Lifestyle Before Colonisation
The way indigenous people lived was very different to how we live today. They lived in small communities and survived by hunting and gathering. The men would hunt large animals for food and women and children would collect fruit, plants and berries. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities only used the land for things that they needed – shelter, water, food, weapons. They never overused it or damaged it.(source: Skwirk.com.au)
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Lifestyle After Colonisation
European settlement had a severe and devastating impact on Indigenous people. Their dispossession of the land, exposure to new diseases and involvement in violent conflict, resulted in the death of a vast number of the Aboriginal peoples. The small percentage of Aboriginal people who did not die during these early decades of the colony, were not unaffected. The impact of the white settlers changed their lives, and the lives of future generations, forever.
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