Aboriginal history and culture
Clans, kinship and language | The Creation time | Dreaming and ceremonial sites | Respecting Indigenous culture
Non-Aboriginal people have come to this country and found used pieces of ochre, stone tools and charcoal from cooking fires. They say that Aboriginal people first lived here 20 000 years ago. More recently, this date was changed to 50 000 years ago ... and it may change again. However, Aboriginal people know that they have lived in this country since it was created.
-Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre
Many of the rock paintings in Kakadu depict animals that are now extinct on the Australian mainland. For example, the long-beaked echidna is thought to have disappeared about 15 000 years ago, while the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) and the Tasmanian devil are thought to have disappeared from the mainland about 2000 to 3000 years ago (Chaloupka 1993).
Archaeologists have found an extensive range of Aboriginal artefacts at old camping sites throughout the Park, particularly in the escarpment and floodplain country. Radiocarbon dating of material from some of these sites has revealed an occupation date of between 20 000 and 25 000 years. There were, however, artefacts below the last layer of carbon-bearing sands, indicating that humans were in Kakadu earlier than this.
Thermoluminescence dating of sand associated with artefacts from lower levels, puts the occupation date of Kakadu at 50 000 to 60 000 years before the present, making these the oldest occupation sites discovered in Australia. Among the artefacts associated with the sites are flaked-stone tools, ground ochre and grindstones.
Changing lifestyles
Whilst Aboriginal people belong to a particular clan territory, they also travelled through and used other territories. Use of other clan territories was generally arranged through relationships established by marriage, kinship and ceremonial cooperation. In this way groups who observed the appropriate protocols could gain access to the full range of resources available in the region (Press et al.1995).
Aboriginal people were traditionally hunter-gatherers and moved regularly to places where resources were plentiful. There were no permanent settlements, but favoured camping areas were used for many, many generations. Among the temporary dwellings the people used were stringy-bark and paperbark shelters near billabongs, wet-season huts built on stilts on the floodplains, and rock shelters in the stone country.
When non-Aboriginal people arrived in the Kakadu area the Aboriginal population decreased markedly as many people died of disease or moved off their land to towns and settlements. The reduced population and the introduction of vehicles and shops have changed traditional seasonal movements: people are able to base themselves in an outstation or town and use vehicles to shop, to visit different outstations, to attend ceremonies and to move about the country on hunting trips.
It is thought that about 2000 people lived in the Kakadu area before the arrival of non-Aboriginal people; there are now about 500 Aboriginal people living in 18 outstations dotted throughout the Park.
Kakadu is jointly managed
Kakadu's traditional owners have leased their land to the Director of National Parks to be jointly managed as a national park. Joint management is about Bininj and Balanda working together, solving problems, sharing decision making and exchanging knowledge, skills and information. Overall direction is provided by the Kakadu Board of Management which has an Aboriginal majority representing the traditional owners.