Aboriginal Culture Poetry

ABORIGINAL LIFESTYLE
PAST AND PRESENT

Good morning exchange students. When asked about the age of Australia as a country many people would say it is only a mere 200 years old; but the truth is Australia has been home to Indigenous Australians for more than 50 000 years.   It is believed that at least 750 000 Aboriginal people were living in Australia at the time of Captain Cook's arrival. These people were divided into around 600 different tribes and had hundreds of different languages.   Isolated from external influences, the Aboriginal people developed their own way of life, in accordance with their religious and spiritual beliefs of the “Dreamtime”.   The European settlement in 1788 was a period of time where the Indigenous culture faced a tremendous change of identity.   Was it colonisation or invasion? Many people argue about this, but either way the impact of the white settlers changed the lives of the aboriginals and the lives of future generations, forever.  
The Aboriginal culture is key aspect of Australian identity.   Poetry and other forms of literature were written as a response of certain events of a particular time.   These poems reflected the ideology- the feelings, values and attitudes of the people of a particular period of history.  
Poetry written by Aboriginals about their life in the 18th century or earlier represents their traditional way of life without Western influences.   The literary free-verse style of the poem “The Camp-Fires of the Past” written by Rex Ingamells (1913-1955), gives the reader an idea of what life was like for Aboriginal tribes around Australia before the settlement occurred. Since there is no rhyme scheme, the main poetic devices used in this poem are alliteration and assonance.   This creates a steady rhythm and helped set the mood of the poem.
“…thousand, thousand campfires burned each night…
Every night among the fires, men chanted to the beat
of stick and boomerang and clap of hands,
or drone-and-boom of...