Australian Aborigines and Institutional Racism

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Australian Aborigines and Institutional Racism
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Australian Aborigines and Institutional Racism

• Aborigines arrive in Australia 40-60,000 years
  ago
• 1788. Britain establishes prison colony in Sydney
• British possession justified on the basis of
  terra nullius (no mans land)
• Contact with European civilization brings
  disease, death through war, massacres, cultural
  disintegration

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Australian Aborigines and Institutional Racism

• 19th Century. Aborigines seen by European racial
  theory as subhuman destined to die out
• 20th Century. Assimilation policy Aboriginal
  culture deemed inferior to white culture
• Aborigines must assimilate. Adopt white
  cultural and social practices

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Australian Aborigines and Institutional Racism

• Aborigines placed in reservations controlled by
  white administrators
• All aspects of life work, marriage, movement,
  social and cultural practices - controlled by
  white administrators
• Aboriginal children (particularly half-castes)
  taken from their parents and tribes
• The stolen children educated to become farm
  labourers and domestic servants

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Aboriginal resistance

• Wars and resistance against the invaders
• Maintenance of culture despite suppression
• Formation of Aboriginal organizations to fight
  for rights

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Aboriginal Resistance

• Fight for citizenship (achieved in 1967)
• Strikes by Aboriginal workers in big cattle farms
• Agitation for land rights High Court of Australia
  overturns terra nullius in the Mabo and Wik
  cases in the 1990s

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Aboriginal Resistance

• Agitation for recognition of the stolen
  children. Acknowledged in the Bringing them
  back home report
• Official apology by the Rudd government

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Cathy Freeman, 2000 Olympic Games Gold Medallist
in Sydney, shows the Aboriginal Flag
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But

• Aborigines still have
• The highest death rate of all Australians
• The highest infant mortality rate
• The lowest income
• The worst health
• The highest imprisonment rate