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Australian identity and culture essay thesis
Is australia a multicultural country
Australian identity and culture essay thesis
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How has White Australia shaped Australian identity? The essence of White Australia molded the basis upon which Australian identity is shaped. A individual's way of identifying oneself to fitting to the country in which they live is an correlation enabled by national distinctiveness, which converts to an “significant module of identity”. Domestic individuality is a “collectively fabricated notion or parable” amalgamating its populace; its advocated types frequently imitate principles the populace wishes their country and in turn individually to be exemplifying. Communal custom usually delivers mutual ground from which extravagant, rational national identity and standards can be established. Common self-identification as white persons of the …show more content…
The end of the 19th century Australian population comprised mainly of settlers from the Britain; the mainstream of the population consequently had joint communal dialect, past, and backgrounds. This ‘Britishness’, Meaney implies, was a fable more suitable to Australia, where its customs were regimented, compared to Britain, where it subsisted as a knowledge of apprehensions. Shared self-identification as British molded Australian identity delivering a domestic legend of a nation established, conquered and governed by white dependents of Britain, a ‘White Australia’. National identity is absolute by 19th century meaning, connecting certain individuals; any other inhabits are omitted from that distinctiveness, and in turn the country. By identifying Australia as a land conquered simply by the British, settlers banned the existence of any other background. The presence of Indigenous Australians was thus a …show more content…
The present main standard is now multiculturalism. Primary Australian national distinctiveness, given its connotation with the strategy and essence of ‘White Australia’ that has been so methodically denounced, is therefore frequently viewed as ruined, becoming a notice of disgraceful and culpable prejudiced past. Yet although ‘White Australia’ neither concerns to contemporary civilization nor is it acknowledged, it amalgamated Australia in a shared power of persistence and confidence, without which Federation might have been difficult. Its effect loiters in our structures of administration, debates over refugees, disputes about Indigenous land rights and the substance of school syllabuses, and conclusively in general aspiration to follow to the understandings of political appropriateness, and prevent the brand of being a nation of
The 2014 Walkley Award winning documentary, "Cronulla Riots: the day that shocked the nation" reveals to us a whole new side of Aussie culture. No more she’ll be right, no more fair go and sadly no more fair dinkum. The doco proved to all of us (or is it just me?) that the Australian identity isn’t really what we believe it to be. After viewing this documentary
During world war two Australia came close to being invaded, the Japanese in Sydney Harbor were a huge fright to many Australians. After world war two it seemed Australia needed to populate or perish. So the government made a big push to fill Australia. Many children were born due to this new idea. They were called the 'Baby boomers'. The baby boomers were being born at huge rates and inflating Australians population. The white Australia policy was pretty much abandoned as migrants flooded into Australia. White Australians still felt that they were superior but they needed these immigrants to populate Australia.
Key events in Aboriginal Australian history stem from the time Australia was first discovered in 1788. For instance, when Federation came into existence in 1901, there was a prevailing belief held by non Aboriginal Australians that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005:259) which resulted in the Indigenous people being excluded from the constitution except for two mentions – Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and Section 51, part 26, which gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. Aboriginal people were officially excluded from the vote, public service, the Armed Forces and pensions. The White Australia mentality/policy Australia as “White” and unfortunately this policy was not abolished until 1972. REFERENCE
...ndigenous recognition and the removal of racist remarks has been an on-going theme for a vast majority of time. The necessity of Constitutional reform to close the gap on cultural divide as well as support the on-going concept of reconciliation is essential in ensuring Australia continues to improve and nurture its relationship with Indigenous peoples. The process of amendment through referendum has proven to be problematic in the past, with the success rate exceptionally low. Though with key factors such as bi-partisan support, widespread public knowledge and correct management, the alteration to remove racial discrimination and provide recognition for Indigenous persons within the Constitution is highly achievable. If proposed and eventually passed, this will provide assistance in eliminating many of the cultural gaps Indigenous persons face throughout society.
Of course it is naïve to believe that Australians only developed an identity after the First World War, but it is true to say that it was changed forever. Before Australia became the Australia known today, it was a land of bush rangers, farmers and convicts; a penal colony that had ambitions of becoming a nation who self-governed and had unified defence and transport*. Before federation Australia had fought in Sudan and the Boer War to provide support to the mother country as it was thought to be a heroic endeavour that was a type of rite of passage (Australian War Memorial, n.d.) and there was a global perception of who and what Australians were. Upon federation the people were very consciously intent on building themselves into a great nation (Bean, 1993), but not to sever ties to Britain completely as mostly foreign policy relied on what the British government dictated (Rickard, 1992).
Thus, this creates connotations to patriotism and pride towards the country the reader lives in. Coupled with the large image of Australia filled with smaller images of people of all ages, and race, sporting the Australian flag, influences the reader to enter the article with a positive attitude towards Australia Day, as it seems to put this day in high esteem, which consequently convinces the audience, before even commencing to read, that the day is about ‘unity’ and not division. The smaller images of a non-traditional and traditional stereotypical Australian prove that race play no part in this celebratory day, creating the sense of Australia being an accepting
Choo, C and Hollbach, S. 2003. History and Native Title. Western Australia: Studies in Western Australian History.
The rights and freedoms achieved in Australia in the 20th and 21st century can be described as discriminating, dehumanising and unfair against the Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians have achieved rights and freedoms in their country since the invasion of the English Monarch in 1788 through the exploration and development of laws, referendums and processes. Firstly, this essay will discuss the effects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Indigenous Australians through dehumanising and discriminating against them. Secondly, this essay will discuss how Indigenous Australians gained citizenship and voting
The history of colonisation is intricately linked with the creation of the “Other” just as with patriarchal designation of women as the “Other” in relation to men. In Australia the notion of the “Other” in relation to gender and race is inherently linked to the formation of “Australia” as a “heterotopic” entity, built on the doctrine of terra nullius. The doctrine of terra nullius was established and propagated through the mapping of the continent, concealing as with empty spaces on colonial maps, the Aboriginal connections to history, identity and culture that forms the basis of the Indigenous ontological ...
Samuel Wagan Watson presents an Aboriginal perspective on Australian identity, exploring the marginalization of Aboriginal culture. Watson associates
Ever since the 1970s, Australia has become a multicultural nation. Australia’s multiculturalism is a way to explain the variety of ethnic backgrounds within the Australian people. “It implies that there are many ways of being Australian, not just one ‘Australian way of life’” (Carter 333). Multiculturalism has majorly changed the way that people view Australian history and identity.
Collective Identity is an individual or groups set beliefs and rituals that make up there own personal identity. It is how one can belong or feel accepted by a group or create how a person is. Indigenous people here in Australia are an example of a very strong version of collective identity. Indigenous people belong to tribes or clans, and all the separate clans have different collective identities but they are all similar in some ways. An indigenous clan that you are apart of determines on where you are born and also your language group. There are many different things that make up the aboriginal identity one of the main thing being the Dreaming, which is the creation story of the aboriginals. The originally known as the Dream Time is the
Historical accounts have often overlooked the more violent aspects of Australia’s colonisation (Watson 2002, p. 6). This approach to Australian historiography presents a whitewashed view of the past. Within this essay, is a critical analysis and comparison of two representations of the frontier conflicts of Australia. The historical texts reviewed in this paper, Through Their Eyes (Lakic & Wrench 1994) and Rivers of Blood (Medcalf 1995), examine darker elements of Australia’s history and recognise the experiences of Indigenous people. They belong to a modern historiography that extends beyond the proud, patriotic and pleasantly sanitised view of Australia’s dominant culture to explore how the events of Australia’s colonisation impacted people’s
The British settlers, the ‘Australians’, did commit genocide on the native Aboriginal population through assimilation, “the killing of so many Aborigines by disease, loss of access to land and food, and by armed conflict.” Some historians may argue that by the definition of genocide (“the systematic killing of all or part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group”) the situation in Australia was not a genocide, because it wasn’t systematic, it merely happened without methodical planning. This essay will look at the impact/different actions of Australians and in what ways they were genocidal. The Australians’ intentions were to breed out Aboriginal culture and the Aboriginal people themselves.