Government Policies

Federation in 1901,
the Constitution made only two references Aboriginal People

Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census
Section 51 (Part 26) gave power over Aborigines to the States

Aboriginal people were wards of the state policies and practices in Australian society
at the time including segregated denying people of their basic rights of freedom ,access to education, maintaining inequality in work and pay . Policies were developed by the European Australians

The Aborigines Act of 1940 introduces a new policy of "assimilation". of Aboriginal people
"The policy of assimilation means that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines are expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, as other Australians. " http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/other/IndigLRes/rciadic/national/vol2/278.html?query=~%20assimilation

In 1965 The Federal Government introduced an integration policy for Aborigines. Charles Perkins The "Freedom Ride", tours rural NSW in a bid to highlight segregation and racism in country areas.

In 1967 The majority of the Australian population 91% voted to include Aboriginal people in the census and have the right to vote in their own country

The NSW Land Rights Act 1983 . acknowledged the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land The NSWALC provides a detailed history and provides current information regarding the the 120 Local Aboriginal Land Councils in NSW and 13 Regional Land Councils.
http://www.alc.org.au/

1869 - 1969 The Stolen Generation is the term used to describe the removal and separation of Aboriginal children from their famlies and communities by the state authorities. Children were place in homes and institutions, Aboriginal languages, culture and customs were also lost to many of these children as they were taught only western lifestyle and learning the European Australians at the time believing children would be given a better life and education

In April 1997 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission released
Bringing them home. which was a national inquiry reporting on the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families
"The report concluded among other things that "Indigenous families and communities have endured gross violations of their human rights. These violations continue to affect Indigenous people's daily lives. They were an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out Indigenous families, communities and cultures, vital to the precious and inalienable heritage of Australia".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Them_Home#Report_summary

Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation was founded around 1980 to assist all Aboriginal people who have been fostered, adopted or raised in institutions to find their way home.
http://www.linkupnsw.org.au/

Right side of the Page Traditional Aboriginal Cultural Values

On the right side of this blogger page

I have placed information and links to sites that support Understanding of Aboriginal peoples Dreaming, The creation stories that are integral to aboriginal culture,customs and beliefs of the past and now. I have explored many sites and resources available on the Internet including examples of Aboriginal peoples navigation and stories in the constelations in the stars : The EMU in the Sky :

Dust Echos are fascinating animated stories with narration that tell twelve different Dreaming stories

Safe Koori Kids’ website at www.thegeorgeinstitute.org/safekoorikids

"Injury is a leading cause of Indigenous mortality in Australia, but little is known about the impact of injury on indigenous children, particularly those living in urban areas," . Students explore what can be done to eliminate or reduce the risk of harm At The ‘Safe Koori Kids’ website www.thegeorgeinstitute.org/safekoorikids,

Students of Briar Rd Public School at Airds in Sydney’s South West launched the new education program ‘Safe Koori Kids’ is used to educate children and raise community awareness of safety and the importance of preventing injuries to children.

Students in years five and six participated in school and community safety activities as part of the program, including helping to develop a safety website.

Injury experts at The George Institute for International Health and Yooroang Garang School of Indigenous Health Studies at The University of Sydney have worked closely with local Aboriginal community organisations in South West Sydney and Campbelltown City Council to develop this innovative approach to address the risk of injury to youths and children in the area.

NSW State Plan

Greater Western Sydney Region: The region has the highest number of Aboriginal people of any region in Australia outside of the Northern Territory.

Greater Western Sydney covers nearly 9,000 square kilometres and encompasses 14 diverse local government areas: Auburn, Bankstown, Baulkham Hills, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Camden, Campbelltown, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, Holroyd, Liverpool, Parramatta, Penrith and Wollondilly. The population stands at 1.85 million (June 2005) and is the fastest growing in Australia. Predictions for population growth to 2026 show an increase to 2.2 million.
The region is the most culturally diverse area in Australia. Fairfield for example, attracts a significant portion of newly arriving migrants with residents speaking over 70 different languages.

http://www.nsw.gov.au/stateplan/index.aspx?id=a213790d-dec2-4141-a3f7-1c37d661250e Date Modified:05-Jun-2007

The Honerable Paul keating : Redfern Speech

Keating's Redfern Address voted an unforgettable speech
ABC Radio National recently ran a survey to discover the public speeches that Australians regard as unforgettable. Listeners were asked to nominate their favourite speeches. To qualify for inclusion in the survey, the speech must have been given in a public arena in Australia or overseas. It could be on any subject. Speeches may have been heard or read and can come from any time, from the distant past to the present.
The outcome of the vote was announced on 2 April 2007 at the Eugene Goosens Hall in Sydney. Significantly for Australian and Indigenous history, Paul Keating's address at Redfern Park, delivered on 10 December 1992, was voted number three. (Top of the list was Martin Luther King's "I have a dream", and second was the Sermon on the Mount.) The speech by the then prime minister launched Australia’s participation in the United Nations’ International Year of the World’s Indigenous People, which had been proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly for 1993. http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani/news/KeatingsRedfernAddressanunforgettablespeech.htm

The Honerable Paul Keating:
Redfern Speech (Year for the world's Indigenous People) - 10 December 1992


Ladies and gentlemenI am very pleased to be here today at the launch of Australia's celebration of the 1993 International Year of the World's Indigenous People.It will be a year of great significance for AustraliaIt comes at a time when we have committed ourselves to succeeding in the test which so far we have always failed.Because, in truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we would like to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy, that we are what we should be - truly the land of the fair go and the better chance. There is no more basic test of how seriously we mean these things. It is a test of our self-knowledge.Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history. How well we recognise the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, it cannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia.How well we know what Aboriginal Australians know about Australia. Redfern is a good place to contemplate these things. Just a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed, in too many ways it tells us that their failure to bring much more than devastation and demoralisation to Aboriginal Australia continues to be our failure.More I think than most Australians recognise, the plight of Aboriginal Australians affects us all.In Redfern it might be tempting to think that the reality Aboriginal Australians face is somehow contained here, and that the rest of us are insulated from it.But of course, while all the dilemmas may exist here, they are far from contained.We know the same dilemmas and more are faced all over Australia.That is perhaps the point of this Year of the World's Indigenous People: to bring the dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are part of us, and that we cannot give indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our own most deeply held values, much of our own identity - and our own humanity. Nowhere in the world, I would venture, is the message more stark than it is in Australia.We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not.There should be no mistake about this - our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world.However intractable the problems seem, we cannot resign ourselves to failure - any more than we can hide behind the contemporary version of Social Darwinism which says that to reach back for the poor and dispossessed is to risk being dragged down.That seems to me not only morally indefensible, but bad history.We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us.Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia?Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkably harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians - the people to whom the most injustice has been done.And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.It begins, I think, with that act of recognitionRecognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.We brought the diseases. The alcohol.We committed the murders.We took the children from their mothers.We practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and our prejudice.And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.If we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year.The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showed with devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice.In the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.For all this, I do not believe that the Report should fill us with guilt. Down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the responses we need.Guilt is not a very constructive emotion.I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit.All of us.Perhaps when we recognise what we have in common we will see the things which must be done - the practical things.There is something of this in the creation of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.The Council's mission is to forge a new partnership built on justice and equity and an appreciation of the heritage of Australia's indigenous people.In the abstract those terms are meaningless. We have to give meaning to "justice" and "equity" - and, as I have said several times this year, we will only give them meaning when we commit ourselves to achieving concrete results.If we improve the living conditions in one town, they will improve in another. And another.If we raise the standard of health by twenty per cent one year, it will be raised more the next.If we open one door others will follow.When we see improvement, when we see more dignity, more confidence, more happiness - we will know we are going to win.We need these practical building blocks of change.The Mabo Judgement should be seen as one of these.By doing away with the bizarre conceit that this continent had no owners prior to the settlement of Europeans, Mabo establishes a fundamental truth and lays the basis for justice.It will be much easier to work from that basis than has ever been the case in the past.For that reason alone we should ignore the isolated outbreaks of hysteria and hostility of the past few months.Mabo is an historic decision - we can make it an historic turning point, the basis of a new relationship between indigenous and non-Aboriginal Australians.The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians.There is everything to gain.Even the unhappy past speaks for this.Where Aboriginal Australians have been included in the life of Australia they have made remarkable contributions.Economic contributions, particularly in the pastoral and agricultural industry.They are there in the frontier and exploration history of Australia.They are there in the wars.In sport to an extraordinary degree.In literature and art and music.In all these things they have shaped our knowledge of this continent and of ourselves. They have shaped our identity. They are there in the Australian legend.We should never forget - they have helped build this nation.And if we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we will forge a new partnership.As I said, it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves dispossessed of land we had lived on for fifty thousand years - and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours.Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless.Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without a fight.Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books.Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice.Imagine if our spiritual life was denied and ridiculed.Imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it.It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice we can imagine its opposite.And we can have justice.I say that for two reasons:I say it because I believe that the great things about Australian social democracy reflect a fundamental belief in justice.And I say it because in so many other areas we have proved our capacity over the years to go on extending the realms of participation, opportunity and care.Just as Australians living in the relatively narrow and insular Australia of the 1960s imagined a culturally diverse, worldly and open Australia, and in a generation turned the idea into reality, so we can turn the goals of reconciliation into reality.There are very good signs that the process has begun.The creation of the Reconciliation Council is evidence itself.The establishment of the ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission - is also evidence.The Council is the product of imagination and good will.ATSIC emerges from the vision of indigenous self-determination and self-management. The vision has already become the reality of almost 800 elected Aboriginal Regional Councillors and Commissioners determining priorities and developing their own programs.All over Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are taking charge of their own lives.And assistance with the problems which chronically beset them is at last being made available in ways developed by the communities themselves.If these things offer hope, so does the fact that this generation of Australians is better informed about Aboriginal culture and achievement, and about the injustice that has been done, than any generation before.We are beginning to more generally appreciate the depth and the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.From their music and art and dance we are beginning to recognise how much richer our national life and identity will be for the participation of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.We are beginning to learn what the indigenous people have known for many thousands of years - how to live with our physical environment.Ever so gradually we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to recognise the wisdom contained in their epic story.I think we are beginning to see how much we owe the indigenous Australians and how much we have lost by living so apart.I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view.It can't be too hard. Someone imagined this event today, and it is now a marvellous reality and a great reason for hope.There is one thing today we cannot imagine.We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of disposession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation.We cannot imagine that.We cannot imagine that we will fail.And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won't.I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.Thank you http://www.keating.org.au/main.cfm