Indigenous Australians

land. They drove out the indigenous people and occupied their land. As it commonly happens with imperialist desires to the colonies, occupying, erasing and assimilating indigenous people’s nationality also took place in Australia. The Aborigines Act of 1905 authorized the removal of the indigenous children, and they were removed from their families and communities then placed in white Australian’s society. With an excuse of civilizing, baptizing, or protecting indigenous…

For over 200 years, Indigenous Australians have been subject to racial discrimination. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to Indigenous Australians was meant to be a stepping stone towards reconciliation. Rudd’s apology has since become part of Australia’s history, however, not everybody accepted the apology, while improvement of Indigenous livelihoods is debateable. This essay will argue that Kevin Rudd’s speech positively affected the livelihoods of Indigenous people. In 2008, on the…

Indigenous Australians are grossly over-represented in the criminal justice system. However, the true extent of this over-representation differs between individual areas. Despite indigenous Australians only making up two per cent of the population, they accounted for over twenty seven per cent of the total prison population in 2014 (ABS). This high rate of imprisonment is not due to indigenous people being more likely to commit crime than other Australians, but rather indigenous Australians are…

Indigenous Australians are significantly disadvantaged in modern Australian society. It exists because white Australian public believe that Australia is a post-racial society and claim to be anti-discrimination while ignoring increased incarceration rates, deaths in custody, and lasting effects from political wrongs committed against indigenous Australians. The sociological imagination is a concept used to see how situations in society occur and play out based on how people differ in terms of…

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…

influence, where they were assimilated into the ‘white society’ and sent to mission stations (Clay, 2002). These horrendous events left a legacy of families in ordeal, which continues to affect Indigenous Australian communities. This essentially led to an uprising in mental health disorders amongst Indigenous Australians, such as depression initiating…

Thancoupie World: Thancoupie is an Indigenous Australian artist with a strong Thanaquith background. Born in the late 1930’s the world in which she spent her childhood was rich in traditional customs. One of these customs was to use clay for ceremonial purposes. When Thancoupie was a young girl she knew that clay was sacred, Thancoupie said that where she grew up, ‘The men used to keep the clay in a special storehouse and we kids were not allowed to touch it’. The artist goes by her totemic name…

Since the dawn of Australian cinema our Indigenous culture has been in the spotlight. However, it has not always been as positive as we see in today’s film, originally, the indigenous were depicted as evil, savage and primitive sub human animals that would hinder the development of Australia early in its “white life”. One director who has really shaped the way the indigenous Australians have been viewed in film today is Rolf de Heere, born in the Netherlands in 1951 who moved to Sydney when he…

Indigenous over-representation in the criminal justice system has been the focus of numerous reports, discussions and research projects since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (Wahlquist, 2016). Revealing unacceptably high Indigenous imprisonment rates, the data is grim, indicating that even though comprising less than 3% of the population, Indigenous people represent almost 33% of the prison population, and over 50% of all young people in detention (Australian…

Australian indigenous people lived on this land for up to 60,000 years before Europe discovered the country and claimed settlement. The ingenious people lived their own lives, spoke their own language and had their own lifestyle. They believed they belonged to the land. They lived semi nomadic lifestyles traveling seasonally letting their previous land to re-flourish. This all changed in 1788 when the British claimed settlement. Australian indigenous people could no longer live the way they knew…