Revelation
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Possession and population
This page of the presentation is to educate you of the English taking possession over the Aboriginals land.
-29th of april 1770, Captain James Cook claimed New Holland (Australia) as Terra Nullius meaning it was no man's land and he could claim the land in the name of the English.
-25th january 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip raised the union jack at Sydney Cove in the arrival of the First Fleet.
-1901, the Immigration Restriction Bill was passed and it extended the dictation test to include all people of non-European origin, and became known as the official "White Australia Policy."
-1920, Aboriginal population is estimated to be at its lowest at 60,000 - 70,000. It is widely believed to be a ‘dying race’. Most Australians have no contact with Aboriginal people due to segregation and social conventions.
-1940, White Australia policy succeeds: 99% of Australia’s 7 million people are white.
-1953, Atomic tests are conducted on Maralinga lands at Emu Field, South Australia. They are code named Operation Totem. A black cloud passes and hundreds of families are forced to leave their homelands because of severe contamination. Further atom tests followed in 1956 at Maralinga, South Australia - Operation Buffalo.
10 years after the Australian government declared the clean-up of Maralinga as completed (in 2001) erosion continues to expose radioactive waste repositories.
-1954, Queen Elizabeth visits Australia for the first time and in Canberra signs the Aborigines Welfare Ordinance 1954 that permits the ethnic cleansing of the Australian Capital Territory, clearing it of resident Aboriginal people.
-1957, Atomic testing (Operation Antler) at Maralinga, South Australia. The presence of Aboriginal people on the test site is documented.
-1966, Stockmen and women walk off at Wave Hill cattle station owned by British aristocrat Lord Vestey, about 700 kms south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, in protest against intolerable working conditions and inadequate wages. They establish a camp at Watti Creek and demand the return of some of their traditional lands. This begins a seven-year fight by the Gurindji people to obtain title to their land.
The South Australian Prohibition of Discrimination Act is the first of its kind in Australia and bans all types of race and colour discrimination in employment, accommodation, legal contracts and public facilities.
The South Australian Lands Trust Act is the first legislation providing land ownership and compensation to dispossessed Aboriginal people. The Act set up a trust composed of Aboriginal people. It enabled them to obtain specific title to reserves, where reserves existed.
-1966, The Conciliation and Arbitration Commission finds in favour of an application from the North Australian Workers’ Union for award wages for Aboriginal pastoral workers. The cattle industry reacts by phasing out Aboriginal labour and progressively evicting Aboriginal communities off the properties which are their traditional lands.
-1997, the Human rights equal opportunities association estimate that approximately between 1-10 and 3-10 of all the aboriginal and torres strait islander children are removed from their families.