How Aboriginal Australians Made Australia 

I'm aborignal Australian & I am beyond grateful for this information, makes me feel proud.

I'm Australian and they don't even give this stuff a passing mention in history class but hey great video 👍🏻

I'm aboriginal and I knew some of this because of my grandma, idk why we don't learn about it in school we only know about dream time. Thanks bala

you forgot the bit where the aboriginal fire use early on made australia a desert in the first place.

The parallels to American Indians is actually a bit surprising to me. They also dramatically altered the landscape.

My experience as an Australian here. I remember reading an encyclopedia from the 1970s about Australia. It barely mentions the Aboriginals, mentioning them as a 'stone age people' who lived in Australia before the British arrived and then ignoring them. In high school history classes we only hear about Aboriginals in the context of colonization and modern times. In primary school we learned some things about Aborignal mythology (the Dreamtime) and art (dot painting). But their history before 1788 is a huge blindspot in our education system, and I guess this is how you still get people imagining Aboriginals as a 'stone age people' who acheived nothing before the British arrived. We definitely never learned anything about Aboriginal agriculture.

I'm Australian and thank you for making this video man. I am not Indigenous myself but so many old and young people know next to nothing of indigenous cultures, their history and our history with them. When I was growing up we had a Labor government in power, Labor has always tried to teach the history of Indigenous people's in public schools as a mandatory part of the curriculum, so I learnt about them. Shortly after I left school, however, a Liberal government came in (they're actually a conservative party despite the name) and they removed the subject from the curriculum entirely, mainly because their party were/still continue to be the architects of the vast majority of atrocities committed against Indigenous Australians, and our history of institutionalised racism vis a vis the White Australia Policy and the Stolen generation, etc. To this day our Indigenous communities in Australia have never recovered from these atrocities and white Australians beliefs are still heavily shaped by the societal conditioning that they were subjected to throughout the time these policies were being implemented, and they still hold on to their beliefs of Indigenous Australians being drunken layabouts, even my own parents do, and unfortunately many of those older people have passed those beliefs onto their children, many of whom don't know better because we are no longer educated about their history and our "interaction" with them. I hope more young Australians watch this video and realise that indigenous Australians were far more sophisticated than they had ever realised. A proud culture that has barely survived numerous attempts at genocide, whether by outright massacre, genetic replacement or cultural destruction. We put the original custodians of this land into the situation they're currently in, we need to take responsibility and actually allow indigenous Australians a platform to actually tell us what would help them. THAT is one thing any country with a downtrodden native population should do to help, just listen to them. Edit: if you want evidence of how shamelessly and unabashedly racist some of my fellow Aussies are then read the replies.

I'm aboriginal and highly APPRECIATE and RESPECT this video for being created as it is information like this that helps to protect and prolong the cultures survival within this day and age. Everything is precise in this video and you have done a tremendous job to represent just how in tune with the land our ancestors were and still are. Thanks bruz [-o-]

"They knew all along what these structures were, but had never been asked". Literally every interactions between natives & colonists.

I'm an Australian history major and knew exactly where you sourced all of this from as I watched it. I'm impressed - most RU-vidrs pull their videos from their arses. You got an instant sub from me.

Interesting presentation. Aboriginals are definitely among the most ignored groups in history! I was passingly aware of some agricultural practices, but no where near to this extent! Might aboriginals have been the oldest agriculturalists on the planet?

there a lot of assertions here in this video but precious little Scientific evidence offered

I can't help but snicker at the map at 3:31... do you think he knew what he drew? He knew.

I mean, who ISN'T glistening with moth fat these days?

It's actually messed up how History education here in Australia didnt teach us about this and its always making Aboriginals as stone age people and the lost generation

You do know that Dark Emu has been exposed a a fraudulent text by a man who is pretending to be Aboriginal, also drawings aren't photographs.

A huge rewrite of history,I was expecting the magical serpent to appear

Videos like this are super important to counter the narrative of "primitive" indigenous peoples. Really great vid!

As an Australian, you never learn stuff like this, I have a new found love for both your channel and the native culture if Australia

Hey! I’m so happy to see my culture being represented on RU-vid!!! I’m from the Ngunnawal tribe and it’s pronounced none-a-wall Thank you!! 😊

Very interesting, I learned a lot, did not know 85-90% of this. Loved the animations. This video, the Hatshepsut and the chocolate video are my 3 favorites you have made :)

This is true my tribal land has been growing back with traditional land management while the Aussie farmers land near us is a barren dust bowl 😂.

I told this to my science teacher and he said the reason we don’t know this is becuase the British wanted to think that aboriginals were cavemen so that it would be ok to steal there stuf

Bravo! A much needed counterblast to the myth that the native Australians were uncultured primitives - a narrative that was very convenient to the colonialists and is still used to salve our consciences for the unthinkable damage we caused to their society.

This video has done a justice to my people’s history all my life I’ve been told of what my people used to do before the British Empire arrived and now seeing it Animated and on RU-vid my favourite website had made my heart jump with Joy. Thank you mate my people are the Ngarigo one of the Alp tribes that was described as “Glistening” after they had their moth buffets 🥰 something my Grandmother never told me about the moth hunts

Reminds me of the "legend" of how the Amazon Rainforest was actually a garden. The trees and plants were planted by an extinct tribe that once were regarded for building massive structures made of branches and sticks. The jungle that the Amazon has become was due to this garden being left unattended by those who planted it, like the ruins of a lost civilization.

Bruh why aren’t we learning this in school as an Australian I would love to learn more about the people before us

I really hesitate about using the word "agriculture" or "farmers". Did they use extensive irrigation? Practice extensive monoculture? Run large surpluses? Extensively use domesticated animals? Then that's agriculture and they were farmers. It sounds, though, like they understood their ecology deeply and how to leverage it minimally. They used swidden burning techniques, had some favored cereals but grew many different plants, and didn't use domestic animals. They ran small surpluses. This sounds like a complex form of permacultural horticulture, which is still very impressive. They managed to have legit early-cities. I am curious about how big their populations actually managed to be consistently. But it does sound like they practiced horticulture, not agriculture, and were gardeners, not farmers. This may be pedantic/semantic, but the distinction is important and has large implications for how they organized their societies.

I love your snobby accents when quoting the colonizers. Brilliant.

Native Americans were similarly effective farmers before the arrival of Columbus.

“How aboriginals made Australia.” Short answer: They didn’t 💀

This video, and the one about Potatoes saving the world, made me feel so sad. When the conquerors come in and destroy cultures, they lose SO much. The world loses so much.

Encouraging natural plants to continue growing to monoplise an area is not the same as farming. But hey spin it however you can.

G'day mate, I just wanted to say I love your work and this video was so interesting to learn about my home country and our rich history of our sacred people. Keep up the good work mate.

Why was the population so low pre contact then?

Love the video as I am a Aboriginal here I didn't even know about the fish traps lol thanks!

All ancient groups of people knew their land well. I am surprised to see that so many people did not know about the information in this video.

We brought a European land management that wasn't in Europe or with a climate like the northern hemisphere. So obviously this didn't work. We also cleared massive amounts of forest on the east coast for grazing.

The Bush tomato is definitely not dependant on people to survive, grows like crazy and is near impossible to kill. Also one of the most bitter things I have ever eaten, makes moth cakes seem tasty.

1:25 the pain of all history youtubers.

Under their management you wouldn't have the sad tragedy that is raging across Aus now.

I'm an australian, I have recently finished learning Australian history through school. We do not acknowledge any of this This does not mean that I don't believe the video. I think my experience will add to the argument

I migrated to Australia in 2000 and I’ve never heard of the majority of the information in this video, thank you for making this.

Thank you for this! Awareness of the achievements of earlier cultures has been ignored for too long. Living in Micronesia for the last 25 years, I am frequently surprised at the technical achievements of these peoples that are being swept under the rug of "history." Your point about how we need to learn how our ancestors managed their world is of increasing importance, as we run into our failures as stewards.

how come none of the explorers, or expeditions sent to investigate any region of Australia describe "farms" ?

They were hunter gstherers

Very interesting to learn this. However, during the 40,000 years of human presence many large animals have become extinct (due to Human activity?) A lot of time was available to learn the lessons of resource management

What's wrong with being hunter-gatherers?

answer: they didn't

Well constructed - will be forwarding this on to fellow teachers. THANK YOU

I learned A LOT from this video. Thank you VERY MUCH for your great work and research!

I Appreciate the care and respect that went into this video on a historically neglected people in a pretty forgotten corner of the world. Cheers mate

There is no evidence to suggest that the Aboriginals farmed or lived in permanent housing in towns.

this will help with my assignment thank u so much ! such a well written and made video haha

And everywhere they went new farms sprouted from their footprints and their rainbow coloured droppings were full of magic seeds.

This is fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing

Thank you so much for this I love learning about indigenous people

Massive speculation.

Thanks for this video😁👌🏽 much love and respect.

I love how you throw subtle shade at England from time to time (I'm from India)

3:30 Pause!! Don't tell me you didn't see that 🤣🤣🤣

Yeah so I’m Australian and they don’t teach much of this stuff in school, maybe dream time stuff when we’re young but nothing like this, good job man

As Australian students, we acknowledge the creator of this video and the information included. We respect how you gave the right information and are giving the respect the Aboriginal crew deserve. We appreciate the facts, the hard work and detail you have put in the video, along with the double checking your facts. Thanks, Histriano Ronaldo

I’m amazed that a lot of this information can be found in the Melbourne museum’s aboriginal and Pacific Islander exhibits. It’s not really common for me to find high quality videos going into detail on how aboriginal cultures thrived in pre-colonial times.

If they had significant agricultural prosperity their population would have risen to many thousands as in African tribes. But they didnt. Where were the 30, 000 strong indigenous tribes ?

Awesome video on a super interesting and overlooked topic! Also loved the prophecy of WHALEY BOY

Just because you are aboriginal doesn't mean that you are any more special than anyone else nor deserving of any special treatment than anyone else.

Thanks for the video, as recently as this year (2019) a Victorian Indigenous aquaculture site has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, and funds are going towards building a potential visitor centre. It's estimated the site is about 6,600 years old.

@1:45 it's called 'MurNong' you missed the N. I'm indigenous australian and i grow murnong

As a science teacher in North West I teach indigenous land management. This video has made it onto my program this year as part of my teaching. I found it exceptionally relevant given the large fires in Australia this year, which would have been far less dangerous if people had been managing the land properly.

Excellent video, thanks for making something so educational, you’ve got another subscriber mate (Y)

Given that there were only about 100,000 locals in total in an enormous continent when the British arrived, it's unlikely that there would have been enough people to create the enterprises and communities mentioned on the scale claimed. As for destroying the wildlife, it has been pretty well established that many entire species of large wildlife were hunted to extinction long before white men arrived by the people claimed to have been sensible stewards of the land.

It's been established that agriculture appeared independently in Papua-New Guinea.

In south Brazil fishermen get help from dolphins who make the fishes flee towards the fish nets. It's mutualism

Very Informative

Thank you so much for this video, i hope it reachest the widest audience as possible, i am happy in the knowledge that we are being recognized, Slowly but will get there one day❤

Great video, I loved the animations and your commentary (made me laugh in a good way). Just an update. The eel traps and houses around Lake Condah, (called Budj Bim cultural landscape) was given World Heritage listing by UNESCO a few weeks ago. We are proud of our home and welcome local and international visitors anytime. Cheers from the Gunditjmara Nation.

Great video. Greetings from a Tunisian Amazigh to the lovely Aboriginal Australians.

just found ur channel and omagad its good stuff

I'm a 57yr old waradjuri man from Alexandria Sydney. In & out of institutions 50yrs. Lost my way last 30yrs. This woman; Ella Noah Bancroft, Like my mother, (R,I,P). Re stores hope, things gon be ok. Thank U 2all the Ella's out there trying 2make changes 4the betterment of all?? Atom heart mother. Shine on you crazy diamond ☘️✌️☮️☢️🌴

I believe they had great land management that we could use today. It is too bad so much knowledge has been lost around the world.

Im australian and i thought i knew a fair bit about the Aboriginals but im starting to realise i knew stuff all and what i thought i knew is completely wrong i guaranty the average ausie has no idea how advanced the Aboriginal people where

We say in east asian countries, in the eyes of a buddha there are only buddhas and in the eyes of a dog, ( dogs were considered base animals)there are only dogs. Europeans who knew only to plunder and destroy never could see that the land was carefully preserved.

Very interesting.Thankyou.

As a aboriginal woman I just wanted to say thank you for this video. Even today we are taught all Aboriginal people were nomadic hunter gatheres.

It's also a little known fact that when the first European settlers showed up they helped feed the aboriginals. Because the aboriginals immediately ate the Europeans

dude, well done, a million thanks.

This vid is so good! love the animation!😉👍

An ancient Aboriginal prophecy about a half-whale, half-man would come to unite our worlds? Clive Palmer! Give us another chance!

Coming back to this video now with the bush fires in the news. Why do settlers ruin everything

Very well studied and very well said!

this was a particularly great video

9:00 aren't there folks who similarly fish with the aid of dolphins?

My people, my pride.

very interesting it helped me a lot from my assessment thank you

This is amazing. Thank you!!

60,000 years in the Stone Age is nothing to be proud of.

The eel traps in South Western Victoria have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site as of 2019.

This knowledge should be taught in schools ots an awakening for us, who came later.

Top notch and very engaging.