Genocide Of Indigineous Australia

12 Pages 2923 Words

Aborigines in the early colonial period is staggering.

Brief history of the Australian indigenous peoples

The Aborigines achieved a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, moving seasonally between camps as food supplies dictated. Fire was used methodically to burn old growth and encourage new. They had complex religious beliefs, sophisticated social relationships and trading links across the continent. In 1788 the first European settlement -Britain’s latest penal colony - was established at what is now Sydney. The effects were catastrophic. With the convicts, soldiers and settlers came diseases to which Aboriginal people had no resistance - typhoid, flu, smallpox and venereal disease (Chesterman, J. and Galligan, “The Citizenship Divide in Colonial Victoria”, in Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship pp 14-33). The rape and abduction of Aboriginal women and girls were common (Saul, Ben p 41).

From the beginning of the British invasion of Australia, indigenous people were slaughtered on a grand scale....