Classes

So I have finished my 3rd week of classes here already! Can you believe it? I sure can't! They say time flies when you're abroad - it's the truth! I'm taking Australia Now, Australian Wildlife Biology, Blue Planet - Intro to Marine Environments, and Aboriginal Women and Coloniality.

You already heard some info about my intro to marine env'ts class. The other day, we learned why the Great Barrier Reef will be disappearing in the next 50-100 years. (So COME VISIT ME NOW! hint hint. Mom. Dad. Caroline.) The ocean holds the majority of the carbon in the world. Because of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, the carbon cycle, which combines water and carbon dioxide to produce a hydrogen proton and a carbonate ion, will cause the oceans to become more acidic. The addition of hydrogen protons is what causes the oceans to become more acidic. Now, the coral uses the carbonate ions in the ocean in order to produce calcium carbonate, which is what their structure is made of. However, the more protons there are in the ocean, the more protons will combine with carbonate and create the bicarbonate ion. This, in turn, leaves little carbonate ions left for the corals to use. So yeah, in a nutshell, that's why the coral reefs are endangered from us loverly human beings.

My other classes are really interesting too. My Australian Wildlife Biology class is taught by this lady who has really short hair except for one long braid down the side of it that sits on her shoulder. She is hilarious. I have that class at 9 am, but it's totally ok cause she has such interesting anecdotes and stories about the animals we learn about that she makes it a lot of fun. Like, she worked in Antarctica. And is obsessed with the platypus.

My Australia Now class is somewhat interesting. It's a guy lecturing us for 1.5 hours each week on how Australia has a very dull history. He said that himself. We're all like, great, thanks for giving us a heads up that it's going to be dull. Really makes me want to pay attention and be here. But we have interesting readings for our tutorials, called tutes, that I have on Thursday. Essentially it's just an hour of a smaller group with a tutor (teacher's assistant) who leads us in a discussion about the readings and what we talked about in class.

My Aboriginal Women and Coloniality class is really interesting. The Australians did not, and some still don't, treat the Aboriginals (also called Indigenous) people well at all. The first group of convicts and their captain and crew essentially showed up, saw the Aboriginals, didn't recognize any sort of hierarchy or leader to negotiate a treaty with, so ended up just taking any land that they wanted. And due to their cattle and sheep farms, many of the water holes and places that the Aboriginals went to each year and knew that they'd find water and found, have dried up, are gone, or the Aboriginals are prevented from going back there. Some Aboriginals are given land for compensation, but the land has no water on it, so is no good to them. I have a whole book of readings from my Australia Now and Aboriginal Women and Coloniality class that I'll bring home.

One girl in my Aboriginal class is an Aboriginal woman from west Australia. Her family and people "live in the bush," meaning that they live off the land and hunt and fish and fend for themselves. Her name is Abby and she's really cool to talk to. She got a scholarship to come to the University of Melbourne and is the first of her family to go to university and to finish high school. I was lucky enough to sit next to her during our tute the other day, and we got to talking about the history of Aboriginals and the stolen generation, since I had no idea what that was.

So the white Australians thought that the Aboriginals were going to die out. So they decided to "provide a pillow for them" for their race to die out in peace. However, the Aboriginals were not actually dying out. The Australian government decided to take the "half-caste" Aboriginal children - or the Aboriginals that looked more white than black, and put them in "missions." A mission is a place where there are nuns and they forcefully took the Aboriginal children to bring them up as white children, with white ideals and culture. So Abby's grandmother was one of these children that were kidnapped from their parents and put in a mission. This generation is known as the "Stolen Generation."

She said that her grandmother no longer knows how to speak her native language, so the rest of the family doesn't know how to speak it, because in the mission, they were only allowed to speak English. Abby said she took a video camera and taped her grandmother's story about the mission and what happened in her life, though she wouldn't talk much about what actually happened in the mission. In some missions, they abused the children.

Abby also said that there is not much education within the Aboriginal communities. They have a different sort of knowledge - the knowledge of the land, how to survive, how to find water, how to hunt and fish. But she said they need to bring education out to the Aboriginal people in order to educate them. A lot of the men are abusive to the women and the percentage of Aboriginals in jail compared to other races is much higher.

I'm reading a book titled "Coonardoo," by Katharine Susannah Prichard, which was published in 1929 and is about an Aborignal woman and a white man being in love. It was very controversial at the time. It's incredibly interesting, I'd recommend it. We also have to read "Talkin' Up to the White Woman," by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, which is also supposed to be good. And I was recommended the movies First Australians, Rabbit Proof Fence, Black Chicks Talking, and Bran Nue Dae (which Abby's uncle wrote as a screen play, toured around the country with, and someone bought the play off of him. I guess he's been in and out of mental institutions frequently though). All of those talk more about the Aboriginals, so I'm hoping to check them out sometime soon.