Aboriginal Rights in Australia: Segregation, Forced Settlements and Assimilation Policies to Eliminate Culture
By simple deduction, a 5,752 reduction of the aboriginal population every year for the first 113 years of colonization is approximately 480 people a month up to 1901. The birth rate per month for the 115 years after 1901 was only 506 people per month due to policies by the Australian state discussed within this essay.
European law and government have replaced indigenous forms, which is a social exclusion on an institutional level. National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children had an approximate figure of possibly 50,000 indigenous children taken from 1788 and 1997, where they were put fostered or institutionalized. The National inquiry also was tasked with examining the policies and events that occurred to make separation happen, current laws that need to change, and ways to compensate discussed. As high as one in three aboriginal children could have been taken from 1910 to 1970 and may have continued past the 1970s. The legacy of child removal is the over-representation of Aboriginals in child protection. The abuse rate is at multiple times non-indigenous rates. The Bringing Them Home report agrees with the assessment that forced removal created a disproportional number of aboriginals in the child welfare system. A National inquiry recommendation was that indigenous communities should be consulted concerning teaching this history to social work undergraduates and social workers working with aboriginal children. An Aboriginal should be the one to conduct the teaching if possible. More than 150 years of forced removal leave a legacy of disadvantages, including mental health, education, and homelessness. The self-determination policy enacted in 1972 was aimed at promoting the indigenous communities by giving them decision-making power over their future at an institutional level such as through the Aboriginal housing scheme, medical service, and Legal Aid the policy also created The Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
In 1975, the self-management policy was created to manage local projects for indigenous communities. However, in reality, the type of project was not open to change by aboriginal people. In 1976, indigenous land rights legislation was created in most states, including the Northern Territory. However, the range of Aboriginal land control varied widely depending on the state. The Australian judicial system and parliament have not reached a legal justification for its land. Rollback of the limited progress made in the 1970s was due to the Liberal party in 1996, led by John Howard. The collective reconciliation movement was abandoned, self-determination was abolished, and there was the 2005 abolition of The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The Native Title Amendments Act was introduced in 1998. It added complexity to property law, which negatively affects other tenure systems. Native title issues arise from many property law cases remaining unresolved due to the complexity. Professional training and guidelines are recommended to resolve these issues. The Howard government was also responsible for cutting indigenous programs significantly. Prime Minister Howard did not apologize for Stolen Generations observing that all the good achieved for Aboriginals is more significant than the bad. However, they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, unemployment rates are multiple times non-aboriginal rates. Lower homeownership, a mortality gap, higher exclusion from internet access, and a lower qualification rate.
By 2008, Prime Minister Rudd made a public apology for the Stolen Generations. However, Northern Territory Emergency Response intervention initiatives continued institutional exclusion and violence. These exclusionary initiatives include Closing the Gap as a response to creating the Close the Gap campaign by leading Aboriginals, non-government organizations, and human rights groups. The two campaigns were established to address the disproportionate morbidity, mortality, employment, and education in indigenous populations. However, they lacked an emphasis on difference and diversity. Many gaps are not on track, such as educational attendance and outcomes. The life expectancy gap will most likely not be achieved by 2031. The Northern Territory intervention was recognized in 2009 to be discriminatory against Aboriginals. It violated their self-determination rights, stigmatizing them and ignoring indigenous social constructs and perspectives. The Committee for Elimination of Racial Discrimination concurred by stating that the intervention is racially discriminatory. It has the effect of reducing aboriginal rights such as property and legal rights, land, quality housing, work, and cultural development. A national representative body was formed in 2010 after extensive lobbying efforts by the indigenous community and supporters.
Using Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples writes down Aboriginal's right to make decisions over their own lives by electing representatives, using their institutions and procedures. An independent steering committee did extensive consultations across Australia and created a report called ‘Our Future in Our Hands’ which included representative model proposals and established a board by 2011, the first meeting of the National Congress took place. Psychological distress is reported three times more often among indigenous Australians. Suicide rates are high. Reducing discrimination on a personal and institutional level and increasing connection to the community and culture could reduce it. The current economy pushes Aboriginal communities to survive in a modern labor market created by their community. They enter from a steep disadvantage due to institutional discrimination discussed earlier. Children and traditional lands were taken and forced to convert to Christianity through an upbringing in Christian Australian families. Australia has a history of enslaving Aboriginals. In Australia's Multicultural Statement, Malcolm Turnbull, as Prime Minister, said Australia is the most successful country at multiculturalism. Integration is a key Australian government policy, not multiculturalism. An example is in the Indigenous Advancement Strategy 2018, where three targets focus on making communities safer, getting adults to work, and children to school, leaving structural oppression from colonialism neglected, and reflecting the problem onto Aboriginals. Progress like the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples should continue and build more opportunities for self-determination, policy reform, and initiatives for health, housing, and education for indigenous communities.
Charles Darwin's theory of Survival of the fittest was attached to Aboriginal people. The theory involves superior animals evolving to outlive inferior ones, which leads to ideas of Aboriginals eventually dying out for the white race to continue. Whites would have kids with Aboriginals. By the 5th generation, indigenous characteristics would be non-existent, which was part of the assimilation policies. Bloodline is used in the articulation of Aboriginals' own identities. Therefore, not having the appearance of being indigenous can be hard for people. However, identity goes beyond blood, as articulated in: ‘You can be mixed blood and that but, my identity is Aboriginal, and that is it.’. The Forrest review was conducted by Andre Forrest who is an influential mining businessman. It was an Australian government-commissioned report. The report highlighted his interpretation of problems he believed to be created by Aboriginal people, such as welfare dependency. Northern Territory Emergency Response interventions were in his report, which also relies heavily on Aboriginal behavioral change. Even though Aboriginal dependency was an intentional policy, including caretakers who had control over Aboriginals' lives and when they were taken away and institutionalized. Poverty is also seen as morally deficient for those who are poor. The right to be understood and understood as part of The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was enacted in 2009; it also states interpreters should be provided to include Aboriginal people in essential services such as hospitals. The top end of the Northern Territory has failed to adequately provide language speakers. When interpreters are used, distress in hospitals is mitigated, especially for treatments and diagnoses where clear understanding is essential for patient health, and to lack an interpreter would make the situation unsafe.
Concerning Covid-19 and Aboriginal Australian Poverty, it affected their response due to the higher rates of part-time employment, unemployment, lower quality work, and unpaid internships among aboriginals because of the historical legacy of institutional impoverishment. Diseases unheard of elsewhere appear in Aboriginal communities, which shows exclusion of healthcare provision, an example is acute rheumatic fever being present in aboriginal communities at globally high levels, patient education and timely injection are vital to mitigating it, as well as hygiene and sanitation in the spread of trachoma and other diseases which disproportionately affect aboriginals.
Delays in accessing healthcare lead to more morbidity and mortality, as observed in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Australia. During COVID-19, delays appear impossible to prevent especially non-urgent referrals due to secondary care reductions to use the extra capacity to fight the pandemic; cancer screening was halted to prevent vulnerable cancer patients from contact with Covid-19, which led to more advanced cancers and survival outcomes ramifications. People in poverty are disproportionally affected by Covid-19, the higher chronic disease rates among Aboriginals and living in overcrowded housing is more common, leading to more chances for Covid-19 to cause damage or death. Rapid Covid-19 testing is deployed to indigenous communities to evacuate infected individuals. The social exclusion of Aboriginals shows up in Australian vaccine programs such as the Australian Immunisation Register because it fails to get data on at-risk groups' medical risk factors. Receipt tracking would ensure vulnerable people get their vaccines. Living in poverty may mean no running water, electricity, or a refrigerator which is the case for some indigenous people today.
Multigenerational housing is common among impoverished Aboriginal people. Community actions protected Aboriginals better than many national governments. Biosecurity Act 2015 allocates additional power to the Minister of Health, used during a covid-19 pandemic to give rural areas travel restrictions. If anyone wants to go into remote communities, a 14-day isolation period is mandatory. Food insecurity is increased due to higher costs during covid-19. Aboriginal people were already food insecure pre-pandemic. The more extended transportation of food to rural areas makes prices very high. It is typical for remote areas only to have one shop, which leads to no competition in pricing. There is evidence of price gouging. Prices could be 60% higher, so traveling to towns for lower prices was common before Covid-19. Unemployment was increased due to Covid-19, which increased cost burdens. Tourism stopped, which reduced employment in tourism by Aboriginal people. This reduced their capacity to promote their culture and to produce a living. With the recent history of being pushed into reserves, Covid-19 is an added isolation on top of the stress among many Aboriginals who continue to live on the reserves they were sent to in the 1970s. Data is lacking about Covid-19 rates among Aboriginals, but its importance in understanding the impact on impoverished communities. This data would give justification for allocating resources such as personal protective equipment, food, and access to services in order to combat the inequalities present before covid-19 to prevent them from getting worse.
Conclusion
Segregation to achieve Aboriginal destruction, forced settlements, caretakers to control them, reproduction regulation targeting their skin color, assimilation policies to eliminate culture and to subordinate and exclude them from freedom of movement, education, and free marriage has been discussed to highlight the poverty and social exclusion experienced by Aboriginals. The Stolen generations' child removal is recognized by the Australian government to have been cultural genocide. The 5,752 reduction in population per year for 115 years after the arrival of British colonialism in 1788 shows that the Aboriginal population was not flourishing as it should be due to the decrease to 100,000 in 1901 when it was 750,000 at the lowest approximation. The fact that the average birth rate was so low for the 115 years after 1901 (at 6,703 per year) makes the child removal policies and other government attacks more salient. Taking the figures from (Bringing them home 1997), if 50,000 children were taken from 1788 to 1997 that is approximately 239 children taken per year for those 209 years. The low number of 1 child removed per year on average is still significant and evil but it may indicate that government-sanctioned massacres and reproduction regulation had been far more dominant evils in the Australian government's history. Self-determination policy enacted in 1972, the self-management policy for local indigenous projects in 1975, indigenous land rights legislation in 1976, and the creation of The Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 2011 have been positive steps forward in Aboriginal rights but progress was rolled back due to the Liberal party in 1996 in which self-determination, The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the collective reconciliation movement were abolished. Changes in property law hurt Aboriginal communities' rights to land and programs were cut. Overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, unemployment, low homeownership, low education, and a higher likelihood of death and disease is a legacy of Australian government policy to subordinate them.
An apology came in 2008 by Prime Minister Rudd for the Stolen generations but the Northern Territory Emergency response continued which included a government response called Closing The Gap. The United Nations called The Northern Territory intervention discriminatory.
With Psychological distress multiple times non-Aboriginal level, the suicide rate is high which is a legacy of the social exclusion and impoverishment conducted by the state. Improvement to interpreter practices at service settings like hospitals is an inclusionary policy that has met with positive results, but the Northern Territory is falling behind. The essay discussed how Covid-19 worsened the poverty and exclusion faced by Aboriginals including in employment, health care, housing and education, and cultural production due to tourism stopping for Covid-19.
