Indigenous People Essay

1125 Words3 Pages

During the country’s colonial period, the indigenous people in Australia were subjected to mass killings because of European interests. This account of genocide is clearly identifiable by the immense number of casualties, yet other instances of genocide occur under the public radar. According to the 1948 definition of genocide, which includes other elements beyond mass murder, it is accurate to support the idea that genocide against Aboriginal Australians has continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1948, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide established a concrete definition for what actually constitutes genocide. This fundamental aspect used to qualify genocide is the condition that an action is intended to destroy a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The emphasis of the 1948 definition is that it specifies those qualifying actions. Besides the most obvious method of physical killing, genocide can occur through other methods such as mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions favorable for the destruction of their way of life, proposing measure to prevent births, or forcibly transferring children from one group to another. These criteria validate the stance that the modern day treatment of Aboriginal Australians constitutes genocide. Though the mass murders of the colonial period may have decreased or ceased, cultural genocide is a major supporter to the idea that genocide has continued in Australia. While this act may not involve the physical killing of people, it does signify measures taken to eliminate the culture that defines a people. In his article Australia: a continuing genocide? author Damien Short notes that this process of cultural genocide takes place in t... ... middle of paper ... ...diverse world. Works Cited • Noyce, Phillip, Christine Olsen, John Winter, Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, Gulpilil, Ningali Lawford, Myarn Lawford, Deborah Mailman, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Christopher Doyle, John Scott, Veronika Jenet, Peter Gabriel, Roger Ford, and Doris Pilkington. Rabbit-proof Fence. United States: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2003. • Short, Damien. "Australia: A Continuing Genocide?" Journal of Genocide Research 12.1-2 (2010): 45-68. Print. • "The Intervention Is Killing Our People." Web log post. Rollback the Intervention. 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 5 Oct. 2011. . • "The Legal Definition of Genocide." Prevent Genocide International. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct 2011. .

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