Australia’s first peoples are the oldest living civilization in the world. The continent’s history began about 65,000 years ago, when humans populated Australia in the first migrations out of Africa. These first populations were nomadic hunter-gatherers with a special connection to the earth, which was reflected in their religious beliefs.
COLONISATION
In 1788, a British fleet sailed into what today is Sydney Harbour to start a penal colony. Shortly after their arrival, disease carried by the Europeans (probably smallpox) devastated the native tribes that lived in the area. Other diseases followed, decimating the indigenous populations, whose immune systems were unaccustomed to them, and unable to adapt.
EXPROPRIATION
Another dramatic consequence of European arrival was the expropriation of land. The English settlers assumed that because the indigenous people were nomads without a concept of land ownership, they had the right to drive them out of the areas where they usually cultivated the land or hunted animals. Aboriginal people found themselves unable to survive.
ASSIMILATION
First Peoples were offered no place in the economy or society of the colonists. In fact, the disappearance of Aboriginal people in southeast Australia was so rapid that the belief arose that all would soon die out by a process of ‘natural elimination’. In the late 1920s and early 1930s they were separated from society and put into reserves. Later there were attempts to assimilate them into what was assumed to be the superior white culture.
atonement
Today many Australians acknowledge the damage caused to the First Peoples. In recent years, small symbolic acts have been carried out in an attempt to apologise for colonialist cruelty. Among these was the establishment of a national Atonement Day on May 26, and the decision to change the national anthem to include a reference to the Australian First Peoples. However, there is still much work to be done.
THE STOLEN GENERATION
From 1915 to 1970 the Australian government followed a state policy called ‘assimilation’, which basically consisted of kidnapping Aboriginal children (predominantly those with lighter skin) to be raised by white families. These families would be encouraged to erase all vestige of the children’s original culture and turn them into Westerners. In many cases, these kids never saw their real parents again, and were taught to systematically devalue their own indigenous identities. Timothy Gray is an Aboriginal cultural guide in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Gray was separated from his mother and siblings when he was even too young to be put up for adoption. He first met his real mother in his thirties and was eventually able to get in touch with one of his siblings. He was told that other siblings had died or were in prison. Speak Up met with Gray. We began by asking him how it was to be raised by a family unsympathetic to the aboriginal culture.
Timothy Gray (Australian accent): When I was a kid I went to the school I was the only aboriginal kid in the whole school, but the kids there were pretty cool, they knew I was aboriginal but they were pretty nice. But when I went to high school that’s when I started being called names, derogatory names like ‘coon’ or ‘abo’ or ‘boong’. So I felt it a little bit there, I felt it a little at home, ‘cause I was raised by non-indigenous parents, and my foster father, he was very ignorant, probably borderline racist, so I copped it a little bit there. And when I met my original family later in life, because of my fair skin, a lot of the darker Aboriginal people would hassle me because I looked white.
australian prisons
Although Australia’s First Peoples only represent 3 per cent of the population, Aboriginal people make up an incredible 27.4 per cent of the prison population. Gray explains why.
Timothy Gray: Two words: systemic racism, not taking away from the fact that there are people who are in prison for crimes, I definitely wouldn’t say that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people get locked up for nothing. But if you look at the statistics and you look at the percentage of the population that we are —2.9, almost 3 per cent— it doesn’t add up, the incarceration rates compared to our population rate. So I’ll give you an example: so let’s say an Aboriginal man and a white man walk into the courtroom, they’ve both stolen a Mars bar, you know, a chocolate bar. The aboriginal man might get time for it —might get locked up for it — whereas the white man will not. Things like that. And the only reason that can justify that is the attitude of the courts, the attitude of the judges, the attitude of the police, the prosecutors, the lawyers. Just judging by the statistics and the percentages, it must be systemic racism. What else could it be?
LIMITED INTEGRATION
So, is the Australian state now integrating Aboriginal culture?
Timothy Gray: There’s still a hugepresence of colonialism in Australia, and I think bringing Aboriginal culture and Torres Strait Islander culture into the schools, the young generation coming up will be less ignorant, they’ll be less racist because they’ll have more of an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. From 1788, when the British arrived, the colonists tried to wipe out Aboriginal culture, it’s been 230-plus years. Fast forwardto now, I’d say we have more representation, the school curriculums are starting to encourage aboriginal studies more. Aboriginal studies have been around for a while, but more so in universities or colleges, now it’s more entrenched into primary schooling, so the younger kids, and it’s definitely represented in the arts, like music, painting... and also in sports. So it’s getting better.
NEW ZEALAND MODEL
However, in comparison to New Zealand there is still much to be done, says Gray.
Timothy Gray: New Zealand, it’s a lot smaller, and there are not as many tribes, but there’s still a diversity in amongst those tribes. And I think what the New Zealand governments have done in the last twenty or thirty years have really tried to reconcile with the Maori and really gone out of their way to add the Maori culture into their lives, because I meet a lot of white New Zealanders who can speak Maori! And they do that through school and things like that. The New Zealand model of connecting culture could be a good case study for the Australian governments to realise. But I think they are starting to do it but there’s a long way to go, Australia is way behind anything that New Zealand has at the moment, as far as that goes.