Makassan Contact With Australia - Effect On Indigenous People of Australia

Effect On Indigenous People of Australia

The Makassar contact with Aborigines had a significant effect on their culture. Ganter writes; "the cultural imprint on the Yolngu people of this contact is everywhere: in their language, in their art, in their stories, in their cuisine."

Studies by anthropologists have found traditions that indicate Makassans negotiated for the right to fish certain waters. The exchange also involved the trade of cloth, tobacco, metal axes and knives, rice and gin. The Yolgnu of Arnhem land also traded turtle-shell, pearls and cypress pine and some were employed as trepangers. While there is ample evidence of peaceful contact, some contact was hostile. Using Daeng Rangka described at least one violent confrontation with Aborigines, while Flinders heard advice from the Makassans to "beware of the natives." However, rock art and bark paintings appear to confirm that some Aboriginal workers willingly accompanied the Makassar back to their homeland of South Sulawesi, Indonesia across the Arafura Sea. Women were also occasional items of exchange according to Denise Russell, but their views and experiences have not been recorded. After visiting Groote Eylandt in the early 1930s, anthropologist Donald Thomson speculated that the traditional seclusion of women from strange men and their use of a portable bark screens "may have been a result of contact with Macassans."

Smallpox also appears to have been introduced to northern Australia via Makassan contact in the 1820s.

Some Yolngu communities of Arnhem land appear to have re-figured their economies from being largely land-based to largely sea-based with the introduction of Makassar technologies such as dug-out canoes, which were highly prized. These seaworthy boats, unlike their traditional bark canoes, allowed Yolngu to fish the ocean for dugongs and turtles. Macknight notes that both the dug-out canoe and shovel-nosed spear found in Arnhem land were based on Macassarese prototypes.

A Makassan pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast, not just between Makassan and Aboriginal people, but also between different Aboriginal groups, who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Makassar culture. Words from the Makassar language (related to Javanese and Indonesian) can still be found in Aboriginal language varieties of the north coast; examples include rupiah (money), jama (work), and balanda (white person), which originally came to the Makassar language via the Malay 'orang belanda' meaning Dutch people from the root word for swamp.

Regina Ganter and Peta Stephenson argue that aspects of Islam were creatively adapted by the Yolngu, and Muslim references survive in certain ceremonies and Dreaming stories today. Stephenson speculates that the Makassans may have also been the first to bring Islam to Australia.