Living the Aboriginal Way

Indigenous Australians are probably descendants of the first modern humans to migrate out of Africa to Asia, roughly 70,000 years ago, arriving in Australia around 50,000 years ago.

The stolen generation has created a long-term impact on reconciliation in Australia and has created a significant impact in Australian history by affecting the lives of indigenous. “The stolen generation has created many negative implications in Australian society, further disbanding therefore greatly slowing reconciliation attempts done by various prime minister and organisations “We say Sorry” Kevin Rudd persistently repeated in his apology speech to The Stolen Generation. Where at least one hundred thousand indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parent’s care, this policy went on for 6 decades (1910 to 1960) this was the result of various government policies introduced in 1910.

“In what ways did Indigenous peoples resist the non-Indigenous settlement of Australia in the frontier period and how did non-Indigenous peoples retaliate? In your answer, discuss and analyse the initial and ongoing impact on Indigenous communities.”

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.

The stolen generation is a term to describe aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from families by federal and state governments and by church missions. The aim of this was to bring aboriginal children up in white families and teach them to reject their original culture, therefore if they continued successfully there would eventually be no indigenous people remaining.

After this time, many atrocities occurred, such as the fact that Aboriginals were often killed for sport, and massacres such as Myall Creek were occurring, where 28 Aboriginal men, women and children were murdered near Myall Creek Station in 1838. There was also the problem of the Stolen Generation, when Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their homes to be raised as though they were white. It was only recently in 2008, that Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, apologised for the actions that the government had undertaken. In another apologetic move, Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered a powerful speech regarding the fact that Aboriginal Communities were still segregated despite the fact that laws had been changed a number of years ago. This shows that the idea of atonement by Australia is quite a new topic. Does this prove the challenges that Aboriginal’s faced nearly 200 years ago are still present in today’s society? It was enough to force the Aboriginal men, women and children to begin act in support of their rights.

To begin with, a clarification must be made. Although for the purposes of this assessment I will be using the term Indigenous Australians, it is not the most appropriate term to be using, as the technical definition of indigenous is ‘originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native’ (‘Indigenous’, 1987). The more correct term would be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

The National Inquiry into the separation of the children concluded that 'between one-in-three and one-in-ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970' (Wilkie, 1997). It was the 1960s, at the earliest, when the various 'protection' Acts were either abolished or discontinued.

Over the past 230 years, Aboriginals have protested in many different ways to gain rights, which they believe they are deserving of. Through aims of what they wanted to achieve, the processes they went through brought them disappointment over the poor results of some actions and pleasure over the success of others. Over those years, very few periods of protest have been as revelational or effective as the protests occurring between 1938 and 1972. During this period many different groups of Aboriginals have fought for the common cause of being recognised as people rather than interferences caught in the midst of Australians expansion as a nation.

It was the belief of the time that this full blood Aboriginal population would eventually die out. In 1937 the Commonwealth-State Native Welfare Conference was held and the agreement that was reached was “this conference believes that the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end” (Arrufat 1930).By the 1950s these children began to be placed with white families to be servants or sent to work as under paid labour. It is unknown how many Aboriginal people where taken form their families but today there are thousands of people with out a family history because most of these children now known as the stolen generation never sore their families again. Even siblings where separated, usually for life. It was an ethnocentric view of Non-Aboriginal Australians to think that these children would be better off growing up without their Aboriginal Families.

Aboriginals or indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. Aboriginals were nomadic people who came to Australia about 40,000 – 60,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Religion is a great part of Aboriginal culture. The essay answers these questions: What do Aboriginals belief? What is a Kinship system? What is Dreaming and Dreamtime? What rituals does Aboriginals have?

Most of the Aboriginal population relocated due to disease that hit the population in the mid-19th century. However, there are still native residents living in Coogee.

Before Europeans arrived in Australia, Indigenous Australians were free and had their own cultural identity, practices many languages, had a strong culture and sense of belonging to their land. Their lifestyle was good which was based on hunter-gatherer culture

Aborigines in Australia Foreword: The aborigines in Australia have been the subject of controversy and attention towards the end of the 20th century because of their maltreatment in the hands of their British colonizers and continued persecution in a land they rightfully own. Their rich culture, which dates back to the Ice and Stone Age, is near extinction because of the oppression they suffered through time. In spite of the odds, however, the remaining children of this near extinct but proud race are fighting valiantly to survive and preserve their proof of existence in a world dominated by educated and civilized people. This essay analyzes the plight of this minority group in three

The world consists of the different types of people in the particular country. The statement “Aboriginal people” was new to me because I am from another nation where such kind of individuals does not exist. I had not taken any subject in my country related to the issues that are existing in another country such as in America, Canada etc. Canada is the first place where I knew about aboriginal people. The following paragraphs will show about the situations faced by the aboriginal people in the past and present day. I got the information about this from the class lecture notes and from watching the videos related to the indigenous population.