Today, thousands of Aborigines face a life of family breakdowns, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and mental torment caused by separation from their parents at a young age. .
On the 29th of April 1770, when a small vessel, Endeavour, first entered Botany Bay, the lives of the native inhabitants of the land, which was to be named Australia, changed forever. Although they were unaware of it at the time their undisturbed coexistence with the ecosystem would end after 65 millennia; the white man had come. .
With them the white settlers bought disease, weapons, alcohol, and worst of all greed and hatred. The greed for possession of land and hatred towards the black race, to which the idea of possession was alien, caused the early conflicts between the European and Indigenous people.
Massacres were common, even as late as 1928 when 65 Walbiri natives were brutally murdered by Northern Territory Police. Altogether around 2000 White and over 20 000 Natives were slaughtered in the course of settling this great country of ours. This is discounting all the Aboriginal deaths from poisoning; at the time it was acceptable to sell Aborigines poisoned flour or pour toxins in their drinking water. After 100 years of white settlement the native population dropped by an overwhelming 92%.
Throughout this conflict Indigenous children were kidnapped and exploited for their labour. Then the protection and assimilation Nazi-style policies came, which gave whites the undeserved power to control the lives of Indigenous people.
By removing children from their birth parents to breed out the inferior Aboriginal race the Europeans had shattered the lives of everyone involved. It is finally time to stop blaming our fathers for this social experiment and recognise that only through reconciliation can we help seal the deep wounds that are at present bleeding the life out of these hapless individuals.
It is estimated that 100 000 people of aboriginal ancestry still do not know their families today.
