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1. The first Australians Australia has two Indigenous peoples Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. Together they number 352,970, according to figures from the 1996 Census, and represent about 2 per cent of the total population of Australia. At the Census, 28,744 people said they were of Torres Strait Islander descent and a further 10,106 people said they were both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Historically and to this day, Aboriginal people have lived on mainland Australia, Tasmania and many of the continent's offshore islands. Torres Strait Islanders come from the islands of the Torres Strait between the tip of Cape York in Queensland and Papua New Guinea. Since World War II many Torres Strait Islanders have moved to the mainland, principally for economic reasons. About 80 per cent of the Torres Strait Islander population now resides outside the Torres Strait. Ethnically and culturally Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are distinct peoples. We have also had different histories since European settlement. In all but the more remote areas of Australia, Aboriginal groups were dispossessed of their land piece by piece. The Torres Strait was annexed by Queensland in 1879, and, other than in the establishment of settlements such as Thursday Island, the Islanders were not dispersed from their homelands. Until the modern era, however, the people of the Torres Strait were, like Aboriginal people, subject to restrictive and paternalistic legislation that denied them their citizenship rights. Today the social indicators for Torres Strait Islanders in education, health, employment are similar to those for Aboriginal people. This pages is about both of Australia's Indigenous peoples. But, as Aboriginal people form the majority of the Indigenous population and historically occupied far more of the land mass of Australia, in some of the pages that follow the text deals mainly with the experiences of Aboriginal people. Quotes My grandfather saw rights to land being trampled by the hooves of cattle, rights to fair treatment being strangled by iron neck-chains and rights to life being dispensed with the muzzle of a gun. He lived in that period of history which people now say is so far in the past it should be forgotten. I say it should not be the subject of guilt -- a wasted emotion -- but of honesty, a reminder of what has happened, in order that the thinking behind those events does not have a legitimate place in the present. Patrick Dodson, Sydney Morning Herald, March 1997 How, then, do we deal with the Aboriginal dead? White Australians frequently say that 'all that' should be forgotten. But it won't be. Black memories are too deeply, too recently scarred. And forgetfulness is a strange prescription coming from a community which reveres the fallen warrior and emplazons the phrase "Lest We Forget" on monuments throughout the land. If the Aborigines are to enter our history 'on terms of most perfect equality' ...they will bring their dead with them and expect ans honoured burial...If we are to continue to celebrate the sacrifice of men and women who died for their country can we deny admission to fallen tribesmen? Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, 1981 For white Australians, to cut ourselves off from the destruction of Aboriginal society is also to sever the ties that bind those born this century to the pioneers or the Anzacs, since none of us nurtured grain at Parramatta, discovered gold at Mount Morgan or held the Germans at Amiens. By what measure of fair delaing can one generation lay claim to the virtues of its forebears but erase any stain from their vices? Humphrey Mc Queen, 24 Hours, February 1997. |
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