Page 6 - Indiginous Australians

Mary Alp
Pacific Islanders whose ‘higher visibility’ of leadership & religion together with
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( NZ has the Treaty of Waitangi signed between the British Crown & 500 Maori chiefs; Canada & US have hundreds of treaties dating back to 1600’s)
The official contact policy the British brought with them reflected the 1770s British humanitarian societies anti-slavery movement. It stated that the ‘Aborigines were British subjects, and as such should not be treated as enemies ... and that any clashes should be matters of legal processes ... and that every effort should be made to win the Aborigines’ friendship, and that especially from 1820
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The British also brought with them 1,500 people 3⁄4 of which were convicts. Their makeup ranged from petty criminals to more hardened criminals. Most were victims of Britain’s changing society. The1760 Agriculture Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, & 1773 Enclosure Acts, drove people to the cities where unemployment, poverty & crime were rife. The jails were overflowing. America had been the dumping ground for convicts but after the 1776 American Revolution, transportation was temporarily suspended. In 1788 Australia became the next penal colony. The next dumping ground. NSW was basically left to these hardened men & their jailors until 1813 when free immigrants arrived. These new settlers pushed inland & also established new colonies (in Tasmania, South
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(Map you have – you can see that in 1788 the whole of Australia was occupied/owned by Aboriginals & that by 1965 virtually all the land had changed hands & was claimed either by non-Aboriginal people or governments 15
12 C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of aboriginal Society, pp 14-16; G. Williams ‘Does true reconciliation require a treaty?, Indigenous Law Bulletin, vol 8;issue 10 pg3-5, quoted in Australians Together ‘The Lack of a treaty’, p4.; My Essay , ’How important is the land to the Aborigine & why?
13 A.P. Elkin, The Australian Aborigines,pp362-363.
14 R. Broome, 2019 Ibid, pp 17-22; Australians Together,’ ‘Colonisatiion’ p1. 15‘The Theft & return of Australian Indigenous Land 1788 – 2013’, Brilliant Maps .
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agriculture, ensured a treaty.
to 1840 to bring them the blessings of civilization and Christianity.
Australia, Melbourne). Land loss was rapid & widespread.