of the
Murchison River. One of these huts was described as being "made of clay
with a roof sloping down on two sides."
In
1803 another report of Aboriginal people living in a larger permanent
settlement derived from the Baudin expedition, where they encountered a
settlement on the tip of Peron Peninsula, Shark Bay, Western Australia
on 18 March 1803.
Three
members of the Expedition mention this assemblage of huts, Baudin,
Peron and Freycinet, and the ship's artist Petit was ordered to make a
drawing. According to Baudin, "Twelve or fifteen huts, much better made,
than those we have found hitherto, composed the village where this
small tribe lived ... ones that belong to the heads of families ... were
much bigger and were built with considerably more symmetry."
Peron's
description was, "these huts of the Land of Eendracht [central west
coast of WA] ... are in the form of a hemisphere slightly depressed at
the top ...... Their height is from 12 to 16 decimetres [1.2 – 1.6 m],
by a diameter of 20 to 25 decimetres [2.0 – 2.5 m]. They are composed of
small trees implanted in the soil ... On the outside are attached
layers of foliage and clumps of grass covered by a large quantity of
soil."
The
bottom drawing in the collage of abodes was made by the junior artist
Petit, which first appeared in 1807 in Peron, Lesueur and Petit's Atlas.
PLEASE
NOTE: This information does not intend to undermine the tribes who
permanently or semi permanently used very simple dwellings to meet their
particular purpose.
