The first week of this trip is down! With this last week being heavily focused on cultural history, we had a lot of free time to explore our new home for the next couple weeks! This city is vibrant and always seems to have a new adventure around every corner. As a group, we were able to experience the Aboriginal section of the Melbourne Museum together. We were expecting a sort of mundane illustration of history with a lot of factoids, but it was actually a very interactive and artistic section that was full of interesting stories told by virtual make-ups of Aboriginal people. In particular, there was an exhibit that seemed to be an eagle that had various colors and nature scenes projected onto it while a story was told in the background about the Aboriginal culture. The story in the background talked about the Eagle as the Aboriginals Creator, and the crow as their Protector. Throughout this storytelling there was also nature sounds in the background, such as water dripping, or various bird calls. The entire museum was interesting, but we found this one to be our favorite because we thought it did an excellent job of illustrating the importance that the Aboriginal culture places on their relationship with nature and the Earth that we live.

We also visited VACCA, which is the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency. We learned a lot about the history of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and we found it quite interesting to draw similarities between their history and the US’s history with Native Americans. We think Australia seems to do a much better job at acknowledging their Aboriginal people than the US does as far as acknowledging Native Americans. At VACCA, the first thing our instructor did was acknowledge the original people of the land we were meeting on and paid respects to that specific tribe’s elders, past and present.  The Agency provided services centered around protecting the culture and rights of Aboriginal children. They also play a role in working with the government, like Child Protection, to help inform decisions that best accommodate an Aboriginal child in the system. It was incredibly devastating to learn about the “Stolen Generation”, which was the Aboriginal generation that was essentially forced from their parents’ care and placed into foster care so that they could receive a more “European” lifestyle. The basis of this was barbaric and stripped this generation of their cultural identity without legitimate reasoning for removal. VACCA informed us of services and ways they are working to protect the rights and cultural identity of Aboriginal children today, and the ways Australia is working to make sure that they do not treat Aboriginal people as they did in the past. 

Alexis Wilson and Cristina Renee Pliego