Reconciliaton of Australia - History News paper Article

Reconciliation of Australia

Reconciliation in Australia is a big issue in today’s society and all communities. Reconciliation of Australia’s aboriginal people goes back hundreds of years. The question remains of whether enough has been done to compensate for the trouble caused years ago.
The problem for Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia truly began in late 1770. The trouble started when Captain Cook landed on the shores of Australia, at the time the conflict began between the aboriginals and European settlers.
The Europeans have held their view for the last 200 years that the Aboriginals were Fauna and Australia was really un-inhabited thus for earning the name Terra-nullas, meaning no man’s land. The Europeans had no respect for the aboriginals and simply invaded their land without permission. A treaty was never signed and no negotiations were ever attempted by the Europeans. Thousands of aboriginals were displaced from the start and the course of history for their people was going to change forever.
Hundreds of aboriginals were murdered or killed in battles against the Europeans. It’s believed that the aboriginal’s waterholes were being poisoned as the Europeans wanted to diminish their race. This trouble and conflict continued for years.
The trouble brew up again majorly around 1850 during the period of the “Stolen Generations”
The stolen generation was an extremely hard time for aboriginals and their culture. The White Australians took children from their families and attempted to assimilate them to the European and Australian culture. In this many aspects of their culture were lost. The conflict didn’t end there there were many laws made against the aboriginals and most of those were to stop them from being considered “people in their own country.” Up until 1967 the constitution of Australia section stated that aboriginals were not to be counted as people in the country. This was an outrage to most people in Australia and a Referendum to alter the constitution was passed in 1967 with a 90.80% Yes vote. It’s clear the people of Australia understand that the aboriginal people are humans too and should be treated equally. There was also an addition to the constitution that “laws cannot be made for any race in particular” to the constitution which many aboriginal and non aboriginal Australians are happy with. It’s clear some progress has been made in recent years to further reconciliation in Australia. On January 16th 2008, Prime minister Kevin Rudd. Made a formal apology to those affected by the stolen generation events. Many commented and said. “We shouldn’t have to apologize for something we didn’t do.” But the apology seemed to give Australia a fresh breath of air for a new era and moving on towards truly reconciling.
However a year on from the apology and it seems like it never happened. People have forgotten about it and no real changes have been made. As always an apology is useless without action isn’t it.

Werner De Wilzem.