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Diseases were not common within the Aboriginal society. They lived a generally healthy life, and what diseases they did get were treated using their own medicines. There was hardly any war and violence. The aboriginal people relied on their land, culture, and beliefs to survive. They lived for their land and past ancestors. .
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The first fleet arrived in Australia in 1788. The land had been claimed by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770 and was known as "terra nullius"meaning empty land. This was not because the British people did not see the Aboriginals, but because the Aboriginals did not build permanent dwellings or cultivate the land like the Europeans. This was the beginning of British occupation and colonisation. The contact between these people and the Aboriginals was not peaceful. .
The white people had brought with them sheep, horses and other animals. This caused disturbance for the Aboriginals as it caused widespread damage to their sacred land. The white people had also brought diseases. Up until then, the Aboriginals had only learned to treat the diseases of their society and not the diseases from the European countries; this meant that the common cold could be fatal. In 1789 a smallpox epidemic introduced by the European settlers wiped out at least half of the Aboriginal people living in Sydney, as they had no resistance. .
The British settlers started to take over the land that the Aboriginals were living off; this started to cause widespread war and massacre. A famous massacre that occurred during colonisation was the Myall creek massacre in 1838; here 28 Aboriginal old men, women and children were murdered. While seven out of the eleven stockmen who committed the murders were hung, there was an outcry on why anyone should be hung for murdering aboriginal people. .
From massacres and diseases that were killing the Aboriginals it was thought that they were dying out. The Aboriginals had become trespassers of their own land.
I. INTRODUCTION During the past century, the english-speaking legal world has experienced real and considerable change in the areas of criminal law and criminal sentencing procedures. These ever-changing systems of legal processes, rules, and theories are typically reflective of the society's ...
