‘Displaced person in your own country, lonely in teeming city crowds, last of your tribe’. Has anyone here ever been forcibly abducted from your home? Or have had your children literally pried out of your arms and stolen from you? Or have you had your parents murdered right in front of you? Australia’s indigenous people and rightful owners of the land have been permanently segregated from the Australian society having been faced with extreme adversity, torture and catastrophe. Consequently, Indigenous Australians were made outsiders in their own home. Yet, The Australian Government and communities have accepted all of you here today with open arms and officially entitled you as Australian citizens. As can be expected, this is even stated in the Australian National Anthem, ‘For those who’ve come across the seas we’ve boundless plains to share’. With no reference to the Aboriginals and Australia’s true history as well as disreguarding them in the verse ‘For we are young and free’. Good morning, I, a fellow immigrant and Australian am here today to oppose Australia’s values of acceptance and freedom. How can we be truly accepted …show more content…
However, she was made famous for her controversial Australian poems displaying her views and strong opposition to the typical Australian values of acceptance. She outlines her immense resentment to Australia for segregating her based on her accent, looks and opinions. ‘You tell me I look strange. Different. You don’t adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you’re better than me’. She has a large difference in traditions and values to Australia and consequently has been carved to believe by society that she has to either ‘love it, or leave’. Evidently, proving that not only she feels separated and excluded from Australian society but that everyone with a different value, opinion or perspective does, including Indigenous
I, along with many other people believe that as a human we deserve Human Rights, regardless of who we are of what our background is, where we live, what we look like, what we think or what we believe in. However this is not the case. In Australia we are believed to be a multicultural community and a diverse society. Nevertheless the way Asylum Seeker and Refugees are being treated is
The National Apology of 2008 is the latest addition to the key aspects of Australia’s reconciliation towards the Indigenous owners of our land. A part of this movement towards reconciliation is the recognition of Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders rights to their land. Upon arrival in Australia, Australia was deemed by the British as terra nullius, land belonging to no one. This subsequently meant that Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were never recognised as the traditional owners. Eddie Mabo has made a highly significant contribution to the rights and freedoms of Indigenous Australians as he was the forefather of a long-lasting court case in 1982 fighting for the land rights of the Torres Strait Islanders. Eddie Mabo’s introduction of the Native Title Act has provided Indigenous Australians with the opportunity to state claim to their land, legally recognising the Indigenous and the Torres Strait Islanders as the traditional owners.
...at these several events in our nation’s history have demoralised our reputation to other countries globally. To make us known as a better country to other nations, we’ve completely abolished the White Australia Policy, gave back the aborigines their freedoms and we were also the first country in the world to give women rights. Australia today in present day is now one of the most multicultural societies on Earth, and we definitely follow our values of mateship, acceptance and freedom.
In doing so, we are also blocking out people who have the potential to bring even more cultural diversity into the community. If we honestly believe that we are a generous and multicultural nation, it’s time we show it by empathising with our fellow human beings. In order to improve the conditions in detention centres there must be a change to our unnecessarily harsh system. We need rules to be enforced, such as; a maximum 30 day time limit, and the people that are detained must be let out within this time frame. Within this time, health, character and identity checks must be completed. Shutting down isolating and remote detention centres. Speeding up the processing system. Asylum seekers must be given the opportunity to communicate with the outside world and have full access to legal advice and counselling. This means that telephones, internet and external activities need to be an option. Unaccompanied minors also need to be a priority. It is time that Australia treats our neighbours with all the dignity and respect that they finally
The Stolen Generation has had a profound impact on every aspect of the lives of Indigenous communities. It has jeopardised their very survival. It has impoverished their capacity to control and direct their future development. The Stolen Generation has corrupted, devastated and destroyed the souls, hopes and beliefs of many Australian lives through damaging assimilation policies established in an attempt to make a ‘White Australia’ possible. Discrimination, racism and prejudice are some of the many permanent scars upon Indigenous life that will never be repaired. However, recently Rudd and the Australian public have sincerely apologised for the detrimental effects the Stolen Generation had caused. The Stolen Generation has dramatically shaped Australian history and culture.
Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.
Australia’s Indigenous people are thought to have reached the continent between 60 000 and 80 000 years ago. Over the thousands of years since then, a complex customary legal system have developed, strongly linked to the notion of kinship and based on oral tradition. The indigenous people were not seen as have a political culture or system for law. They were denied the access to basic human right e.g., the right to land ownership. Their cultural values of indigenous people became lost. They lost their traditional lifestyle and became disconnected socially. This means that they were unable to pass down their heritage and also were disconnected from the new occupants of the land.
Australia has been depicted through several different artforms – paintings, songs, poems – in order to reflect the multicultural national identity of Australia. These artforms in particular, had influenced the nation and advanced thought provoking ideas during the era of the oppressed indigenous people. Indigenous authors enlightened the hardships they faced, through artforms such as poems and contributed greatly to the Australian national identity. Oodgeroo Noonuccal, was the first Aboriginal woman to be a published author, and her poem “No More Boomerang,” highlights the impact the white settlers had on the indigenous community by showing the contrast in their daily lifestyles and the affect of the loss of their culture. These are revealed, through poetic techniques, imagery and symbolism, in order to deliver the subject matter to the audience. The message of the forced cultural differences the indigenous people faced was emphasised boldly and marked the white settlers as thieves of their land and culture.
Mansouri & Kirpitchenko report migrant youth as having “an aversion to formal structured engagement” (2015), rather gravitating towards active engagement in informal or family structures. This aversion may result from Australia’s “history of racism” (Poynting & Mason, 2008) equating to those not of caucasian descent being classed as “other” (Poynting & Mason, 2008; See also Bird & McDonnell 1997) and leading those under this classification being subjected to xenophobic backlash (Poynting & Mason 2008) in the form of citizenship being shaped as obedience to the law (Macduff 2014). This is demonstrated through the citizenship pledge, where applicants physically submit to the legal requirements of the pledge, enforcing the governments authority (Macduff 2014). Obedience is further asserted by government policy, with former Prime Minister John Howard stating “if they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off” (Poynting & Mason, 2008). Well intended, the former Prime Minister responded to 9/11 with a “call for greater state intervention in Muslim cultural and religious matters” (Poynting & Mason 2008) as a means to protect Australia. However, this representation of a people as a “monolithic cultural identity” (Bird & McDonnell 1997) creates problems through separating caucasian Australia from the “other”, creating what Poynting & Perry call a “permission to hate” (Poynting & Mason 2008) and limiting opportunities to participate as citizens of the country they now belong to. “Law is an instrument through which a communities values and rights may be given effect” (Wong, 2014) and the effects of the proposed amendments on civic participation among migrant communities may be that formal participation reaches even lower numbers. Wong’s fears for the “victims of bullying” (2014) resonate
Since I have arrived here at Lambing Flats, nothing has changed. I am still facing the same discrimination I have been for a while and I am still judged every day under their harsh eyes. It seems as if all of Australia is against us. They publish mean cartoons about us (See Appendix 1) that poke fun, no, not just poke - disrespect and make fun of us in every way. They make fun of the way we talk, walk, dress and look! Half of these things are out of my control, so what am I meant to do? I have heard that in places other than here, we are actually accepted. Well, at least not discriminated against. In Cooktown and Cairns, we are accepted, and there is still gold there too! Even in other places other than here, not everyone discriminates against
The stolen generations, the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children that occurred in the late 19th Century to the 1970s have had effects on Indigenous people of Australia today. The 1997 report Bringing Them Home, from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, reports that up to one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed during this time period. The vast number of indigenous children stolen and the immense amount of sorrow that had been caused has left a lasting impact in today’s Indigenous society. The physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was faced by the overwhelming number of members of the stolen generations has left some incapable of loving and maintaining relationships, leading to
Australia is a welcoming country that is happy to take in immigrants from other countries. Between June 2012 and June 2013 a total of 152 414 people moved to Australia and have come from over 200 different countries. And from them 152 414 people 123 438 people became Australian citizens by transferring from at least 190 different countries. I can put this into perspective for you, we recorded to have 23,442,055 people living in Australia on the 30th September 2013, by these figures this shows that we do accept people and do love having you in the countries because we keep accepting as the population keeps growing. The song I am Australian by The Seekers demonstrates this by stating in the chorus: ‘And from all the lands on the earth we come’ on line three then in line six it is demonstrated again: ‘I am, you are, we are Australian’. This shows that Australians are accepting of other people from different countries. Most countries including Australia will accept you as of where you have originated from but we like to embrace the culture not just accept ...
an influential voice in the field of Australian poetry. Born in 1940, she has been
Australia has committed 143 human rights violations, and has started to ruin our national reputation. Nobody wants to be called a racist. Unfortunately, many people worldwide are calling Australians exactly that. If one looks at Australian history, they will see that our white ancestors weren’t really racially tolerant at all, which left us with a bad reputation as racists. We’ve worked for many years to change how the world sees us as a country, but now we’ve undone all of that hard work by deciding to turn back the boats. However, by doing this, we’ve not only been called racists, but we’ve also broken international human rights laws that we swore not to break with the UN, severed relations with other countries, and pushed many of these innocent asylum seekers to the brink of suicide.
The Stolen Generation has had a large effect on the stages of reconciliation between white and Indigenous Australia. With the acknowledges the Australian government has made to the neglect, and the abuse that has occurred to a large number of Indigenous Australians, further steps to reconciliation can be made. Events such as Kevin Rudd’s speech have been a large step towards reconciliation, with a formal apology acknowledging the many Australians that had been affected by these actions.