Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through

The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) was a law that changed Indigenous Australian lives forever. The act enabled the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines to essentially control the lives of Aboriginal people. It was the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) that had major provisions that resulted in the containment and suffering that Aboriginal people endured. This suffering included the practice of forcible removing Indigenous children from their families. These major provisions help us understand what the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) involved and the impact it has had on the daily lives and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples today.

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.

It is a commonly known issue in Australia that as a minority group, the people of Indigenous Australian ethnicity have always been treated, or at least perceived, differently to those of non-Indigenous disposition. This can be applied to different contexts such as social, economic, education, or in relation to this essay – legal contexts. Generally, Indigenous Australians face issues such as less opportunity for formal education, less access to sufficient income, more health issues, and higher rates of imprisonment (Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service

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 has had a great effect on Aboriginal rights and freedoms as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders didn’t even have the rights to raise and look after their children and as a result 100,000 Aboriginal Australian’s were displaced and placed into white families. The lack of understanding and respect for Aboriginal culture also meant that many people who supported the removal of these children really thought they were doing “the right thing”. The impact on Australian life today is still being felt as the Stolen Generation is seen as a recent event has it only ended in the early 1970s. Children that where taken away back then now cannot trace back their roots and therefore have no record of their family history or where

Assimilation policies existed in purpose of allowing the removal of Aboriginal children legal and believed as to be the right thing. The removal policy was managed by the Aborigines Protection Board. The Aborigines Protection Board was a government board established in 1909 with the power to remove children without parental consent and without a court order. These policies were especially detrimental to the Aborigines as a ‘government’ act prevented them with having authority over their own children and having no power in stopping the abducting of their children. Over causing a significant discrimination against the indigenous race, breeding hatred and inequality in Australian society, the implementation of these policies caused immense heartache and anguish for the Aboriginal parents for losing their children, the children of the Stolen Generation experiencing solitude and confusion for majority of their lives and the rest of society,

In 1967, a landmark event occurred for the Indigenous Community of Australia. They were no longer declared Flora and Fauna This means that Aboriginal people would be considered a part of the landscape and not humans in their own right.. In 1967, a Referendum was held by all members of Australian society voting on the issue of allowing Indigenous Australian to be a part of the census and thereby able to vote and be counted as part of Australia’s population. This achieved not only citizenship for Aboriginal people, but put the issue of Indigenous Rights on both the political and social platforms. This essay will look at the lead up to the Referendum, how Aborigines and their supporters communicated their belief in their rights to the

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.

Assimilation policy proposed that ‘full blood’ Indigenous people should be allowed to ‘die out’ through a process of natural elimination, while ‘half-castes’ were encouraged to assimilate into the white community. This approach was founded on the assumption of black inferiority and white superiority. It was assumed that Indigenous people would enjoy the same quality of life as white Australians if they adopted European customs and everyone would live together as a single white Australian community. In actuality, assimilation policy further destroyed Indigenous identity, culture and families. It also was justification for the removal of Indigenous children from their

Most of the crimes Indigenous children were being arrested are unreasonable; for example Girls falling pregnant young were taken away from their families where the Boards ‘advertise children for fostering: 150 on public offer and 90 for non- Indigenous parents’ (Haebich and Mellor, 2002, p. 259). As a result to the Aboriginal Affair Act 1958, over 200 children were being adopted into white families; to the government was a way of keeping them out of poverty or other negative circumstance. However, in my opinion stripping a child away from their parents will negatively impact the child; they are more likely to misbehave and come in contact with the police. Also the children will feel vulnerable as they could be exposed to sexual, physical and emotional abuse from their adopted families. This form of force assimilation can be considered as the process of cultural genocide, as Aboriginal children are taught to conduct themselves similarly to Europeans and reject their people and culture leaving them detached from their

The referendum campaign effectively focused public attention on the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were second class citizens with all sorts of limitations - legislative and social - on their lives. This decade-long campaign to change the Constitution came to symbolise the broader struggle for justice being fought during these years. Activists presented the case for a Commonwealth government

The policy gave the government extensive powers over Aboriginal people with regards to residence, employment, marriage, education and nutrition (Kidd, 2000) thus promoting dependency and demoralization among Aboriginal people. Late 1800s through much of the twentieth century, the suppression of the rights of Aboriginal people continued with government control of wages and pensions, a practice now called ‘stolen wages’( Attwood, 2003). This imposed poverty on Aboriginal people and established the exploitation phase of fraudulent activities by governments and their public servants and the starving of Aboriginal communities of essential funds for survival (Kidd, 2000).

This article gives the reader an inequitable view of Indigenous Australians, defending Tony Abbot’s point of view and the audience is encouraged to agree with mainstream media in regards to whether or not Tony Abbott is racist. Article B from the Koori Mail condemns Tony Abbott’s viewpoint as not only racist but he is insulting the very culture that he is representing. Article B states that Tony Abbott does not understand Indigenous culture and how important land is to them “Connection to country is everything to Aboriginal people – defines Aboriginal people and sustains us in a cultural and spiritual sense and can play a vital role in building economic independence, self-determination and healing” (Greg Cromelin, Article B). With Article B the audience is encouraged to get angry at Tony Abbott’s comments and make him out to be racist.

From this time, Indigenous Australians have suffered destruction, loss of land and a lost sense of sovereignty and culture. “Protection Acts” segregated and controlled Aboriginal peoples, consequently continuing the divide between race nations (Brady, 2007). The 1967 referendum allowed Aboriginal people to be included in the census, however did not allow them to vote. These, in turn were all symbols of their moral and political rights, encouraging them to fight for their rights in land, self-determination and respect (Attwood & Markus, 2007).

In 2008, Australian government apologized to the indigenous people who are also called Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. The Australian government has confirmed that during 1800 to until 1970, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in their respective states were affected by the forced removal of children. There were thousands of indigenous children died by rape and distress they suffered by white man. There were not treated as equally as white children who go to same school. These children never get to see their families once are they bring to the boarding school when they were forced to learn about Christianity. During the 2007 election campaign, the Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd promised a formal apology to Australia’s Aborigines (Anne 2013). The apology involved an offer for a policy to have an equal right between indigenous and non-indigenous people in educational and economic opportunity.