Reflective Essay on History of Treatment of Indigenous Australians

Running Head: ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
Topic- Reflective essay investigating the history of the treatment of Indigenous Australians over
the last century
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2ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
The reflective essay on investigation of the history of treatment of Indigenous Australians
over the last century is based on the ethical perspectives of engineering management and is
structured based on Describe, Interpret, Evaluate, Plan framework (DIEP) of reflective writing.
This paper also includes the cross-cultural communication aspects in regard to interaction with
Aboriginals and engineer representatives. As far my knowledge is concerned, engineers are to be
largely responsible for welfare, health and safety of the public in their professional practices. The
DIEP framework basically answers the two main considerations of the paper- one is the impact
of aboriginal treatment history on ethical practice of engineering and second, its influence on
cross-cultural communication.
First the history of treatment of Indigenous Australians over the last century is described
here. Indigenous Australians are in the lowest rung of the socio-economic hierarchy in the
country. According to Castellano (2014) extreme poverty and social inclusion are the words that
best describe their background. There is a strong line of demarcation in between the Non-
Aboriginal Australians and the Aboriginal Australians (Daley 2017). Be it in terms of health,
education, social status, employment status, economic prosperity, cultural integrity or
government support, aboriginal people find themselves far behind the non-aboriginal
Australians. The issue of ‘stolen generation’ was prominent in since 1910 and the aboriginals
fought for their equal rights back in 1967 and they were finally recognized provided the right to
vote and were included as the citizens of Australia (Dudgeon et al. 2014). But regardless of this
temporary political equality the Aboriginals are still fighting for their equality even today and
racism is still persistent. Most of their lands were taken from them (where lands being declared
as Terra Nullius- land belonging to no one) during the colonial period leaving them with no
occupation and no means of earning livelihood (Gee et al. 2014). Holland (2016) criticized that

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there is no end to the disparity of the aboriginals and instead of improvement the country has
fallen back in terms of ‘closing the gap’ for the backward peoples. Statistics also support the fact
that commonwealth funded indigenous programs have been cut short under Indigenous
Advancement strategy by federal Coalition Government (Hollis and Goldfinch 2017). It is also
opined that the aboriginal communities are exercising their own ‘lifestyle choice’ instead of
living culturally connected lives. One aboriginal health care expert opined that ‘they will suffer
rather than seek treatment’ because of their fear of experiencing institutional racism (Lin et al.
2014). And it is worth mentioning that it is not diseases that make them sicker but it is racism
that does. Government policies were amended a number of times but are no that effective in
changing the way of living of the aboriginals at large. Protection and integration were important
parts of various Government policies from time to time but no reconciliation is being made and
the conditions of Aboriginal people remained subtle (Lohoar, Butera and Kennedy 2014).
According to Malaspinas et al. (2016) Genocide waves have increased their fear for the non-
aboriginals and Government officials and they also fear to fight for their own human rights
afterwards. So, it is clear that the aftermaths of colonization have impacted the lives of the
aboriginals in the most negative manner in aspects of racism, stereotyping, misconceptions,
disease and poor healthcare providence, poor education providence and unsuccessful
reconciliation.
Based on the above description, this paragraph tries to interpret the impact of this
historical aboriginality background on the ethical perspectives of engineering practices. Ethical
practice of Engineering or Engineering ethics is a field in moral principles applied to engineering
practices (Rigney 2017). All societal, client and professional obligations of the engineers are
examined and included under ethical conduct. The fundamental principles include truth,