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Assimilation Policy On Indigenous Australians

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The nature of government policies and their impact on indigenous Australians.

Assimilation Policy
The assimilation policy was introduced in 1937 in the Australian government’s effort to abolish aboriginal culture and assimilate children indigenous and white background into Australian society. This was an intended strategy of absorbing Aboriginal people into white society through the process of forcibly removing children from their families. The policy was introduced by the Commonwealth Government by holding a national conference on Aboriginal affairs which agreed that Aboriginal people ‘not of full blood’ should be integrated into the wider population. All of the commonwealth states agreed to the adoption of the assimilation process, In …show more content…

The implemented policy expected Indigenous people to take responsibility for becoming the same as white people, but never gave them the same rights or opportunities to do so.

Zita Wallace, who was taken aged eight years old signified the opposite effects of the assimilation policy the government hoped for, explaining; “There is no black or white, we are both of those. I am black and I am white. We were the product of white men raping our traditional women. We were an embarrassment. No-one wanted us. They just wanted us out of the way.”

She explained the Impacts on the children at the time, that many children of the Stolen Generations were psychologically, physically, and sexually abused while living in state care institutions or with adoptive families. Living conditions in the institutions were highly controlled, with common harsh punishments, the children were often cold and hungry and received minimal if any affection from adult figures. They generally received a very low level of education, as they were expected to work as manual laborers. These children were indoctrinated to reject their culture often caused them to feel ashamed of their Indigenous heritage. Many children were wrongly told that their parents had died or abandoned them, and many never knew where they had been …show more content…

The era of forcible removal and assimilation continued until the mid 1960's. The damaging impacts of the removal policies continue to resonate through the future generations of Aboriginal families as the trauma is inherited by new children in multifaceted ways through parenting practices, behavioral problems, violence, unresolved grief and trauma, and mental illness. in psychological studies of aboriginal families, there have noted a high incidence of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and suicide among the Stolen

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Due to the actions promoted by racism against aboriginals from the year 1910- 1970 many Indigenous Australians have grown into adults still carrying the scars of the past. Some will never come to know their birth parents or who they truly are. They will grow old with the remembrance of a past full of torture and abuse that they will carry till the day they die. They grew up with the idea that their heritage should be rejected since it is the ‘inferior’ way of life.

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It may be believed that the culture’s ways are always the best, and other cultures are not considered to have any positive elements. This was the thinking behind the ‘White Australia Policy’; after years of half-hearted protection full-blood Aborigines were allowed to die out, while part-Aborigines were encouraged to assimilate into European culture. In 1937, the government released a policy paper which concluded: “The policy of the Commonwealth is to do everything possible to convert the half-caste into a white citizen.” In practice, the ‘half-castes’ were not accepted by the white society causing the assimilation policies to fail, due mainly to high Aboriginal unemployment. It is poignant to highlight that while policies specifically regarding Aborigines were terribly intolerant, it was racism from the community that rendered the policies ineffective.

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Some were adopted by white families, and many were placed in institutions, where abuse and neglect were common. (Behrendt, L. 2012) Some Indigenous Families are still affected to this

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The policy of protection that removed Aboriginal children from their families between 1910 and 1970 by Government and church missionaries was an attempt to assimilate them into the White Australian society and breed out the Aboriginal race. Firstly and most importantly, the separation and removal of children from their families and tribal elders meant that these children were unable to maintain their cultural identity. They were either taken to missions/reserves or white families where traditional practices and language was prohibited. The restriction on practices such as the kinship system, totems and ceremonial rituals, all of which are mediums through which the Dreaming is expressed, diminished the children’s ties with their

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Initially, European invasion meant that Aboriginal people were held accountable to a law they neither understood, nor believed in. Their own laws have throughout history been rejected, ridiculed and ignored. The Stolen Generations are another issue of mistrust. Aboriginal children were removed from their families under government orders, and for many Indigenous people, the presence of government officials is still associated with family separation. Past events, including dispossession of land, separation of families, poverty, racism, unemployment, overrepresentation in the justice system, education standards and loss of identity, country and connection to land, have led to Aboriginal people being disadvantaged when compared to the wider Australian population (NSW Department of Community Services, 2009).

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