Reconciliation and Aboriginal
Australia is a diverse country, it has many culture such as Asian, Indian, aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples. Like any other country, Australia also has a local people called Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have lived in NSW for more than 40,000 years; they are the oldest people in Australia (life, 2014). Aboriginals have lived peacefully on their land before the white man came and took their land. Because Australia was isolated from the rest of the world, so the Aboriginal could not contact for help. Since then, many bad things happened to Aboriginals. They started to lose their identity, they lost their land, their family, their culture, and the most important thing is they lost their existences. Many years later, the Aboriginals started to show their presence. They realized that they couldn’t live this away forever. On 27 may 1967, The Reconciliation happened. Reconciliation is about unity and respect between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non-indigenous Australians (Reconciliation, 2013). Reconciliation is basically a government program to make the Indigenous people gets more right and can create a better social identity, but then It does create controversy. There’s significant changes in aboriginals environment and non-indigenous perspective of aboriginals, which shows the effectiveness of the reconciliation. However, some people said that the Reconciliation doesn’t really effective based on what’s going on today.
This essay will discuss on how effective the process of reconciliation been for aboriginals in Australia in many perspectives. Firstly, it will discuss the effectiveness of reconciliation. Secondly, it will discuss about the non-effective effect of reconciliation. And in the end it will conclude how effective the reconciliation is.
The program that the Governments made has good impacts on Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginals have felt the impacts and Reconciliation has changed some Aboriginal peoples. Nicky Winmar is one of the examples from the affect of Reconciliation. Nicky Winmar is the indigenous footy players that have become Australian hall of fame players; he could play at his best because there is equality that made from Reconciliation (Fame, 2014). Another examples are Cathy freeman. Cathy Freeman is Indigenous Runner that has achieved Young Australian Of the year, Medal of the order of Australia, and Australian Institute of Sport Living legends gallery. She was born in 16 February 1973 where Reconciliation has been running for 6 years. On 6 years, Cathy Freeman already felt the good impacts from Reconciliation. As she said, “Life was free and easy, the tropical climate was great, and we barefoot kids were allowed to run around everywhere” (Freeman, 2014). It shows that there was no racism and Indigenous people could live equally. The Stolen generation was a huge problem for the Indigenous people, but in between 1980 and 1994 Link-UP (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation reunited more than 1,000 individuals, they helped Aboriginal people to trace family information and reunion support. There is also “Sorry Day” in 1998. This is an annual event, and on this day all of the Australians can sign the “Sorry Book”. Sorry Books, in which people could record their personal feelings, were presented to representatives of the Indigenous communities (generations, 2009). Hundreds of signatures were received. People could also register an apology electronically, you can view the 24,763 apologies to Australia's indigenous people made at Apology Australia (generations, 2009). There are also economic benefits of closing the gap in Indigenous employment outcomes.
The Reconciliation’s goal has achieved. The goal is to make non-indigenous and indigenous to unite and to raise equality. Government also already did their best to help and support the