Ex. 5. Question for discussion
Consider the reasons why Britain adopted a policy of sending convicts away from its territory. Why, beginning with the late 18th century, did it choose to transport convicts as far away as Australia and not to any other colony in the empire?
UNIT 4
WARM UP
Ex. 1. What do you know about aborigines in Australia?
READING
Ex. 2. Read the following text and match the paragraphs with the titles:
1. Life
2. Appearance, looks
3. The immigration
4. Why the Aborigines seem to look primitive
5. Social organization
6. Way of life: Childhood
7. Family life and marriages
8. Religion
The History went on
10. The wiping out
How the Aborigines get grown-up
Australian aborigines
A. The Aborigines have the longest cultural history in the world, with origins dating back to the last Ice Age. The first humans traveled across the sea from Indonesia over a land bridge to Australia and Tasmania, about 70,000 years ago. The next immigration followed 20,000 years later. The members of this group which had spread over the western part of Australia are the Aborigines' ancestors. The whole continent was colonized within a few thousand years. When the Europeans came to Australia in the 18th century, they found about 750,000 "primitive" natives, as they called them, who seemed to live there as in the Stone Age.
B. The Aborigines did not have agriculture and did not learn how to tame animals. They therefore had to live from what nature gave them. Hunting was therefore the only thing which they could do to get food. The men hunted animals such as kangaroos, snakes and emus. The women caught smaller animals and picked fruits, honey and seeds. They dug with graving tools for edible roots. The Aborigines had to walk around very much. Therefore they only carried the items they really needed with them: e. g. a spear, a boomerang, a wooden shield, a bag, wooden bowls, grindstones, graving tools and their cult objects (for example their famous paintings on barks).
C. Approximately 500 various tribes existed. Each had their own territory, dialect or language. The leadership, if we can talk of a leadership, consisted of some of the oldest men of the tribe. When the Europeans came they could not find any uniform language, because after the immigration the Aborigines dispersed very much.
D. Their appearance varies within the different tribes. Generally they have a small figure and long thin legs. The skin is brown and different from Blacks' and Indonesians'. The head is small, the face is flat and the noses are wide. The hair is developed on all parts of the body. On the head it is long, black and wavy.
E. Their sophisticated view of life and their religious philosophy is not real primitive. There are other reasons, why the Aborigines live so close to nature. The most important reason may be that the Australian native sees nature as a process of spiritual power from their forefathers, who walked over the same paths and ground as the Aborigines today. It is therefore not allowed to interfere with sowing or plants.
F. The Aborigines say it had been the "Creation Ancestors" (animal and human) who created the landscape and the first people. When these creatures disappeared, they left their spirits in the mountains and rocks. The laws are for the Aborigines made by the Creation Ancestors. They turned animals or plants, which did not obey that law, into stones. The hills and mountains were made in that way. Some plants and animals were rewarded for obeying the laws and were made into people. Specific traditions, rituals, laws and art link the people of each clan to the land they occupy. All clans have places to which their spirits return when they die. The Aborigines believe that to destroy or damage a sacred site threatens not only the living but also the spiritual inhabitants of the land.
G. When a mother gives birth to her baby, the father is not allowed to be there. In some tribes, the father asks a "message stick" for the sex of the baby. If the stick is long, it is a boy and if it is short, it is a girl. A baby does not get its name until it is one year old. Before the naming the Aborigines say the baby is not a real person.
H. The boys and girls became men and women between the age of 10 and 15. There is a special ceremony called "initiation." After the girls' ceremony, they are women and therefore ready to get married. One tribe says that when the boys' beards begin to grow, it is yet time for the initiation. His body is painted with earth colours and he must dance around a fire. Then the men circumcise him, break him a teeth with a stone and he gets deep cuts on his chest, back, arms and legs. They put some ash on the wounds, in order that the wounds begin to swell. If there are scars, this is the symbol that he now belongs to the tribe. In the end, the young man must drink blood from the oldest man of the tribe. This is the ceremony of "blood brotherhood."
I. The western social structure, with the just-as-you-like-choice of your marriage-partner looks for the Aborigines very primitive. Marriage is more than a contract between parts of different tribes for the Aborigines. A man must choose a woman from another tribe. The daughter of one of the brothers of the mother is preferred in most of the cases. Marriage and relationship are a matter of various rights and commitments. One must obey complicated rules of etiquette after the degree of relationship. A woman usually has more than one husband. The first one is sometimes 30 years older than herself. She is allowed to choose her next husbands on her own after the first. A woman's status is improved by having many children. If she was unable to have any children, she was given a child. The man's status grows too, if he has many wives and children.
J. There were approximately 750000 Aborigines when Sydney was first settled by the British. The British thought they could take away the land from the natives, because they saw no system of government, no commerce or permanent settlements and no evidence of landownership. Many Aborigines were driven away from their land by force and a large number got numerous diseases. The balance between nature and the people was broken down, because many bought alcohol and drugs from the settlers. Sheep and cattle destroyed waterholes and many species disappeared. Whole tribes were massacred when the Aborigines fought back. The survivors were put into reservations and church missions. Many women were raped. Some Europeans saw the Aborigines as wild animals and hunting them was a kind of sport. Full-blood Aborigines in Tasmania were therefore wiped out. There were only 61,000 left in the early thirties of the 20th century.
K. The scientific interest for the Aborigines came. By the early 1900s, the British wanted to segregate and "protect" the Aboriginal people. Employment and property rights were restricted and the state removed children from mothers if the father was non-Aboriginal. The positive side was that full-blood Aborigines living in reservations were protected in some way. The assimilation policy of the 1960s completely controlled the peoples' life. They decided where the Aborigines could live and whom they could marry. The Aborigines were forced to adapt the European culture. The Aborigines became better educated and more organized after WW II. Citizenship was bestowed in 1967. The assimilation policy was replaced by policy of self-determination in 1972.Today 200,000 Aborigines live in Australia. They had begun to forget their traditions and culture. Many had become sick and had begun to fight one another, but recent laws made it possible to regain there land. The problems disappeared when they came back to their land and lived there their traditional way of life. They live like before on some of these outstations: The Aborigines collect berries and seeds and they hunt kangaroos and other animals. The children learn more about their culture and language as well as English and mathematics. They are proud of their culture and their life, although they live in very poor houses and water is far away.
COMPREHENSION CHECK
Ex. 3. Answer the following questions:
1. Why is the aboriginal lifestyle called “primitive”? Do you think this is an appropriate term?
2. Describe the aboriginal way of obtaining food, their looks and social structure.
3. What are the aboriginal perceptions of nature and the Creation of the World?
4. What is involved in the “initiation” ceremony? Why does it have so much importance for any aboriginal boy and girl?
5. How are aboriginal marriage traditions different from those in the western culture?
6. What factors contributed to the wiping out of the Aborigines?
7. How has the state policy towards the Aborigines changed over the years?
VOCABULARY
Ex. 3. Find the Russian equivalents for the following:
Ice Age, to tame animals, edible, cult objects, sophisticated, forefather, to obey the law, sacred site, complicated rules of etiquette, landownership, massacre, survivor
FOLLOW UP
Ex. 5. Questions for discussion:
1. Do you think it is important to keep old cultural traditions alive in the modern globalized world? Why or why not?
2. Compare the current state of the Aborigines in Australia with that of the Native Americans in the USA. What is your opinion on the “reservation” policy? Has it delivered the final blow at the natives or has it been the last resort in an attempt to preserve the traditional lifestyle?
UNIT 5
WARM UP
Ex. 1. What words do you associate with New Zealand?
READING
Ex. 2. Read the following text and say what it adds to your knowledge:
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean consisting of two main landmasses (commonly called the North Island and the South Island), and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori language name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also includes the Cook Islands and Niue (self-governing but in free association); Tokelau; and the Ross Dependency (New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica).
New Zealand is notable for its geographic isolation: it is situated about 2,000 km (1250 miles) southeast of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and its closest neighbours to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga. During its long isolation New Zealand developed a distinctive fauna dominated by birds, a number of which became extinct after the arrival of humans and the mammals they introduced.
The majority of New Zealand's population is of European descent; the indigenous Māori are the largest minority. Asians and non-Māori Polynesians are also significant minority groups, especially in urban areas. The most commonly spoken language is English. New Zealand is a developed country in terms of quality of life, life expectancy, literacy, public education, peace, prosperity, economic freedom, ease of doing business, lack of corruption, press freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. Its cities also consistently rank among the world's most livable.
Elizabeth II, as the Queen of New Zealand, is the country's head of state and is represented by a ceremonial Governor-General who holds reserve powers. The Queen has no real political influence, and her position is essentially symbolic. Political power is held by the democratically elected Parliament of New Zealand under the leadership of the Prime Minister, who is the head of government.
The first European name for New Zealand was Staten Landt, the name given to it by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who in 1642 became the first European to see the islands. Tasman assumed it was part of a southern continent connected with land discovered in 1615 off the southern tip of South America by Jacob Le Maire, which had been named Staten Landt, meaning "Land of the (Dutch) States-General". The name New Zealand originated with Dutch cartographers, who called the islands Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. No one is certain exactly who first coined the term, but it first appeared in 1645 and may have been the choice of cartographer Johan Blaeu. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand.
History
New Zealand is one of the most recently settled major landmasses. The first known settlers were Eastern Polynesians who, according to most researchers, arrived by canoe in about AD 1250–1300. Some researchers have suggested an earlier wave of arrivals dating to as early as AD 50–150; these people then either died out or left the islands. Over the following centuries these settlers developed into a distinct culture now known as Māori.
The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, they are Polynesian and comprise about 14 percent of the country's population. Maoritanga is the native language which is related to Tahitian and Hawaiian. In 1840 representatives of Britain and Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi. This treaty established British rule, granted the Maori British citizenship, and recognized Maori land rights. Today many of the treaty's provisions are disputed and there is an effort from the New Zealand Government to recompense Maori for land that was illegally confiscated. The present Maori population is around 600,000 or 14% of the population, and the Maori live in all parts of New Zealand, but predominately in the North Island where the climate is warmer.
Maori Traditions
Before the coming of the Pakeha (White Man) to New Zealand, all literature in Maori was orally passed onto succeeding generations. This included many legends and waiata (song). The most recognised tradition today is the "Haka" which is a war dance. The Haka was performed before the onset of war by the Maori last century, but has been immortalized by New Zealand's Rugby Team the All Blacks, who perform this dance before every game. The traditional Maori welcome is called a powhiri, this involves a hongi which is a greeting that involves pressing noses as opposed to a kiss. Another prominent feature of Maori culture is the striking tattoos that were worn. Full faced tattoos or "moko", amongst the Maori tribes was predominantly a male activity. Female forms of moko were restricted to the chin area, the upper lip, and the nostrils. Today the Moko still lives on as an increasing number of Maori who are opting to receive their Moko, in an effort to preserve their culture and identity. A traditional form of cooking called a Hangi is a feast cooked in the earth. Stones are heated in a fire in a dug out pit and covered in cabbage leaves or watercress to stop the food from burning. Mutton, pork, chicken, potatoes and Kumera (a sweet potato) are then unusually lowered into the pit in a basket. The food is covered with Mutton cloth or similar and traditionally with flax. Finally earth is placed on top to keep in the steam. The food takes about 3 hours to cook. The Hangi is still popular and is a viable alternative to a weekend barbecue. The unique taste of food cooked in a Hangi can best be described as steamed food with an earthen flavour.
European settlement
The first Europeans known to have reached New Zealand were the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman and his crew in 1642. Māori killed several of the crew and no Europeans returned to New Zealand until British explorer James Cook's voyage of 1768–71. Cook reached New Zealand in 1769 and mapped almost the entire coastline. Following Cook, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing and trading ships. They traded European food and goods, especially metal tools and weapons, for Māori timber, food, artifacts and water.
Becoming aware of the lawless nature of European settlement and of increasing French interest in the territory, the British government sent William Hobson to New Zealand to claim sovereignty and negotiate a treaty with the Māori. The Treaty of Waitangi was first signed in the Bay of Islands on 6 February 1840. The drafting was done hastily and confusion and disagreement continue to surround the translation. The Treaty, however, remains regarded as New Zealand's foundation as a nation and is revered by Māori as a guarantee of their rights.
COMPREHENSION CHECK
Ex. 3. Answer the following questions:
1. What is special about New Zealand’s geographic position?
2. What are the different names of New Zealand known to history? Which languages do they come from?
3. Who were the first known settlers of New Zealand? By what means did they arrive?
4. Which Maori traditions are still alive today?
5. What was characteristic of the first stage of the Maori-European contacts in New Zealand (prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi)?
6. How did the Treaty of Waitangi come into being? What is its significance in the history of New Zealand and for the Maori people?
VOCABULARY
Ex. 4. Find the English equivalents for the following:
вымирать, характерный (отличительный), европейское происхождение, продолжительность жизни, грамотность, преуспевание (процветание), пригодный для жизни, допускать, полагать, делать заключение, выдумать (создать неологизм), предоставить гражданство, положения (условия) договора, последующие поколения, обессмертить, команда (экипаж) корабля,
уважать (почитать)
FOLLOW UP