Humanities - Jane Elliott’s Brown Eyes - Connection to Country - Case Study Assessment Answer

Humanities Case Study Assignment

Assignment Task

CASE STUDY 1 - Jane Elliott’s Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes experiment

Question for Case Study 1: How does the concept of “othering”, as seen in Jane Elliott’s Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes experiment, prevent people of diverse cultures from making strong connections with each other, thereby contributing to tensions amongst different ethnicities?

Case Study 2 – “Connection to Country”

Question for Case Study 2: How can an understanding of Aboriginal peoples’ connection to country, and their knowledge of caring for the environment, help Australia to avoid disaster in terms of our escalating environmental problems?

Solution for Case Study 2

Aboriginal people created a land management system that was rather complex before Australia got invaded by the non-Aboriginal people. There was nothing like pristine wilderness but a patchwork of burnt areas that were late re-grown. It is imperative that understanding of the use of fire to plan and predict the growth of plants by the Aboriginals be understood to prevent environmental disaster in Australia. In this complex land management system using fire as a tool, the Aboriginal people had in mind animals such as possums, birds, reptiles, kangaroos, wombats, insects as well as the different plant species. The pattern of burning the forests was a well-laid down pattern that ensured that no species of plant or animal got completely exterminated. In this well-laid burning pattern, plant cycles need to be considered as the Aboriginal did so as to ensure sustainability and maintenance of biodiversity. It would be necessary for the Australian government to copy emulate how the Aboriginals managed and conserved their environment in order to ensure sustainable development so as to avoid the looming environmental disasters foreseen today (Hoffmann, et al., 2012). For example, the country can be laid out to suit certain species in the complex land demarcation that has to be maintained for generations to come for posterity and sustainability. This demarcation has to consider plant cycles. Moreover, there must be no uncontrolled fire. Research has shown that uncontrolled fire may wipe out all the sources of food. The Aboriginals were very conscious about the uncontrolled fire and did prevent the otherwise they would die. In fact, evidence shows that no devastating fire outbreak occurred during those ancient times (Gammage, 2011). For sustainability, the Aboriginals were actually farmers who would re-plant the burnt vegetation so that they would have continuous food supply. This way, plant species were maintained but not completely exterminated. In addition, the Aboriginals used some kind of customize templates in land management that can be borrowed by the Australian government to prevent natural disasters and environmental problems. These specific templates suited plants, animals and even the land in general. The Aboriginals new each animal’s preferences. For example, the Kangaroos were known to prefer short grass while the native bees prefer the desert bloodwood. Therefore, by using fire to manage land as well as the environment, such animals were factored in the burning plan. This is unlike the current bushfires used by the modern Australian farmers which burn everything resulting into loss of biodiversity at an alarming rate (Koenig, Altman, & Griffiths, 2011). Today Australian government and the entire environmentalists’ fraternity have a distorted perception of the “wilderness”. They focus in maintaining the wilderness not realizing that Aboriginals had a well-orchestrated land use planning and management that can be adopted to prevent the foreseen calamities that are beckoning due to poor conservation strategies.