Impact Of Australian Government's Assimilation Policy On Aboriginal Children

The Australian Government's assimilation policy was a policy of absorbing Aboriginal people into white society through the process of removing children from their families. The idea of this policy was to breed out and abolish the aboriginal society and to assimilate them into the white community. The impact that this policy had on the indigenous Australians was very negative as many children were forcibly taken from their families.

One way the assimilation policy impacted the aboriginals was by ‘stealing’ the aboriginal children. These children were named ‘the stolen generation’. The children were taken from their parents and sent to mission schools and foster homes. Here they were told to forget their heritage and everything they knew and were taught the english language and were forced to adapt to the white ways of life. An example of this was a 17 year old girl by the name Lorna Cubillo. She was one of the 100,000 aboriginal children removed from their families. She was taken away from her family to a foster home, she was later sexualy abused and never saw her family again.
Some of the main human rights abused by the assimilation policy include the right to own things and no slavery. For example Olive from the movie ‘the rabbit proof fence’ was used as a cheap slave labourer after she escaped from her mission school. This was very negative as she was often sexually assaulted and treated poorly. This went against the human rights law of ‘no slavery’ where no one has the right to make anyone their slave. Also the human right ‘the right to your own things’ which allows everyone to own things and not have them taken without good reason. This was abused as the The australians took their best land having a bad effect on the aboriginals as they were forced inland into the