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The Aborigines About half of the customers in the Tennant Creek grocery store were Aborigines, and one scene in particular was memorable. A white woman and an Aborigine family who were obviously dear friends but who apparently had not seen each other in a long time embraced with unrestrained happiness and excitement. What really struck me about it was that, although I'd seen plenty of Aborigines in Australia during the past few weeks, this was the first time I'd seen whites and Aborigines interacting so joyously. The event made me think more deeply about the Aborigine situation in Australia. And so, being in the middle of the Outback, I thought this would be a good place to discuss it.
Aborigines, descended from the original inhabitants of Australia, today comprise about 3% of the total population of Australia. You don't see many Aborigines on the east coast of Australia, like in Sydney or Melbourne, but you do see a lot here in the Outback. The Aboriginal story is complex and I've been trying to understand it during my travels through Australia. In many ways, their plight is similar to that of the Indians / Native Americans in the U.S. but in some ways it's an even sadder story. I'll try my best to summarize what I've learned here, but I'm sure I'll over-simplify it, so my apologies in advance if I do.
When the first white settlers landed in Australia in the late 1700s, Aborigines had been living on this continent for over 50,000 years. Unlike in America, where the white settlers recognized Indians as native inhabitants, most of the first white settlers here viewed Australia as just an empty continent. They simply moved in and took over, while enslaving and killing thousands of Aborigines in the process. Unlike in America and in New Zealand, the native tribes in Australia didn't mount a coordinated resistance to the white intrusions, mainly because there were dozens of separate Aborigine groups, many of whom spoke unique languages. It also seems that, unlike with certain fierce and territorial Indian tribes in the U.S. (such as the Comanches and Blackfeet), it wasn't in the Aboriginal culture to resist – nearly as much, anyway.
The whites tried to extinguish the Aboriginal culture in the early 1900s by breaking up families, forcing children into boarding schools, and outlawing the language and customs, a policy that largely failed. Over the past 30 years, the Australian government has tried to make reparations to the Aborigines, including returning some of the land to the original tribes. A lot has been done to heal the wounds of the past, but there's much that remains to be done.
That's the history. Now here's my opinion.
From what I've seen during my travels over the past three months, there's a huge difference between New Zealand and Australia in terms of how well the natives in those countries have assimilated into their respective white societies. In New Zealand, the native Maoris and the whites co-exist in what appears to be a state of relative parity and comity. I encountered numerous Maoris in urban areas of New Zealand, like Auckland and Wellington, and overall there seemed to be relatively little discrimination against them by the whites. I'm familiar with the Native American situation in the U.S, so I was surprised by the relative lack of tension between white New Zealanders and Maories, from what I saw there.
It's a very different story here in Australia. For one thing, I've seen very few Aborigines in large Australian cities. Instead, most natives in this country, as in America, live in poorer, rural areas. There also seems to be a much higher level of discrimination against the natives here in Australia than in New Zealand and thus, Aborigines generally subsist in a lower socio-economic strata. This probably has to do, partly at least, with how whites historically have dealt with the native populations in the two countries. In New Zealand, there were relatively few clashes between Maoris and whites during white settlement and the two groups worked together relatively well. During white settlement in Australia, on the other hand, the whites decided that instead of working with Aborigines, they would try to dominate them (like in America).
This is a complicated topic and it's just my opinion, of course. I'm sure this is far too simplistic, being based only on the scant three months I've spent traveling around New Zealand and Australia. I'm still trying to understand the Aborigine situation here (as well as Aboriginal concepts such as "dream time"), but it's clear to me that Australian Aborigines today, like Native Americans in America, face a lot of problems, including discrimination, poverty, and high levels of unemployment, alcoholism, and substance abuse.
From what I've seen, and except for a few chance encounters in grocery stores and such, there doesn't seem to be much social interaction between Aborigines and whites in Australia. It's probably for the same reasons that there isn't much interaction between Indians and whites in America: a difference in culture, a lack of understanding, and a degree of mutual suspicion. It's certainly a sad situation, but from what I understand it is getting better here. Slowly.
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