From 1788, Australia was treated by the British as a colony of settlement, not of conquest. Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius').
However, once European settlement began, Aboriginal rights to traditional lands were disregarded and the Aboriginal people of the Sydney region were almost obliterated by introduced diseases and, to a lesser extent, armed force.
Answer and Explanation: It was in 1794 when after several attempts, a group of 70 people started farming on Aboriginal land in Hawkesbury after dispossessing the Aborigines of their homeland. These farms also served the purpose of providing security to the local White community.
On 3 June 1992 the High Court of Australia recognised that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Mer (Murray Island). In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people.
1901. Australia becomes a Federation. The Constitution states that Aboriginal People will not be counted in the census, and that the Commonwealth has the power to make laws relating to any race of people In Australia with the exception of Aborigines.
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Under the laws of the Australian Government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not included as citizens. Instead, in many cases they were treated as foreigners in their own land.
These children were forcibly removed from their families and communities through race-based policies set up by both State and Federal Governments. They were either put in to homes, adopted or fostered out to non-Indigenous families.
An Aboriginal protest march took place on Australia's bicentenary 26 January 1988. An Aboriginal speaker describes the invasion of Australia and the resulting problems of dispossession and poverty. She also says it is a day to celebrate the survival of Aboriginal people.
On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them.
Aborigines Act 1969 (1969 - 1983)
' It was a landmark Act that abolished the Aborigines Welfare Board and moved all Aboriginal children into the same welfare system as non-Aboriginal children. It made Aboriginal children who had been under the care of the Aborigines Welfare Board wards of the State.
Following the failure of the Gove lands rights case, the Whitlam Labor Government instigated an inquiry into Aboriginal land rights (known as the Woodward Commission), which eventually led to the Fraser Liberal government passing the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
Police and settlers hunted down Aboriginal families, pursuing them for kilometres across their country, before gunning them down in a creek bed in north-west New South Wales. Official records state at least 40 men, women and children were killed, but other historians suggest hundreds of Aboriginal people died that day.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
In 1969, New South Wales abolished the Aborigines Welfare Board, and this effectively resulted in all States and Territories having repealed legislation that allowed for the removal of Aboriginal children under a policy of 'protection'.
Today, Stolen Generations survivors live right across Australia. Most (73%) live in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
Thousands of children were forcibly removed by governments, churches and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families, nationally and internationally. They are known as the Stolen Generations.
The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
From the first federal electoral Act in 1902 to 1965, when the last state changed its law, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were subject to regulations which prohibited them from voting at federal and state elections.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.
On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been blighted by past government policies of forced child removal and assimilation.
Almost 70% of Australians accept that Aboriginal people were subject to mass killings, incarceration and forced removal from land, and their movement was restricted.