Wednesday, November 29, 2017

THE LOST ABORIGINAL GENERATION


Throughout history, some people regarded their races as superior to  other societies; therefore, they started wars, occupied lands and killed people of other  races. Additionally, in recent history, natives bore witness to a lot of pain / history bears witness to the fact that natives suffered a lot of pain.; because white men regarded themselves as kings of the world, so with geographical explorations, they killed native humans in discovered lands in order to move there with their families and citizens. African natives, Tasmanian natives, and Aboriginal people faced massacres and in Australia, Aboriginal people were exposed to separation and assimilation. The Australian government had a policy of assimilating  aboriginal children by separating them from their families in order to give them up for adoption to white Australian citizens. This aboriginal generation which was given to  other  families is called the “lost generation”. Not only the aboriginal children but also all of the aboriginal citizens have been affected badly by this policy.
First of all, for  many years the Australian authorities regarded Aboriginal people as lower class men and  wanted to assimilate them  but in the modern world, it seemed very barbarous; thus, they formed  a new strategy; kidnapping children. The Goal of this policy was the degeneration of young aboriginal people. Whether these children forgot their cultural identities or not; they certainly lost their psychological and physical health because foster parents abused them and family bonds lost their importance  for these children. This situation affected both their childhood and their family members in the future because even if they loved their child, they likely would not be good parents by reason of having no parent. These effects of the government policy created a lost generation  of aboriginal people who lost their identity, cultural values, customs, etc. Even though this policy was ended and the president apologized to aboriginal citizens for their wrong attitudes, today these people still suffer the psychological and physical effects of assimilation
What is more, aboriginal people who were  moved  away suffered deeper depression because they were both excluded and they lost their families. Additionally, they hadn’t got any right to search for their children because they were lower class men. This hopeless situation which they were experiencing caused  a lot of damage in aboriginal families; parents started taking drugs and they became alcoholics. They  lost their customs and cultural values, too. Rumor has it that, they tried to struggle with this kidnapping by painting their children’s skin with coal, because authorities selected children who had  white skin. But they did not succeed in protecting their children. In this period of cultural, psychological and moral collapse, other Australian citizens organized a protest for the rights of Aboriginal people in the country and they apologized to them before the Australian authority but many people lived far away from their children.
In conclusion, white men assume that the whole world is their private domain; therefore, they want to do everything they want, because of this reason, all of the wars, massacres and assimilation were considered normal in Africa, in Tasmania and in Australia. Aboriginal people in Australia were affected not only psychologically but also physically owing to these attitudes. A generation has lost their culture because of white men’s ambition.

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