Invasion or Settlement
Invasion or settlement? This question has been asked and debated by many people over the past century. After studying this question over the past few weeks I agree to a large extent that it was an invasion by the Europeans. They stole the aboriginals land, rights and brought over deceases guns and other bad things, they killed a large portion of these aboriginals for no explainable reason and they also kidnapped their children in the attempt to extinct the blackness out of the native Australian people.
In 1788 before the first fleet arrived there were over 500 Aboriginal tribes or nations in Australia all in which had efficient and sustainable systems for living off the land. They achieved a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, they moved seasonally between camps depending on food supplies, had very sophisticated social relationships and trading links across Australia. This was all taken away from them without notice by the British invaders. In 1770 captain cook declared Australia to be ‘terra nullius’ meaning ‘no man’s land’ or ‘land belonging to no-one’ so that he could claim Australia to Brittan. When the first fleet arrived in 1788 the aboriginal people had no idea what was going on and they believed the British people to be ‘ghosts’, because they had never seen white people before. The aboriginals were kind and friendly to the British because they thought they were just visitors, but little did they know that 200 years down the track those ‘ghosts’ would have taken over the whole country. Contact between the locals and the Europeans was disastrous for the Aboriginal people, they brought diseases such as smallpox, colds, the flu and measles, these were fatal as the indigenous Australians had no resistance to such introduced diseases, so therefore these diseases plagued native populations. The Brittan population that were living in Australia at the time would take whatever land they liked pushing away all the aboriginals using forceful weapons which the
In 1788 before the first fleet arrived there were over 500 Aboriginal tribes or nations in Australia all in which had efficient and sustainable systems for living off the land. They achieved a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, they moved seasonally between camps depending on food supplies, had very sophisticated social relationships and trading links across Australia. This was all taken away from them without notice by the British invaders. In 1770 captain cook declared Australia to be ‘terra nullius’ meaning ‘no man’s land’ or ‘land belonging to no-one’ so that he could claim Australia to Brittan. When the first fleet arrived in 1788 the aboriginal people had no idea what was going on and they believed the British people to be ‘ghosts’, because they had never seen white people before. The aboriginals were kind and friendly to the British because they thought they were just visitors, but little did they know that 200 years down the track those ‘ghosts’ would have taken over the whole country. Contact between the locals and the Europeans was disastrous for the Aboriginal people, they brought diseases such as smallpox, colds, the flu and measles, these were fatal as the indigenous Australians had no resistance to such introduced diseases, so therefore these diseases plagued native populations. The Brittan population that were living in Australia at the time would take whatever land they liked pushing away all the aboriginals using forceful weapons which the
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