The dispossession of Aboriginal people has had a continuing effect on Aboriginal spirituality. This dispossession concerning Aboriginal Australians is defined by their forced removal from land, their families, the way of life and culture as a result of a series of government policies by early British settlers. The continuing effects of dispossession can be seen by examining the impact of their separation from land, Kinship groups and The Stolen Generations. LAND: Aboriginal people’s separation from their land still has a vast and overwhelming effect upon their spirituality. The separation resulted in a disconnection with their spirituality, as the Dreaming, which is central to Aboriginal spiritually is inextricably connected to the land. This loss of spirituality has amounted to a loss of identity and connection with their ancestral spirits beings, due to the existence of an ever-present burden of not being able to fulfil their ritual and totemic responsibilities to the land. As Australia’s old Prime Minister, Paul Keating said in 1992, “We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life”. Aboriginal Australians rely …show more content…
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