Preamble
We will be discussing the incidents that occurred to the Indigenous people of Australia. We will describe many historic events, conflicts and tragedies. We will cover from the Dreamtime to the present or what the Aborigines call, ‘The Nightmare.’
Aborigines have inhabited Australia for around 50,000 years. They had always lived their lives as usual. The daily chores of gathering food and building small shelters, their sacred ceremonies and survival.Their young learning to hunt and gather rather than spell and do maths. It was only until one day when the British came, then everything changed.
Aborigines have always been discriminated by white people.
During a period from 1910 to 1970 approximately 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken forcibly or in secret from their birth families by police or welfare officers. They were given to white people or families to be raised like white children, but they were still abused and treated wrongfully. Many of these children grew up in a hostile environment without any connection to their families and they began to lose their cultural identity. They were taken because it was Federal and State Government policy that Aboriginal children should be taken from their birth parents. This movement was called, The Stolen Generation. It was only until recently that a formal apology was made from our current prime minister, Mr. Kevin Rudd on the 12th of February.
Between 1800 and 1930, thousands of innocent Aboriginals were massacred by the British people. Massacres are often started because of conflict such as fighting for land, British raping the Aboriginal women and treating them like dirt. Another reason is because the British treated this killing spree as a bit of harmless fun. The first of the series of massacres was The Black War which happened in 1803 in Tasmania. It was never officially declared a war but we know that the first of the fightingstarted in 1803. The British were constantly in conflict with the Aboriginals; this led to a genocide which almost wiped out all of the Indigenous Australians inhabiting Tasmania.
Aboriginals have many health issues, which can be traced back to the British people.
When the British first arrived in Australia, the British people, mainly the convicts, had suffered from many foreign diseases. When the British came into contact with the Aborigines, the diseases spread. In the first few weeks of colonisation, many Aborigines were dying because of the diseases smallpox, scurvy and influenza. These alone wiped out half of the entire population of Aborigines in Sydney. The main reason for the aborigines being wiped out is that because they were foreign diseases, they had no known cure and didn’t know haow to deal with them.
When the British arrived, they introduced alcohol to the Aborigines. Because the Aborigines have never experienced alcohol, they were very vulnerable; they got drunk quite easily, got into many conflicts and fights with each other and some were killed. The British treated this rather entertainingly. It was only until recently last year, that the government has done something about this issue.
Aboriginal land rights.
When the British first invaded the Aborigines, most of the land was taken away. The Aboriginal fought against the British but because the Aborigines were inferior to the British (mainly because they had inferior weapons like spears and boomerang’s), they lost and the land was taken away from them. The Europeans thought that no-one owned this land so they began a settlement which forced many indigenous tribes to move away from their natural areas. The Aborigines began to fight back, killing some of Europeans but that only made matters worse.
Because the Aborigines were being forced to move elsewhere by the British, they found it very hard to stick to their new diet because they had to find other food sources. They were unable to farm and harvest their own, traditional foods. The Aborigines eventually were in such a state that they began hijacking many British supply ships. This led to many executions of some Aborigines.
Things begin to change for the better.
Australia Day, 26th January, 1938 marked the 150th anniversary of white settlement. This same day the Australian Aborigines League and the Aborigines Progressive Association united, to march peacefully to Australia House and have the first Day of Mourning. This was a bold move by the Aborigines but no doubt the right thing to do.
In 1958, The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) was formed. Its members included Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and had connections in different states. The main aim for its establishment was to push for a referendum. An huge 90.7% of Australians voted ‘yes’ at the 1967 referendum. This was a major victory and meant that the Council for Aboriginal Affairs was set up. The Referendum was a fantastic win for the Aboriginal movement – the movement for equality. This win gave citizenship, which meant Aboriginal people were able to move around freely and have a choice in governments.
In 1962, the 1902 Commonwealth Electoral Act was repealed and Aboriginals in all States, but Queensland, were finally given equal voting rights.
In 1965 Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from Sydney drove around country towns of New South Wales to protest against segregation and living conditions of Aboriginal people. They were very successful in getting media attention, which led to scrutiny of Australia’s Aboriginal affairs.
Recently, on February 13, 2008, the federal government of Australia, led by Mr Kevin Rudd, issued a formal apology to the Indigenous Australians over the Stolen Generations.
He apologised for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians, for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country, for the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind,to the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities and for the indignity and degradation inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture.
In conlusion, we think the Aborigines were treated wrongfully. The Aborigenes wouldn’t have been in all these conflicts if the British people let them live their way of life and tried to understand them. For their future happiness, we believe that they should live the way they wnt to, not the way we want them to. The government should do more to help the Aborigines, not just an apology. The government should repay the Aborigines for the damage that has been caused.
Peter, Stephen, George, Luke and Nathan
