Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders

At this point in time there is no guarantee that the Aboriginal culture will survive the test of time as the future of Australia goes on. The laws that replaced the Aboriginal traditions have permanently damaged the culture of the Indigenous people. In Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, the major portion of the story is about the resilience of three young half-caste aboriginal girls who were taken from their families by white men and their laws. “The white settlers were a protected species, they were safe with their own laws and had police and soldiers to enforce these rules” (Pilkington 15). When the British brought their laws over to Australia, they assumed it would be necessary to enforce it throughout the land they claimed, and over the Aboriginal people.

The Day of Mourning was a chance for Indigenous Australians to stand up for what they believe in, and was the first step towards equality. The rights of Indigenous Australians were restricted by the Government policy of protection and assimilation. The Aboriginal Protection Act was passed in 1869, which gave power over the lives of Aboriginal people to the government, such as where they could live or work. They removed mixed decent Aboriginal children from their families in an attempt to assimilate them into white society. The Child Welfare Act 1939 abandoned this policy and gave Indigenous parents the right to take their children back.

Consequently, the event of British colonisation, is described by many historians as the European invasion of Australia. Following the year 1788, the British continued seizing land and gave little thought into compensating the Indigenous Australians of which they displaced. The Aboriginal population lost access to sources of food and water which they had once been able to use freely, as well as their various sacred sites. The Aboriginal community found themselves living in a world ruled by inhabitants who believed that people with white skin were superior to those of other races. From mid nineteenth century onwards, the Australian governments began implementing various policies of ‘protection’ which in reality segregated the Aboriginal people from the Australian society, consuming their everyday lives.

Modern Aboriginal Issues The first Europeans to settle Australia treated the Aboriginals in a brutal, unfair manor. They downgraded Aboriginals to a lower status as human beings. They tried to force the Aboriginals to conform to the western way of life for more than 200 years. It is only fairly recently that the Aboriginals have finally been able to gain back some of their indigenous rights and traditions. Yet they are still deficient in many areas.

The three main reasons for this dramatic decline were introduction of new diseases, violent conflicts with the colonisers and settlers acquiring Indigenous land (Digital, 2015). In 1848, the Board of National Education stated that it was impractical to provide any form of education for Indigenous children. In 1883 the Aboriginal Protection Board is established in NSW and

It seems to be impossible for the responsible authorities to address this problem effectively when there is lack of efficiency in gathering data. (Source: Article by Milanda Rout in The Australian 27/01/10) Historical background The term Indigenous can be referred as ‘Native to a particular region or environment but occurring naturally in other places as well’ (TheFreeDictionary 2009, ¶.1). In Australia, they were resided for almost 350 to 700 centuries ago. They usually can be found in isolated parts in Australia (History of the Aborigines n.d.). As Britain want to colonise Australia as a country in 1788, the indigenous community were chased by British (Bailey 2008).

What is the connection between official education policies and key events in Aboriginal Australian history? How have Aboriginal people responded to these policies? Key events in Aboriginal Australian history stem from the time Australia was first discovered in 1788. For instance, when Federation came into existence in 1901, there was a prevailing belief held by non Aboriginal Australians that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005:259) which resulted in the Indigenous people being excluded from the constitution except for two mentions – Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and Section 51, part 26, which gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. Aboriginal people were officially excluded from the vote, public service, the Armed Forces and pensions.

They thought this way because of the major differences between the Aboriginal ways of life and the Colonial ways of life. The Aborigines’ simple tools and lack of material items led to the colonists’ ignorance towards the economy and life style of the Aborigines’. Within a short amount of time, the population of Aborigines dropped by hundreds of thousands. Through the expansion of the British colonists, the Aborigines were no longer a free people and were pushed to fight for their liberty. The British invasion of Australia led to many violent battles and ra... ... middle of paper ... ...able children and juvenile offenders.

It is the ‘mother’ from which they used to source food and live (Kauffman, 1998, p.1). Before the settlers arrived in 1788, Australia was known as Terra Nullius meaning a land, as such, belonging to no one (Lindqvist, 2007, p.3). The Indigenous people of Australia were exiled from their own country as the English deemed Australia a place without inhabitants as they did not see the Aboriginals as a civilised race (Aboriginalheritage.org, 2015). The colonisation of Australia was devastating for the Indigenous people, who have existed on this land for more than 60,000 years. For years, they have been fighting to have their land rights recognised.

Aboriginies Question: The British settlers were justifiedin declaring Australia to be terra nulius? Were the British settlers justified in declaring Australia terra nulius? The British bought a lot of things to Australia by declaring it terra nulius, such as they took the land of the Aborigines; they introduced Australia to houses, farms, clothes and money. The British decided that the Aborigines weren’t living there or didn’t have a government before they checked the evidence, and they tried to replace the Aboriginal rules and culture with their own rules and cultures. The British took the land that the Aborigines had lived on for hundreds of years off of them because they didn’t believe that the Aborigines could live there if they kept moving around.