Macassan Influence On Australian Culture

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Many people both nationally and internationally consider the first contact Indigenous Australians had with outsiders as that of interactions with European fleets. However what many are unaware of is, that by this point, Indigenous Australians had for many years participated in a successful trading partnership with their northern neighbours the Macassans. It is important at this point to note that the term Macassan is used in a general sense and does not ‘imply any specific ethnic or cultural group’ . The Macassans, the majority of whom were Macassarese with the odd few Bugis, Turidjene (Bajau) and Javanese , travelled from the ‘extreme south-west corner of the island of Celebes’ embarking on the treacherous journey to the coast of Northern …show more content…

Powell highlights that determining these precise influences is ‘hard to assess because so much of our information comes from the period when European influences were strong in the same areas and because human memory is fallible and prone to interpret the past according to the perceived needs of the present’. One piece of evidence that highlights the long running impacts of the Macassans is that of the dream time stories of the Yolngu people home to the north of Australia. Particularly the story of Djuranydjura, ‘the dingo, who meets Macassans on the beach in a first contact narrative’. The story refers to the Macassans and the goods they bought with them on the journey to North Australia such as matches and rice. In this variation of the dreamtime story the dingo responds by saying if he was to accept the offers of the Macassans goods then ‘he would be the Macassan and Macassans would be Aborigines’. There are many variations of this story some of which act as an ‘affirmation that Aborigines were dependent on non Aborigines for the things they came to find essential following contact’ others reference the trade and sexual nature of relations between Aborigines and outsiders. Furthermore the changes to the language of the Aboriginal people who traded with the Macassans is testament to the impacts of these interactions. The area in which the Macassans travelled along the northern coast of Australia was diverse in its language and culture, as a result of this diversity the language of the Macassans was at the forefront of communication between the two groups resulting in a lingua franca also used among aboriginal people from different areas and dialects. Powell notes the use of the word ‘balanda’ a term originally used in reference to

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