Presentation from Ella and Erin.
We acknowledge that we are here today on the land of the Guringai people. The Guringai people are the traditional owners of this land and are part of the oldest surviving continuous culture in the world. We pay our respects to the Elders past and present, and we feel so privileged to be able to take part in this commemoration of Aboriginal culture and history. We also acknowledge the vibrant and diverse group of Aboriginal people who live in this area now and extend our respect to all Aboriginal people, present.
When we were asked by Neil to discuss the way we see Aboriginal people, we weren’t surehow to answer this question. To us, and many others of our generation, we see Aboriginal people through the same eyes that we see everyone else.
However, we realise that, historically, this hasn’t and still isn’t always entirely the case. While it is difficult to separate parts of the shared history between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Australia, it is absolutely essential to recognise that the experiences of both groups differ significantly in terms of the rights and freedoms they enjoy.
In 1932, my grandmother was born in Australia into a society that would provide her with countless opportunities to discover her own family heritage and history. She was encouraged to express her personal and cultural identity and to be proud to be a young Australian. However, during this same time Aboriginal people were being wiped of their culture, the longest thriving traditional culture in the world. Through the extremely damaging policies introduced by the Australian government, specifically the Protection and Assimilation Policy, Aboriginal people were deprived of their culture, heritage and family. It is almost unfathomable to consider the fact that the Australian Government could discriminate so publicly against Aboriginal people through the assumption that they were unfit to control their own lives. These hardships and the ongoing impact of such grief is still being felt today amongstAboriginal communities.
In 1939, Australia entered World War Two with its Allies, and ANZAC forces involved a large number of Indigenous troops, and while many believed that Aboriginal involvement in the Second World War would help to bring about full citizenship rights for Indigenous people, the immense lack of recognition for military efforts showed that this unfortunately was not the case in Australia. Upon returning from the war, Aboriginal people were barred from Returned Services League clubs, except for a single day of the year - ANZAC Day. The idea that Aboriginal people were able to die for this country, but not free to make decisions about where they lived, what they did for work and who they married is shameful.
In 1943, exemption certificates, more commonly labelled ‘dog tags’, were introduced, and to Aboriginal people this was a significant renunciation of their traditional lifestyle. However, this was seen as one of the very few opportunities for Aboriginal people to break the ongoing poverty cycle, to find employment and access education and social welfare benefits. Indigenous people were forced to deny their Aboriginality and sever all ties with their own culture, to gain the rights and opportunities that were still significantly below those of non-Aboriginal people. While non-Indigenous children were enjoying the freedoms of education, Aboriginal people were being harshly denied these rights and thousands of children were being forcibly removed from their families by the government.
By the mid-60s, our parents were being born, while opposition to Assimilation was strengthening and an Indigenous civil rights movement was beginning to take shape.
One of the most widely publicized protest actions for Aboriginal rights was the Freedom Rides in 1965, led by Charles Perkins, who was the first Aboriginal person to graduate from university. The legacy of the Freedom Rides was that it raised significant national awareness of the struggle of Aboriginal people for equality, and this decade-long campaign to change the Constitution came to symbolise the broader struggle for justice being fought during these years. For the first time in Australia, the greater population witnessed the devastating impacts of segregation that existed across the country.This was considerably conflicting for many Australians who were brought to realise, perhaps for the first time, the immensely racist nature of national governance.
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam replaced assimilation with self-determination in 1972, which initially sounded wonderful for Indigenous people. However, the reality was that the Policy of Self-Determination faced many challenges and failed to succeed in various aspects, such as theway it ignored traditional decision making processes.
In 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody shed light on a significantly negative truth - that is, that Aboriginal people do not die in custody at higher rates than Indigenous people, rather they are hugely overrepresented in the criminal justice system. 3% of Australia’s total population is Indigenous, while they make up approximately 30% of the prison population. Despite this detrimental issue facing Aboriginal people, the government continues to ignore the dire need for change, and it is extensively evident that all levels of government must recognise the driving factors of imprisonment with a focus on establishing safer communities and addressing all areas of ongoing socio-economic disadvantage.
We were both born in the year 1998, and in this same year, Cathy Freeman accepted the prestigious award of Australian of the year. Two years later she lit the Olympic Flame at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and won gold for Australia. She ran her victory lap with both the Aboriginal and Australian flag, a symbol of reconciliation and pride of her Aboriginal cultural and heritage.
Moreover, the 28th May 2000 witnessed a milestone in the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal people. 250,000 Australians turned out for the Walk for Reconciliation across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, indicating the growing support behind reconciliation nation-wide. For five-and-a-half hours, a continuous stream of people made their way across the famous Sydney landmark, making it the largest political demonstration ever to be held in Australian history. Events such as this have initiated Australian society to recognise the inherent need to enrich the identity of the nation as a shared identity.
In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised in parliament to Aboriginal people for the Stolen Generations and recognised the terribleimpact that it had on the lives and culture of Australia’s Indigenous people. Some Aboriginal people found closure in this, while many believed that it was an inadequate apology for the extremely harsh treatment of Aboriginal people since settlement. Words are very powerful, but action is needed to solidify this apology.
Starting next year, in 2017, the Board of Studies will be offering Aboriginal Languages as an optional subject for HSC students in certain schools across the state. Out of New South Wales’ 35 Aboriginal languages across the state, approximately 19 are being taught as part of this content-endorsed course, the syllabuses for these courses being developed through consultation and address the needs of the particular language groups. Even just five years ago,Australian school students would never have believed that they could one day be given the opportunity to study some of the oldest surviving languages the world has to offer. We believe this is a really positive step towards involving more Aboriginal culture in the national education system, and what a brilliant opportunity to connect with this country’s traditional custodians
We are lucky enough to have been given the invaluable opportunity to elect Aboriginal Studies as a subject for our HSC. We believe students at Mackellar are some of the luckiest in the country because our school offers both an HSC and a year nine accelerated Aboriginal Studies course. This subject has not forced us to think in a particular way, but has provided us with the foundations necessary for us to develop an informed perspective of Australian society and to establish our own political voices. We are the voices of our generation, and we will be part of Australia’s most important decisions from this year onwards. Aboriginal Studies has paved the path for us to work towards social change, generating greater respect for Aboriginal people as the oldest traditional culture in the world, continuing today.
So, to answer this question, we view Aboriginal people in the same way we view non-Aboriginal people, but we also understand that we do not have social equality and we need to work towards it. We view Aboriginal people as the traditional custodians of this country, as the keepers of an ancient spirituality that has been carried down for tens of thousands of years. Aboriginal people are the practitioners of the oldest living culture on earth, and we are proud to walk side by side with our community with the common goal of achieving equality and social justice for all.