Impact of Colonisation on Indigenous Australians and their Education

This essay discusses the impact of colonisation on Indigenous Australians, including dispossession, exploitation, displacement, assimilation, and segregation. It also highlights the negative effects of colonisation on Indigenous health and education, including the loss of culture, violence, and the lack of opportunities. The essay provides recommendations for improving Indigenous education, including acknowledging Aboriginal culture, embracing diversity, and respecting the Aboriginal language.

Running Head : SOCIOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY
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Introduction
In Australia, the colonisation has a devastating effect over the indigenous people living in
the land for more than thousands of years. The colonisation that included the context of
language, culture and identity had showered negative impact over the indigenous Australians.
According to the statistics, the lingering injustice of the context of colonisation included
dispossession, exploitation, displacement, assimilation and segregation (Schwab, 2018). This
nature over the Indigenous Australians were being justified by the British Colonies that never
acknowledged, respected or valued the Indigenous Australians.
The trauma caused by the effects of colonisation included the loss of culture, violence,
the loss of land to the Indigenous population. There has numerous of government policies like
forceful removal of children from parents has been often passed through generation within the
communities with some of the major devastating impacts. In the context of history and the
governmental policies, the Indigenous people faced segregation, dispossession and assimilation.
Some of the challenges face by the indigenous Australians on the regards of the governmental
policies included separation from children, banning in the town after 6pm, barred from hospitals,
health care facilities and educational institutions and forcible employment in the home of non
indigenous with withheld earnings from government (Hunter and Schwab, 2018). Furthermore
the indigenous Australians were not also allowed in the public areas without prior permission.
Some of the continues effects of assimilation and segregation within the classroom for the
indigenous students included harsh talks and negative attitudes towards them, they were also
forced to follow Eurocentric curriculum and were often insulted and looked down upon
regarding their cultures. The essay will briefly map the key points targeting the historical focus,

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classroom focus and the direction to the reader followed by focus in the classroom and
recommendation expected.
Impact of colonisation
The colonisation has resulted in racism, inequality and the disruption among the
Indigenous Australian cultures. The colonisation has been one of the most detrimental regarding
the determinants of health that still contributes to impact the health outcomes of aboriginals
significantly. Some of the key aspects of colonisation that negatively impacted the Indigenous
health includes the following (Bennett, Redfern and Zubrzycki, 2017). These historical events
furthermore affected the languages, the culture and the identity of the Indigenous Australians
including segregation, assimilation and dispossession including the context of the stolen
generations.
According to the history of Resistance, the indigenous people actively resisted the
invasion of British people which resulted in a brutal massacre commonly known as the frontier
wars. The year 1960 witnessed numerous of indigenous families breaking down their resistance
(Bodkin-Andrews and Carlson, 2016). The assimilation policy included the scenario where many
of the Indigenous children were snatched from their mothers and family and was being
assimilated to the non-indigenous homes or the areas that are under the care of state. These
children were the stolen generations who are still searching for their current families. From
changing their name and hindering them to permit their honour towards culture and languages,
the indigenous Australians suffered violence and discrimination. The Indigenous Australians
mostly have grown up with the trauma regarding the abusive environments (Axelsson, Kukutai
and Kippen, 2016). Some of the other factors include the transmission of poverty together with

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inadequate education, poor level of nutrition and health care followed by the lack of
opportunities.
In the context of the explanation of the loss for the Indigenous Australians there has been
several of the factors including loss of language, loss of culture and identity together with the
raised mental illness for the intergenerational traumas. The policies related to removal of
children left a legacy regarding trauma and loss continuing to affect the communities and
families of Indigenous Australia.
Providing an educational context
The history related to education among the Indigenous Australians covers a wide range of
major shifts of policy under the system of discrimination that are segregated, excluded and
removed from the families. The schooling was not seen as one of the responsibilities of the
government of the country during the preliminary pat of the colonial era in the NSW (Paradies,
2016). The context of education in this period was observed as the way for civilising the
aboriginal people and teaching them the western ways of life and Christianity. During the class
room premises of the residential schools, the aboriginal children were often abused and
neglected. The range of violence included sexual, emotional and physical torture by the teachers
and the non teaching staffs who were mostly non indigenous in origin. Furthermore within the
class room discrimination in terms of preferences prevailed followed by bullying by the non-
aboriginal children (Black, Frederico and Bamblett, 2019). In the year 1848, one of the features
of the policy by Board of National Education was its exclusion of the Indigenous Australian
from the government schools, the indigenous Australians were refereed as the blacks. Under the
existing pace of colonial situations, according the governmental policies it was impracticable to
give any sort of educational facilities for the indigenous Australians. Until the public Instruction

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Act of the year 1880, the aboriginal children received discrimination at schools. To summarize
there has been major mistreatments of the indigenous students including the lack of proper
literacy and the capital knowledge’s as an aftermath of colonisation.
This section will highlight the lack of the indigenous perspectives towards the curriculum
in school followed by deficit thinking and inherited negative perception of the schooling. The
context of racism plays a very important role towards the degraded class room environment for
the aboriginal Australians (Harrison and Sellwood, 2016). The experiences related to racism
predicts low scores of the test and also their own self perceptions. This furthermore affects the
wellbeing, spelling, reading, school attendance and the cultural identity. There has been large
number of evidences highlighting negative perception of schooling among aboriginal students
including racial discrimination and bullying within the classroom that contributes to poor and
negative educational experiences for the indigenous Australians. The devaluation of indigenous
cultures and language together with the constant force to adopt the western culture has been one
of the major factors contributing to negative perception regarding classroom and schooling.
The implications for the indigenous Australians is the revised educational policy by the
government of Australia that needs to target the encouragement of celebration of language,
culture and identity of indigenous Australians. ‘ Closing the gap’ policy by government is one of
the renowned intervention (Stocker, Collard and Rooney, 2016). Furthermore improvement of
school learning environment together with the improvement of the teaching approaches by
supporting of student focused teachings, un biased teaching techniques and provision of
intensive learning support are the factors of intervention plan that needs to be taken care of.
Recommendation

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The main purpose is to develop an indigenous education action plan and also to guide the
national efforts for closing the gap at the early childhood and school level educational outcomes
for the aboriginal children. The recommended strategy includes a wide range of actions for
bringing both the local level efforts and systematic improvements through out the domains of
activities that will help in closing the gap among aboriginal and non-aboriginal educational
outcomes (Shepherd et al., 2017). These includes engagement and connections, attendances,
quality and unbiased teaching, leadership and development of workforce and the pathways to the
real post school options. Recommended strategy furthermore includes acknowledgement of
aboriginal culture, embracing of diversity practises within the school. Using of local sources and
respecting the aboriginal language. It is important for the government of the country to help the
indigenous Australian to restore and continue with their cultural importance and symbol.

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References
Axelsson, P., Kukutai, T., & Kippen, R. (2016). The field of Indigenous health and the role of
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Bennett, B., Redfern, H., & Zubrzycki, J. (2017). Cultural responsiveness in action: Co-
constructing social work curriculum resources with Aboriginal Communities. British
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Black, C., Frederico, M., & Bamblett, M. (2019). Healing through Connection: An Aboriginal
Community Designed, Developed and Delivered Cultural Healing Program for
Aboriginal Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. The British Journal of Social
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Bodkin-Andrews, G., & Carlson, B. (2016). The legacy of racism and Indigenous Australian
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Harrison, N. E., & Sellwood, J. (2016). Learning and teaching in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
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Hunter, B., & Schwab, R. (2018). The determinants of Indigenous educational outcomes.
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Paradies, Y. (2016). Colonisation, racism and indigenous health. Journal of Population
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Schwab, R. (2018). Educational'failure'and educational'success' in an Aboriginal community.
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