How has the Geography of Australia's.
Indigenous Population Altered in the Last .
The Aborigines of Australia have changed a great deal in the last fifty or so years. Much of this change has been due to Aboriginal integration into the Western-style societies of modern Australia. This integration has included Aborigines in education, working, living in, and unfortunately, in prison in modern Australian society. In the last half century there have also been numerous acts of legislation passed that have affected the Aboriginal populations, many acts giving them rights that they before did not have. Aboriginal assimilation has also been a huge factor in the changing geography of the indigenous peoples of Australia.
Since European settlers arrived in Australian in the late 18th Century, Aborigines were treated as sub-human. Seen as savages they were often murdered by the settlers without provocation or just cause. One of the greatest problems that existed between the indigenous peoples and the European settlers is the vastly different cultures and a subsequent lack of understanding. Aborigines had no concept of land ownership and were driven from the land most desirable to the Europeans, into the harsh climbs of the Australian outback. Aborigines were a people at one with nature, with little regard for materialistic objects or monetary systems. There were also many languages, which put up more barriers between them and the settlers. Many Aborigines also fell ill, unable to cope with diseases brought by the settlers. There was approximately 350,000 Aborigines in Australia in the late 18th Century, a number which had dropped significantly by the start of the 20th Century, leading many of the white population of Australia to believe that the Aborigines would eventually die out. So, what changed for the Aborigines?.
An ideal place to begin would be with assimilation of Aborigines in Australia. This was effectively an attempt to integrate Aborigines (and eventually wipe them out) into white Australian society by taking children from their families and placing them with missions or with white foster families.
