Unit 1: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and the Australian Environment

Content focus:

Students investigate how Indigenous Australians changed the natural environment in Australia. They also explore how the environment influences the human characteristics of the places. Students examine ways Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people influence the characteristics of places, including the management of spaces.

Syllabus content area:
Factors that change environments
Students investigate the ways people change the natural environment in Australia
Environments shape places
Students investigate how the natural environment influences people and places
Humans shape places
Students investigate how people influence places

Key inquiry questions:

• How do people and environments influence one another?
• How do people influence places and the management of spaces within them?

Geographical concepts:

• Place: the significance of places and what they are like. For example: places students live in and belong to and why they are important.
• Space: the significance of location and spatial distribution, and ways people organise and manage the spaces that we live in. For example: location of a place in relation to other familiar places.
• Environment: the significance of the environment in human life, and the important interrelationships between humans and the environment. For example, how and why places should be looked after.
• Interconnection: no object of geographical study can be viewed in isolation. For example: local and global links people have with places and the special connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples maintain with Country/Place.
• Scale: the way that geographical phenomena and problems can be examined at different spatial levels. For example: various scales by which places can be defined such as local suburbs, towns and large cities.

Outcomes:
A student:

• describes the diverse features and characteristics of places and environments
• explains interactions and connections between people, places and environments
  compares and contrasts influences on the management of places and environments
• acquires, processes and communicates geographical information using geographical tools for inquiry

Inquiry skills:
Acquiring geographical information

• collect and record relevant geographical data and information using secondary information sources, for example, by observing visual representations, the media or the internet

Geographical tools:
Maps

• maps to identify the location and spatial distributions

Spatial technologies

• satellite images, GPS

Visual representations

• photographs, aerial photographs, illustrations and multimedia.

Lessons and worksheets included in the download file:

Lesson 1: Indigenous cultures and their link to the environment :: Teacher Resource Sheet 1
Lesson 2: The Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia and the environment :: Teacher Resource Sheet 1
Lesson 3: My Culture and Me: A picture book study
Lesson 4: Indigenous management of the environment :: Resource Sheet 1 :: Worksheet 1
Lesson 5: Breaking the link with Country :: The Stolen Generation: Worksheet 1