Reconciliation in Australia: The Aboriginal People
“Australians of all colours, creeds and commitments are all here to stay, and we have to learn to live together.”
- Rabbi Raymond Apple in an address at the Great Synagogue Sydney, Shabbat, 6 December 1997
____________________________________________________________
_________________________
Reconciliation is a form of agreement that deals with the legacies of our history, provides justice for all, and takes us forward as a nation. It is the process of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders and non Aboriginal Australians moving forward into a phase of mutual recognition of healing and justice.
Reconciliation began in 1939 on Australia day where the Indigenous people called a Day of Mourning which was a call for recognition. The process of Reconciliation has also had an impact on Australia as a whole. Effective changes in Australia have been witnessed since 1945 as greater awareness and compassion to Aboriginal Spiritual Perspectives has influenced the development of an ecological awareness in the spirituality of other Australians.
As European settlement spread across Australia in the late 1780s, many Indigenous people where forced off their lands obligated to start over in foreign places away from their tradition land. The early settlers destroyed their links to the land, spirituality and culture; during that time, Indigenous Australians were racially inferior to Europeans and it was believed the Europeans that the Indigenous People would soon die out. Colonial Australians had begun this process of dispossession through the cultivation of the ‘empty’ land theory: Terra nullius. Dispossession broke up Aboriginal nations and distributed the religious and cultural beliefs and practices around which their lives have centered. Not only had they lost their land and their culture, but also their understanding of their place in life. The main concern of dispossession was the land and their kinship.
In the 1960s there where various actions that led towards the
- Rabbi Raymond Apple in an address at the Great Synagogue Sydney, Shabbat, 6 December 1997
____________________________________________________________
_________________________
Reconciliation is a form of agreement that deals with the legacies of our history, provides justice for all, and takes us forward as a nation. It is the process of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders and non Aboriginal Australians moving forward into a phase of mutual recognition of healing and justice.
Reconciliation began in 1939 on Australia day where the Indigenous people called a Day of Mourning which was a call for recognition. The process of Reconciliation has also had an impact on Australia as a whole. Effective changes in Australia have been witnessed since 1945 as greater awareness and compassion to Aboriginal Spiritual Perspectives has influenced the development of an ecological awareness in the spirituality of other Australians.
As European settlement spread across Australia in the late 1780s, many Indigenous people where forced off their lands obligated to start over in foreign places away from their tradition land. The early settlers destroyed their links to the land, spirituality and culture; during that time, Indigenous Australians were racially inferior to Europeans and it was believed the Europeans that the Indigenous People would soon die out. Colonial Australians had begun this process of dispossession through the cultivation of the ‘empty’ land theory: Terra nullius. Dispossession broke up Aboriginal nations and distributed the religious and cultural beliefs and practices around which their lives have centered. Not only had they lost their land and their culture, but also their understanding of their place in life. The main concern of dispossession was the land and their kinship.
In the 1960s there where various actions that led towards the
Bibliography: WEB • Reconciliation Australia. (2005). Reconciliation Timetable. Available: http://www.reconciliation.org.au/home/reconciliation-resources/significant-events---anniversaries/reconciliation-timeline. Last accessed [21/11/11] BOOKS • Coleman, N. (2006). Religious Expression in Australia since 1945. In: Coleman, N Spotlight Studies of Religion. Australia: Science Press. • Morrissey, j. (2010). Religion and belief systems in Australia post-1945. In: Janet Morrissey. and Taylor, A Living Religion. 4th ed. Australia: Pearson Education Australia. 219-223.