What Are The Characteristics Of The Noongars?

The main explorers and navigators of this country’s shorelines were the Europeans, most notably the Dutch, English & the French. An abundance of records about first contact with the Noongars were marked by them. These written records were proven to be one of the earliest known documentations about the people in Australia and some shed a very condescending light towards them implying as if the Noongars were wild or inciting pity. This however, was not the case are as there are voluminous amounts of records to prove that not only are the Noongars well equipped with the skills that the outsiders desire but the representation that they garnered were inequitably unjust.
The Europeans were unsurprisingly considered as strangers to the Noongars and the aboriginal term to describe them was “Wam Moort” which directly translates to stranger relations/family. The notion of adding the word “moort” alone after stranger exemplifies the kind of people that they are; how they consider these foreigners who look and behave vastly different and dissimilar in nature as opposed to them as one of their own. This paints a different picture altogether.

It is considered as one of the earliest portrayals of the Aboriginal people and can be interpreted in many ways. One would say that this depiction shows an unrestrained barbaric side of the Indigenous people, attacking an unseen enemy which further accentuates this underlying concept of primitivism. However, I would argue that it is a simple but effective representation of how pure and untainted mankind essentially is and his reactions towards these perceived threat is humanity’s innate response to any other sources of danger. Interpretations of historical documents are often funneled and leaned towards the victors which could possibly prime people into only believing one side of the