Approaches to Indigenous Issues essays

Approaches to Indigenous Issues essays Some people have asked the question, how the Australian Aborigines helped shape non-Aboriginal Australians. The response is to say that contact between the two races, both British and Indigenous Australians often resulted in bringing out the worst in people. Human beings have the innate capacity to be either moral or sinister. In 1788 Governor Philip arrived with the best of intentions in British treatment of the Australian Aborigine, however there was a determined effort by various governors, to drive the Aborigines from settlements and punish those who would not conform to the new 'way of life'. Often the Aborigines refused to accept British standards and could see no advantage in changing their ways. By the turn of the century, the settlers had no time for the Australian Aborigine. The Indigenous community was seen as being a pest and a nuisance, but of course, there were exceptions. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a belief in the colony, that the Aboriginal race was reaching its end. Until this had happened they were to be kept out of the way of the British population and were herded onto reserves and missions, to live out their days away from the Australian population where they would not interfere with progress. The ethnocentric attitude that fuels the first racist statement by Cunningham in 1834, of allows an insight into the extreme racist views that were widespread within the colonies at that certain time in Australias history. The allowance of such views was rampant, and allowed for the negative actions to be supported in the racist colonies of Australia. The statement made by Cunningham would have had a frightening negative impact on the general community. Such a statement shows the ignorance of the British colonists, their total lack of knowledge of the Indigenous community around them, and furthermore a certain desire to keep an absolu...