Western Australia Assimilation Approaches and the Impacts on the Aboriginal people

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Western Australia Assimilation Approaches and the Impacts on the Aboriginal people
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Introduction
Assimilation was a policy in the ascendancy in Indigenous affairs from the 1930s to the
1960s. All Aborigines and part-Aborigines were supposed to attain a way of living which the rest
of the Australians lived. This was supposed to see all individuals in Australia live as one
community with the same rights, and responsibilities.1 Also, all were to observe the same
customs as well as be influenced by the same hopes, beliefs, and loyalty. Ideally, assimilation
involves enhancing a particular group in the society to suit the norms and culture practiced by the
rest of the society. This essay will clearly outline the approaches that the Western Australia
authorities used to implement assimilation in the twentieth century. It will examine how this
approaches had devastating impacts on the Aborigines people. In so doing, this paper will
articulate the factor that led to the assimilation process.
The first half of the twentieth century was not an encouraging moment for the
Aborigines. The western Authorities believed that they would inevitably die out. Unfortunately,
the massive growth of the indigenous population's half-casts pronounced to the authorities that
the Aborigines were not to extinct any day sooner. The then Australian government sought a
second plan.2 It decided to stop its protection rule of separating the Indigenous people from the
White people. Assimilation rule was the substitute which proposed a natural death of the full
blood Aborigines through elimination assimilating half-casts to the white community. Several
approaches were used to make the assimilation a success as discussed below:
1 Briscoe, Gordon. 2003. Counting, Health and Identity. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
2 Broome, Richard. 2010. Aboriginal Australians. Crows nest: Allen & Unwin

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To begin with, White superiority, it was an approach that was founded on black
inferiority and white superiority assumption. It is an assimilation approach that was initially
outlined during the first commonwealth and state Aboriginals authorities’ conference in the year
1937.3 During this conference, it was believed that those Aboriginals especially the half-casts
was supposed to be absorbed be assimilated by the commonwealth people. This policy was to be
applied to the end until all half casts were converted into White citizens. The assimilation
policies hypothesized that the indigenous people could enjoy the same living standards that the
white Australians were experiencing after fully assimilating European customs and beliefs. The
Australian government expected all Aborigines and part-Aborigines to attain the same manner of
living like the rest of the Australians. This could lead to the achievement of the policies goal of
achieving one community Australia with similar rights, privileges, same responsibilities, and
same customs observation under the influence of the same beliefs, hopes, and loyalties.
Unfortunately, the white superiority approach was not favorable to the Aborigines. In the
process of the assimilation, the identity and culture of the Indigenous people were undermined.
Similarly, dispossession of the Aborigines was justified. Many of the indigenous children were
removed from their parents. The assimilation policy acted on a well established as well as
widely-accepted ideology that the Aborigines were inferior in comparison to the Australians.
This meant that the Aboriginals ways of life, languages, and culture were substandard. The
assimilations main objective to extinct the Indigenous culture as well as the Indigenous people.
Secondly, the Aborigines were forced to live on the fringes as a way of assimilation.
During this era of conformity, most of the Aborigines were forced out of the reserves. The
3 Charlton, Alan. 2001. "Conceptualising Aboriginality: Reading AO Neville's Australia's Coloured
Minority." Australian Aboriginal Studies 2 (." Australian Aboriginal Studies 47-60.