In early colonial art the aboriginals were portrayed as a 'noble savage'. Clad in old rags to hide their nakedness from the eyes of the Europeans the Aboriginals became, during the 1820s and 1830s, the butt of a cruel and insensitive colonial humour. The colonial artists drew Aboriginal people with large odd shaped mouths and big lips portraying them as some kind of deformed animal. For the great majority of the colonists the Aboriginals represented …showed first 75 words of 575 total…

…showed last 75 words of 575 total…behaviour. Some European artists aimed for a realistic "scientific" record of the Aboriginal communities they visited and left a body of valuable sketches. One of the biggest struggles for many aboriginal people was maintaining their aboriginal identity. Aboriginal people nurtured their identity through contact with their home communities or with elders they have sought out as teachers. Every Aboriginal person developed that Aboriginality was in their own unique way, in return maintaining there own identity.