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were massacred and settlers and convicts attacked—Governor Phillip was speared
in the back by an Aborigine in 1790.
Within a few years, some 10,000 Aborigines and 1,000 Europeans had been
killed in Queensland alone, while in Tasmania, a campaign to rid the island
entirely of local Aborigines was ultimately successful, with the last full-blooded
Tasmanian Aborigine dying in 1876. By the start of the 20th century, the Abo-
riginal people were considered a dying race. Most of those who remained lived
in government-owned reserves or Church-controlled missions.
Massacres
of Aborigines continued to go largely or wholly unpunished into
the 1920s, by which time it became official government policy to remove light-
skinned Aboriginal children from their families and to sterilize young, Aboriginal
women. Many children of the “stolen generation” were brought up in white fos-
ter homes or church refuges and never reunited with their biological families—
many children with living parents were told that their parents were dead.
Today, there are some 283,000 Aborigines living in Australia, and in general a
great divide still exists between them and the rest of the population. Aboriginal life
expectancy is 20 years lower than that of other Australians, with overall death rates
between two and four times higher. Aborigines make up the highest percentage of
the country's prison population, and many Aborigines die while incarcerated.
A landmark in Aboriginal affairs occurred in 1992 when the High Court
determined that Australia was not an empty land
(terra nullius)
as it had been
seen officially since the British invasion. The
“Mabo” decision
resulted in the
1993 Native Title Act,
which allowed Aboriginal groups, and the ethnically dis-
tinct people living in the Torres Strait islands off northern Queensland, to claim
government-owned land if they could prove continual association with it since
1788. The later
“Wik” decision
determined that Aborigines could make claims
on government land leased to agriculturists. The federal government, led by the
right-leaning Prime Minister John Howard, curtailed these rights following
pressure from farming and mining interests.
Issues currently facing the Aboriginal population include harsh mandatory sen-
tencing laws (enacted in Western Australia and the Northern Territory state gov-
ernments in 1996 and 1997, respectively), which came to international attention
in 2000. The Aboriginal community believes such laws specifically target them.
When a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy allegedly committed suicide less than a week
before he was due to be released from a Northern Territory prison in early 2000,
and a 21-year-old Aboriginal youth was imprisoned for a year for stealing A$23
(US$15) worth of fruit cordial and cookies, Aboriginal people protested, activists
of all colors demonstrated, and even the United Nations weighed in with criticism.
Added to this was the simmering issue of the federal government's decision
not to apologize to the Aboriginal people for the “stolen generation.” In March
2000, a government-sponsored report stated there was never a “stolen genera-
tion,” while independent researchers believed the report underestimated how
many people were personally affected.
Before the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, a popular movement involving
people of all colors and classes called for reconciliation and an apology to the
Aboriginal people. In Sydney, an estimated 250,000 people marched across the
Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Liberal (read “conservative”) Government refused
to bow to public pressure. Despite threats of boycotts and rallies during the
Olympics, the Games passed without major disturbance, and a worldwide audi-
ence watched as Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic cauldron.
