historyabo



It all started when the Europeans explored Australia and wanted to use all the wonderful resources Australia had to offer. What they didn’t know was that people were already living there. They had actually been there for thousands of years, without being noticed.

The aborigines where hidden until 1788 when the Englishmen came to Australia. It is estimate d th at there were about a million aborigines on that time, and about 500 different tribes. Each tribe had about 500 members and as mentioned before, all the tribes were different from each other. They had their own language, area and culture, but they also had a lot in common because of mutual cultural background. Religion, beliefs and lifestyle knot the tribes together.

In the 1800s, another large crowd of Englishmen came and forced the aborigines to the coast. There they had to live in reservations with bad fertility. Because of the sickness the Englishmen brought along with them and the bad treatment, a lot of aborigines died. In the 1930s the number was as low as 30 000 ‘’clean’’ native aborigines.

In these days laws to protect the Aborigines were passed. They also made restrictions for the Aborigines against owning land, where they could live, and even to who they could marry. In 1967 the Australians made the Aborigines real citizens. They were given the same rights as everyone else. The racism against aborigines started when they got these same rights. Some people meant that they couldn’t have the same rights as white Australians. It is actually still racism against the aborigines and even a political party named One Nation that wants to exclude the aborigines.

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