During early settlement of Australia, Indigenous children were removed from their families to be conditioned to European values and work ethic to eventually take up positions in the service of “colonial settlers” (HREOC, 1997, pp.22). Despite being an acknowledged and engrained practice in Australia for a number of years before formal government acts legalising the removal of children, the Stolen Generations is a term coined to encompass those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families and communities as mandated by government policy between 1911 and 1969 (HREOC, 1997, pp.22). In an attempt to ‘merge’ the Indigenous population with the non-Iindigenous community, it was mandated that children should be removed from their families so as to lose their ‘Aboriginal identity’ (HREOC, 1997, pp.25). This policy was soon aimed towards ‘assimilation’ as opposed to ‘merging’; the major difference existing in the idea that all Indigenous people should live, work and be educated alongside ‘Whites’ (HREOC, 1997, pp.26). However, by the 1960s it was clear that the policy had failed to achieve its goal of forced integration; Indigenous people refused to “surrender their lifestyle and
Historically Institutional racism plays a major role in hindering the progress of Indigenous people. Institutional racism is addressed in the paper as a key factor in the social disadvantage and consecutive high unemployment rate amongst Indigenous Australians. Australia is privy to a history of wrongdoing against its Indigenous community. Andrew Armitage writes of the British invasion in 1788; ‘the land needed for the colony was obtained by an act of dispossession, assisted in British law by the convenient assumption that Australia was terra nullius (vacant, unoccupied land)’. The invasion was the cause of the ‘land wars’ that ensued and resulted in the massacre and decimation of the Aboriginal people (Armitage, 1995, p. 17).
border of those attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico without authorization from the Federal government of the United States. The number of deaths has steadily increased since the middle 1990s with exposure (including heat stroke, dehydration, and hyperthermia) being the leading cause. According to the United States Border Patrol, 1,954 people died crossing the U.S–Mexico border between the years 1998-2004. In the fiscal year ending September 29, 2004, 460 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005, more than 500 died across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
In 1837, this practice was made official with the appointment by the British Select Committee of “Protectors of Aboriginies” in Australia. In 1869 Indigenous child removal legislation was put in place in all states and territories, giving the “Protectors” the power to remove children, and in 1937 assimilation was adopted as the official national Indigenous affairs policy. It was not until 1969 that Indigenous child removal legislation was removed. Even if past governments had good, albeit ethnocentric intentions, the effects of these policies have been devastating, and this dark and disturbing history of racism and assimilation still haunts many Aboriginal communities
In response to the prevalence of sexual violence in the U.S., Frank Baird created what is now the national movement, Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, the International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault and Gender Violence, in 2001. Walk a Mile in Her Shoes gathers men in communities around the nation and world to walk for one mile in high-heeled shoes to protest sexual violence against women and to raise funds for rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, according to the organization’s website. Walk a Mile in Her Shoes was hosted on Temple’s University main campus on March 22, 2012. Prior to the event, there were 19 instances of reported forcible rape on Main Campus and in non-campus, public area and on-campus student housing areas between 2008 and 2010, according to Campus Safety Services. Kate Schaffer, program coordinator for alcohol and other drugs, interpersonal violence and mental health in the Health Education and Awareness Resource Team, has been instrumental in organizing the event.
Whilst racist attitudes generally resided, what was left was structural racism, meaning the effects of having had such discriminatory legislation, practices and policies to begin, set Aboriginals off on an unequal ‘playing field’ to Non-Indigenous counterparts in many aspects of life. The over-representation of Aboriginals in the criminal justice system can be attributed to structural-racism. In Western Australia, whilst only accounting for 3% of the state’s population, Aboriginals account for a disturbing 40% of the gaol population (Morgan N & Motteram J, Aboriginal People and Justice Services: Plans, programs and delivery, LRCWA, Project No 94, Background Paper No 7 (December 2004) 1, 17). According to the Crime and Justice Statistics for Western Australia: 2003 (Perth: Crime Research) it was recorded that Aboriginal people were eight times more likely than non-Aboriginal people to be victims of violence. Aboriginal women and children are much more likely to be the victims of violence and abuse than non-Indigenous counterparts.
Changes to Asylum Seeker Policies and Capacity to Change During the early 1990s, asylum seekers from Cambodia began to arrive in Australia in large numbers. In response, the government of Paul Keating instituted a policy known as mandatory detention aimed at deterring refugees. Under mandatory detention, anyone who enters the Australian migration zone without a visa is placed in a holding facility while security and health checks are performed. Additionally, the validity of the person's claim to asylum is assessed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Following the Tampa Affair, the Commonwealth Migration Act (1958) was amended by Howard's government in September 2001.
Australia is the nation built on the principles of freedom and equality for everybody, but this is not true for Aboriginal people – the first owners of this land. From 1909 to 1969, the Australian government implemented the policy that forced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to leave their parents’ arms in order to assimilate these children and declared that they were adequately protected and given a better life (Reconciliaction, 2007). The statistics of the Bringing Them Home report suggests that there were about one-tenth and one-third of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken away from their families (Bringing Them Home, 1997, p. 31). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children separated from their families were called the “stolen generations” (Australia Human Rights Commission, 2012). These children had to live in poor conditions, poor quality and received a strange
In comparison around 50,000 people over-stayed their visa last year alone, 298,800 came with a time limited visa and 171,320 came as migrants with permanent residency. The fact is Australia only accepts 0.6% of the world’s refugees and at the current rate of refugee arrivals it would take 20 years to fill the MCG. Most of the people that seek asylum in Australia are from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and China. Raj, a Sri Lankan Tamil man fled his home in Trincomalee in eastern Sri Lanka because he says ‘the island is a living hell for the 3.8 million Tamils who live there’. ''The situation in Sri Lanka is still dangerous.
In the context of Australian Aboriginal studies, the importance of historic, cultural, and political investigation in schools is often over-generalized, marginalized, or completely overlooked for non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal students alike. Because of the historically Westernized viewpoint, education on Aboriginal topics has been sparse and inaccurate, spreading long-standing racist ideologies and reinforcing negative cultural connotations instead of explaining the actuality of the Aboriginal people. Throughout this paper, examples will be given of these oversights in the educational system and provide details into the realities of the Aboriginal context in Australia, as well as positioning the idea of progressive education and the importance