Aboriginal foraging practices and crafts involving birds in the post-European period of the Lower Murray, South Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is an ethnographic study of Indigenous bird foraging post-European settlement of the Lower Murray in rural temperate South Australia. The Aboriginal people of this region have developed unique relationships with the landscape, reflecting the retention of some pre-European Indigenous practices and the development of new traditions. Aboriginal bird foraging practices after British settlement in 1836 were not just relics of a pre-European past but the product of cultural forces that shaped a modern Indigenous identity. Analysis of the continuity of bird foraging adds to the understanding of contemporary Aboriginal use and perception of the Australian landscape.