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Essay on Aborigines
Prior to the colonization of Australia by the British in the late 1600's, large group of natives called Aborigines lived there. They received the name Aborigine due to the translation of the word "the people who were here from the beginning". The Australian Aborigines occupied the entire Australian continent, which included the large island of Tasmania. By the time the British arrived, the Aborigines established a culture to include Art, multiple languages, social structure, and religious and spiritual ideas.
For Aborigines Australia was a marginally better place in which to live in. At the turn of the century, the Australian state governments neither had a uniform nor clear Aboriginal policy. Treatment of Aborigines was consequently decided by society’s individual attitudes, not law. While many people (white) were aggressive towards Aborigines till well past 1930, a general more sympathetic attitude towards them started to slightly ease the strong oppression they were shackled by. As the social stance towards aborigines improved so did the political policy, leading to a small improvement in (or the minor establishment of) Aboriginal economy, though in practise their actual situation had changed little by 1945.
Colonization ended traditional life for Aborigines and started a period of white degradation, leading to their severely oppressed situation in 1900. Control over all Australian land, besides the very remote areas, had been lost. Aborigines were not given the chance to determine their own future and even their language was dying out. “Few whites took the trouble to learn anything about Aboriginal life; many whites regarded Aborigines as oddities or nuisances.” To add injury to insult, aborigines were often the victims or violent racial crimes and discrimination .
Asked to make a report to the Western Australian Government in 1905, Dr W.E. Roth revealed “a most brutal and outrageous state of affairs” in the northern part of the state......
