1809 Views | 4107 Downloads
First Nations Australia writes back
Terri-ann White
Abstract:
I'd like to concentrate briefly on a subject that gives me enormous pleasure in my field of humanities research in Australia as a recent improvement in the ways that our society operates. As a colonised society, one that had involved the forceful taking of land already inhabited
and owned by the First Nations people with at least 60,000 years of occupation, Australia has been slow and resistant to the ideas of sharing land, recognising the violence of settlement and the ongoing devastation of First Nations Australians through marginalisation, and the application of policies developed without reference to the people they would affect. These were usually detrimentally
at best and thoroughly destructive to individuals
and families and, thus, communities at worst. First Nations, or Aboriginal, people often make the claim that they are the most studied group in any society: that their kinship systems, their bodies and minds and reason for being has been dissected by scientists and social scientists and governments since British settlers arrived here in 1788 without inclusion in these findings of their own theories and opinions. They had been designated
as a mute and subservient subject of the settlers in large part, and enormous harm has been perpetuated upon them.
Download Full PDF
