The Impact Of Assimilation On Australian Indigenous Health

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Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (AIH 2015) reported that Indigenous Australians account for around 3 percent of the total Australian population. Compared to the past decade, the number of Indigenous people has increased, but the life expectancy of Aborigines is 10 years shorter than non-Indigenous Australian. A group of diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, kidney diseases, respiratory and eye health and other factors negatively affect Indigenous Australians today. A higher proportion of Aboriginal people were reported as suffering from diseases than non-aboriginal people especially, diabetes and kidney health. Indigenous people presented to hospitals 10 times more frequently than other Australians. As well as this, …show more content…
When Europeans came to Australia, they brought with them some epidemic diseases, such as smallpox, measles, influenza, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, venereal syphilis and gonorrhea, which were common in Europe in the 18th century. With the introduction of illness to Indigenous people, the Aboriginal society became depopulated and a number of Indigenous people died, because they did not have an immune system which could cope with diseases they had never experienced. While Europeans explored across the new land, the impact of introduced diseases affected to health of Aboriginal Australians (AIH 2015).

The Policy of Assimilation (1961) was applied to Aboriginals until the 1960s. The intent of the policy was to merge Aboriginal Australians into the same manner of living as other Australians, as individual members of the Australian community. This policy meant that the Australian government assumed that Aboriginals would enjoy such assimilation. Therefore, the government forced them to settle down in a specific place that was not a traditional Aboriginal way to live. Aboriginal people used to move around the land from time to
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Aboriginal Australians have low levels of education compared to non-Aboriginal Australians. Malin and Maidment (2003) reported participation percentages between different education levels for Aboriginal Australians over many decades. In 1967, 14% of young Aboriginal children attended primary schools, while only 2% of Aboriginal teenagers attended secondary schools. Further education was even less with 00.7% for universities and 0.09% for TAFE programs. In 2001, the education rate has increased overall, but it did not indicate that most Aboriginal children were provided a high quality of education, this is because only 1.5% and 14% of Aboriginals attended higher education, such as Universities and TAFEs. There is still a considerable gap between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal

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