ABORIGINALS, THEIR BACKGROUND, AND ALCOHOL.
BY LETITIA WHILD.
Traditionally, the Aboriginal family was a collaboration of clans composed of mothers, fathers, uncles, aunties, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. Life prior to colonisation was simple, loving, and straightforward. It was a way of life that survived for hundreds and thousands of years, undisturbed and untouched.
Prior to invasion of the white people, the roles of the family members of Aboriginals were set according to individual positions in the tribe, and families would live together in a communal environment with responsibilities being shared throughout the family such as cooking, hunting and the teaching of knowledge by tribal elders. The men were hunters, usually tracking down larger animals like kangaroo or emus, while women supplied the family with nuts, berries and roots.
When colonisation began it meant oppression. Aboriginals were denied the right to live by their own ways and to decide on their own policies. They were denied the freedom to run their own economic and family life. They could not always marry the person they chose, or mix with the people of their choice. Children were often taken from mothers after birth while other children were removed from their family at the age of three or four, and often these children were taught to detest everything that was Aboriginal.
The post-colonisation policy of Aboriginal child removal is the cause of much family heartache and breakdown today. Colonisation meant the deliberate destruction of the values of Aboriginal families through the breakdown of the tribal structure.
When officials come on to the missions, the mothers would run and hide their lighter skinned children in particular, as they were the children likely to be taken because they would more easily “blend in “with whites.
This was the result of the Aborigines Protection Board, which was established in 1883 to give out rations and manage all Aboriginal and Aboriginal...