Australian media has always been a prevalent force associated with Indigenous Australians. Ever since the mass spread of information through media was invented, it has been used as both a negative and positive way to promote certain agendas. Social media is also a mechanism that is changing the way Indigenous Australians interact and use media, and has had an important impact on Indigenous Peoples around the world. Despite many changes for the better in regards to how the media is used to…
The Indigenous people whose traditional lands are the area of Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory are The Ngunnawal people (alternatively Ngunnawal tribe). First encountered by European settlers in the 1820s, the Ngunnawal people lived in an area roughly bounded by what are now the towns of Queanbeyan, Boorowa and Goulburn. The meaning of Ngunnawal is we, the people, or us and today’s spelling came from the settlers, the original spelling was Ngoonawal (rhyming with soon). The region…
Worldview and Privilege Essay The film The Secret River (2015) provides an insightful outlook and perspective on privilege, power, communication difficulties, and differing worldviews. The film provides a view on privilege and power through the depiction of Settlers and Indigenous custodians of Australia. It offers an intuitive outlook on land ownership, highlighting the varying attitudes and relationships each group has with the land and the concept of racial superiority. Differing cultures…
Sally’s Story Sally’s Story illustrates the life of an average Aboriginal family in Australia. The southern British Commonwealth during that period of time was a far cry from its colonial past, where Aborigines were singled out for persecution. Yet, life for members of the Aboriginal population remains to be a struggle in a subtle but present manner. Indigenous Australians faced difficulties from greater economic hardships caused by poverty and unemployment to social stigma and discrimination,…
The title for my exhibition is The Past and Present: Aboriginal Identity. My curatorial theme will explore the lives of the Aboriginal people from the past and present. Many of the artists chosen for the exhibition bring to light, and focus on the Stolen Generation in their works. This will be the past part of the exhibition. The present part of the exhibition will focus on how the Aborigines have dealt with those effects of the Stolen Generations while working to fit in with white communities…
The 1997 Bringing Them Home National Inquiry discusses how the Australian Government has used regulations and policies to force Indigenous children away from their families. This essay will discuss how racism in Australia has impacted the Indigenous Community. It will discuss how the Indigenous Community have been subjected to the Social Darwinist theory, the ‘constructions of race’, Assimilation policies, the Child Removal policies and ‘institutional racism’. The 1997 Bringing Them Home…
Subject Matter: The poem is a scenario about the inevitability of restlessness in the life of a transient-like family. This event is an Australian phenomenon, originated from shearers and rouseabouts (unskilled labourers, or odd jobbers) during the early colonial times. The family is constantly moving from place to place. A lot of Australian families went through similar situations during the time of economic hardship, including Bruce Dawe. The author of this poem that was written in 1999. The…
Unfortunately the statistics in this domain too paint a grim picture. Results indicate that ‘Indigenous Australians have considerably lower numeracy and literacy levels than the non-Indigenous population, significantly higher school absenteeism rates, and lower school completion outcomes’ (Bandias et al., 2013, cited in Cuervo et al., 2015, p.8). Additionally, the situation in regional and remote communities is even worse. On the one hand there is a general decline in the quality of education in…
The fact that Indigenous Australians have experienced maltreatment and a deprivation of their civil liberties for generations is well-documented. In discussing the ways in which Aboriginal people and their white supporters promoted Civil Rights and Indigenous Rights in Australia from the late 1950s through to 1972, this essay will provide a representative rather than comprehensive treatment. It will begin with a brief overview of the state of affairs leading up to the late 1950s. The notion of…
In George Orwell's 1984, a Novel about a totalitarian society, Oceania, that limits what citizens are allowed think, the society’s Government, Ingsoc, standing for English Socialism, rewrites history, replacing it with lies to maintain a good image. Oceania maintains itself through 3 principles, one being IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH; this relating to the way Ingsoc prevents citizens from thinking deeply, shielding them from the outside world, taking control of records, memories, and history, and even…