Essay On Peace In Australia

Betrayal, one of the most horrible things you could do to anyone your family, a friend anyone. To me it’s one of my all time most hated things a person could do and it’s almost unforgivable. In this book A Separate Peace by John Knowles two boys Phineas and Gene who are best friends at a boarding school in New Hampshire experience some of the worst kinds of Betrayal you could think of. Gene commits a very bad betrayal when he jousts the tree limb they are both standing on ending up with Finny falling and badly breaking his leg. This was no accident because Gene can’t stand the guilt.

The Eddie Mabo v the State of Queensland [No. 2] (Mabo) case has had a deep impact on the legal, social and political reality of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in Australia. It’s established a long term consequences may require considerable litigation, or maybe a Federal Legislation. The Mabo case is the means of which the sovereign rights of Indigenous Nations to their ancestral lands. The result in the case was a recognition by the Australian legal system that the Meriam people hold rights to their land under their own system of law, and that those rights should enjoy the protection of the Australian Law.

After many years of European settlement in Australia, many Aboriginal people had been removed from their families and placed into schools with white Australians. This was due to the ‘protection policy’ laws that encouraged the removal of Indigenous children. Because fewer indigenous children were able to learn about their own culture, there was a slow decline in the culture of the indigenous people. As a result of this, there were continued tensions between the free settlers and Indigenous people as they had no roles in the government and couldn’t vote. This made them feel as if they were excluded from greater society and had long term negative impacts upon their sense of belonging to the new

As Carl Jung once stated, “Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious”. To reach a peaceful reconciliation, one must learn to embrace two distinct elements of their personality, the "Persona" and "Shadow." Likewise, in the bildungsroman, A Separate Peace, author John Knowles depicts the common rivalry between young adolescents, and how they struggle to accept their identity and the relationship between their unconscious self. Gene, a Devon High student, becomes best friends with Finny and grows jealous of his ostensibly flawless friend, causing him to make a life-changing decision. His struggles to reach an inner balance between his “Persona” and “Shadow” lead to the ultimate death of Finny. Gene’s transformation involves the changes of his mask and “Shadow”—from guilt and jealousy to pride and tolerance—which results in the later acceptance of the light and dark parts of himself, allowing him to truly reach adulthood and a state of peace.

Aboriginal people, since British settlement, have faced great inequalities and much racial discrimination on their own soil. Aboriginal Australians through great struggle and conflict have made significant progress in the right to their own land. To better understand the position of the Aboriginal Australians, this essay will go into more depth about the rights that Aboriginal people had to their own land prior to federation. It will also include significant events and key people who activated the reshaping of land rights for Indigenous Australians and how that has affected the rights Aboriginal people now have in the 21st Century, in regards to their land.

The Mabo decision of 1992 was hailed as a landmark case in the history of indigenous-white relations in Australia. Overturning centuries of injustice, as well as the myth of right by ‘terra nullius’, the case prompted the passing of the Native Title Act of 1993, which affirmed native title and asserted that native Australians possessed their land under common law, and in doing so ushered in a new era of equality in Australian society. However, though correctly lauded as a milestone in recognition of aboriginals as valid legal entities, the act was not without its problems, and in truth has had little impact on Australian society as a whole. As we shall see, the trend of positive reform existent in the act was not supported in practice, and aboriginal Australians remain at the mercy of Western courts when it comes to their land. Though the Mabo decision and the subsequent Native Title Act went some way to correcting past injustices, its actual impact on Australian society has been negligible.

Since European invasion in 1788, Indigenous Australians have fought to retain their rights and freedoms and to have governments recognise them. From 1788 and onwards the British created settlements on land that Aboriginal people previously used and controlled. Throughout the 19th century the government applied policies of ‘protection’ that have segregated Aborigines from Australian society by denying them equality and opportunity. They have achieved some significant changes in the brawl for acknowledgment (Anderson, 2014). Certain key developments that are significant in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders struggles for rights and freedoms are ; 1967 referendum, Mabo decision, bringing them home(stolen generations) and the apology. These four main key developments have been momentous developments for the Australian Indigenous population that are now allowed they’re human rights and freedoms.

This week’s learning has significantly developed my awareness of Indigenous origins, history and culture. I discovered the multiple recordings of Indigenous origins and events that occurred before and after European settlement. Before starting this unit I did not have proper knowledge of previous government policies of discriminating the lives of Indigenous Australians such as protection, assimilation, integration, self-determination, multiculturalism and the Howard Government’s mean-spirited practical reconciliation (Harrison & Sellwood, 2016); and how Indigenous Australians struggled to earn the equality (Miller, 2012) to reach the current policy of ‘Closing the Gap’. What this week’s learning have highlighted that today Australian classrooms acknowledge, respect and deliver Indigenous Australian histories more adequately than ever before. I now understand that Indigenous perspectives would help students to learn the interconnectedness of Indigenous histories and relate these to contemporary life for Indigenous Australians (The Department of Education, 2017). This understanding is essential for me to evaluate my own knowledge of Indigenous Australian histories and policies to develop a holistic approach to include Indigenous perspectives in classrooms.

"Your surroundings may change but your essence and your personality pretty much stay the same" (Dewan). The setting of the novel A Separate Peace is at an all boys school located in New Hampshire. The characters and plot are finely woven into the fabric of this institution. However, would events in this novel turn out differently if the story was set in a public high school, with a diverse environment? The characters and plot of A Separate Peace are not solely driven by their surroundings because the boys would still break the rules, Gene would have internal conflicts, and the war would affect the students.

Reconciliation is the process of building respectful relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the wider Australian community. It is about understanding and respecting their culture and heritage and signifies ‘coming together’ to become one nation without racism and with equality for all. There are still vast differences in health, education, employment, and standards of living of the Indigenous peoples as compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. Even today Indigenous peoples have a significantly lower life expectancy, up to 11.5 years for men and 9.7 years for women . The infant mortality rate for the Indigenous peoples is double the rate for non-Aboriginal Australians. Understanding these inequalities is the first step to reconciling the differences. Policies such as the stolen generation and assimilation policy destroyed Indigenous identity and culture and justified the dispossession of Indigenous people and the removal of Indigenous children from their parents. We can’t change the past but we can make a better future by understanding and learning from the mistakes of the past, reconciliation is about that. Many practical and symbolic strategies have been implemented over the last 50 years to achieve reconciliation such as ATSIC, Northern Territory Intervention and the Mabo decision. However, the most significant ones are the 1967 Referendum, Closing the Gap framework in 2008 and the ‘Sorry speech’. The aim is to improve the five dimensions of reconciliation: race relations, equality and equity, institutional integrity, unity, and historical acceptance.

The challenges faced By Indigenous Peoples in achieving justice, are both complex and extensive. These issues stem from successive centuries of asserted colonial power, which consequently has resulted in the undermining of rights for many Indigenous communities, including the Australian Aboriginal Peoples and Maori Peoples of New Zealand. Systemic abuse of power has resulted in the gradual erosion of Indigenous culture, and as thus, rights of Indigenous communities, including Intellectual Property and Cultural Rights, have been neglected. As a result, a growing body of declarations, statements, and other developments both within governmental systems, as well as in the wider international justice arena have been received. However, many

A Key conflict that endures as one of the most noteworthy events in New Zealand’s early history is the Waikato war of 1863-1864. The significance of the battles lies in the definition of the status of Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand. Particular historic debate surrounds whether the Waikato war was caused more primarily over the dispute of land or sovereignty. Maori were rising against British control and domination over them exhibited by establishment of the Kingitanga movement and the resistance to land sales. Responding in a way they saw that they had the right British invaded the Waikato. The outcomes of these events still hold debate and controversy in the regions of occurrence even today. With large loss of lives on both sides directly from the clashes, as Maori retained their pride refused to surrender to the British’s superior technology. New laws were passed as a result of the resistance involving shameless policy’s which marginalised Maori and there rights further. The consequences of this war were drawn out until the late 20th, when finally reparations were made in full.

Douglas, G. (2010) Social and Cultural Meanings of Tolerance: Immigration, Incorporation and Identity in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 125-148.

The three sections discuss the impact of systematic dispossession of Maori land in Aotearoa New Zealand during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The first section, Wynyard draws on Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation. Primitive accumulation in the New Zealand context is perceived as an alienation of Maori land for colonial settlers. Likewise, it represents a countless amount of force, fraud, and oppression towards Maori in order to operate a capital accumulation. In other words, it is a form of cultural theft in stealing Maori lands and resources (Heim, 1998). Thus, primitive accumulation causes indigenous Maori left with nothing besides selling themselves as labor to work for the European civilization. This concept is similar to how capitalism was formed in the early colonization in Europe through the same progress of stealing the land and the development of agriculture. The second section, Wynyard covers the case of the Native Land Court where he titled the section as the Theft made legal. The Native Land Court is an intention of freeing up the so-called Theft in obtaining legal act through creating the law in a way to benefit the settlers. The main mean of this act is to maintain the system of British law. This law is launched to completely destroy and ignore the Maori laws through establishing courts, institution and land acts that permit them to

In the beginning of the 19th century, almost all New Zealanders were considered to be Maoris. The Maoris made up nearly the whole country, with a population between 100-120,000, while the European population was down in the hundreds. In 1818, the Musket Wars resulted in the loss of over a fifth of the Maori population, at least 20,000 dead and thousands more captured (“Overview of NZ”). The Musket War was a war that began when the Europeans introduced their advanced technology and muskets into New Zealand. The Musket Wars were a series of inter-tribal wars caused by tribes all trading to obtain muskets. At the end of the wars, in 1830, a new conflict for the Maori population took rise when “warfare gave way to economic rivalry” (“The Musket Wars”). From 1830 on, Europeans would come to New Zealand in waves of hundreds and thousands of people, threatening the Maoris’ once complete control over the land. This brewing economic rivalry was what paved the way for the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document. This treaty was interpreted differently by the English and Maoris, something the British had purposely done. The British plan to deceive the natives resulted in both land and governmental conflicts. Land disputes caused by the treaty’s misinterpretations between the Maori people and the settlers sparked the New Zealand Wars in 1861-1870. At the end of these wars, new laws were passed that nearly abolished Maori rights. In 1896, New Zealand was no longer a Maori