HISTORY OF THE DISCRIMINATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Please read before continuing on...
Before starting, we would first like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Australia, the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. We’d like to pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging as well as those who are reading through this.
OVERVIEW
For more than 60,000 years, the Aboriginals have called Australia their home and on the 26th of January 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip arrived at Sydney Cove in New South Wales. Since 1935, this significant date has been known as ‘Australia Day’. On this day, thousands of Australians gather together and celebrate the arrival of the first fleet and the birth of a new country. However, in the eyes of many, this day is also referred to as Invasion day. As soon as the British flag was placed into the soil, everything changed for them.
For the majority of the 20th century, Australians have only been educated about one side of the settlement in Australia - how the colonisation of the Europeans was untroublesome and harmonious. But were you aware that the Aboriginals were written off from Australian history for the first half of the 20th century? Let’s drawback to the early days where violence was first prevalent.
In the earlier years of the British Settlement, Governor Philip informed that a peaceful and neighbourly relationship must be maintained. But as the Europeans expanded and colonised more throughout scared Indigenous land, disputes and violence started to rise and become more occurrent. In the eyes of the British, Aborigines were construed as ‘their subjects’ and were permitted to follow the law. If an indigenous individual were to show defiance against these rules, it was most likely that they would be punished unjustly.
THE FRONTIER WARS
The Frontier Wars is the term used to describe the slaughters, actions of resistance - as well as wars between the Indigenous people and the British. These events lasted from the beginning of the colonial period to late 1934. However, this time frame is often debated on as acts of brutality against the Aboriginals still occur to this very day.
The number of colonists and Aboriginal casualties is often debated upon as it’s hard to know for certain, however, supposedly around 2000 - 5000 throughout this time period. But in no way does this scale up to the number of Indigenous lives lost. In Queensland, it is approximated that around 60,000 Aboriginies died.
The Frontier Wars and massacres that occurred during this time have been rarely talked about as, throughout history, we have only ever relied on white sources. Have you ever heard of the ‘Potato Field Incident’? It was one of the leading causes that influenced the beginning of the Frontier and Bathurst Wars. In the early 1940s, a quarrel broke out between a settler named James Anderson and the Wurundjeri people from Melbourne. The farmer showed a group of Wiradjuri people how to cook potatoes. From their perspective, they believed that they had established the right to collect some of the crops as it was growing on their tribal lands. And so, would harvest some of the produce for themselves. When they came back, Anderson misinterpreted their intentions and believed that they were stealing. As a response, he called upon some neighbours to help him execute the ‘thieving blacks’. Windradyne, also known as ‘Saturday’, was an Aboriginal Resistance Warrior and lead various attacks against the white settlers.
THE STOLEN GENERATION
From 1910 to 1970, thousands of young Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander children from ages lowest as 4 (some of which were even younger) were forcefully taken from the comforts of their own homes and families due to Government policies. As a result, the children and their communities were left in trauma to mourn their losses - many of whom are still suffering today. The initial aim was to break off the long chain of the imperative cultural, spiritual and family ties in order to shorten the bloodlines.
The policy of Assimilation was what started it all. It revolved around the view of white superiority and black inferiority and suggested that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of full blood would eventually ‘die out’ naturally. This policy stated that children of Indigenous heritage and ‘half-castes’ (a deprecatory term for people of both Aboriginal and white parentage) should be taken and placed into white communities.
In their adoptive families, the children were pressed to embrace the white culture and forget about their own. Many had their names changed and it was forbidden for the children to speak their traditional languages. Unfortunately, a great number of children weren’t as ‘lucky’ and were sent to institutions. No matter where a child was placed, there were always individuals who were bound to experience physiological, physical and sexual exploitation. Feelings of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and suicide were widespread amount the Stolen Generation. This can only be assumed to be caused by mistreatment, as well as the fact that in some cases, children were told that their biological parents had either given them up or had died. As they grew up, they were unable to find their families and were deliberately sent away from their homelands.
Ruth, an Aborigine, was separated from her mother at the age of 4 and said that ‘once you were taken from your parents, you had no more connection with them.”
In the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, the youth are sacred ‘kinship systems’ as they keep the community alive and well bonded, and so, their families were confronted with such torture. As natural, a large number of parents were unable to surpass the grief of having their child taken away from them - in which many turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism.
You would think that the goal to introduce these children with the ‘white lifestyle’ would mean that they were treated with some sort of respect. This is incorrect. Because of the colour of their skin, they were treated less than a human being. Continuing on, in these institutions, the living conditions were unsuitable. Punishments were common occurrences and they were left sometimes to starve and shiver. On top of oppression, the stolen generation were supplied with the bare minimum of education, as well as expected to undergo tiring work such as manual labourers and domestic servants.
As a consequence of this particular period in time, intergenerational transfers of knowledge regarding their culture was lost.
CRUELTY IN TODAY'S AGE
This needs to end, and it needs to end now...
Unfortunately, the violence hasn’t stopped there. Even after hundreds of years of injustice, one would think that we’d all be living in peace, hand in hand. Of course, times are a lot better than before, however, there are still situations where Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are being treated wrongfully - and this needs to stop now.
But the question is... why do we still see acts if discrimination and inequality today?
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
One of the most shocking leading factors is that people are unaware of the history behind the colonisation of Australia and the negative effects it took upon the Indigenous people. Some people may have a brief understanding of the events that occurred, but don’t fully understand how Aborigines were disregarded and treated with such disrespect. For some people, it’s quite a confronting truth to have to face, and so, neglect the past as if it had never happened.
A survey conducted showed that:
1 in 5 Australians would move away if an Indigenous person sat beside them
1 in 10 Australians would joke about them
1 in 10 would not hire an Aborigine for a job.
BIASED STEREOTYPES
How do you define the term ‘stereotype’? There are many different interpretations of this word…
‘A generalisation of first impressions’
‘A simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group’.
The sad thing is that stereotypes can often be based on lies and are sometimes inaccurate or unfinished.
And in the end, it only leads to one thing.
Racism.
In today’s society, Aboriginals are faced with false accusations of many different stereotypes. Some include that all Indigenous people are:
drunks
uneducated
treated too easily by the police and government
dark-skinned
leeches that live off of other people's successes
are 'the problem'
In the same survey used previously, statistics showed that...
More than 1 in 3 Australians consider Aboriginals to be lazy
Almost 1 in 3 Australians think that Aboriginals should behave more like 'Australians'
1 in 5 Australians believe that derogatory terms used to describe Aboriginals aren't that racist