Challenges Of Indigenous Aboriginal Youth

“It might help if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves dispossessed of the land we lived on for 50,000 years, and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours. Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless.” (Keating, 1993)

Indigenous Australian youth still face many challenges evolving into mature men and women in present contemporary Australian society despite the formal acknowledgment of equality. In this essay, it will be identified of how Indigenous Aboriginal youth continue to be affected by white dominant Australian culture including experienced marginalisation, oppression and stereotyping of their culture and beliefs, and the continued affect of connection and interdependence

This is predominately a social phenomenon by which a minority or sub group is excluded where their needs or desires are detached. Initially, marginalisation within the Aboriginal community is a product of ‘White European’ colonisation in the late 1700’s. In fact, Indigenous Australians are still experiencing marginalisation by white Australian culture. This is due to the developments of policy, programs and practices in order to meet the requirements of white society (Baskin C, 2003). For Aboriginal youth, the continued marginalisation is an immediate felt experience. (The Royal Commission) in (Graham, 1999) recognised that Aboriginal youth are furthermost socially and economically marginalised group of young people in Australia, as it was further recognised that their marginalisation was borne out of a complex interrelation of social, economic and cultural factors. (Beresford & Omaji, 1996 in Graham,1999) asserted that evidence of the marginalisation of Aboriginal youth was evident in the early 1990s and since then, the situation has intensified. As a result, a considerable number of Aboriginal youth have alienated themselves from mainstream society by the interaction of family poverty and dysfunction, educational failure and labour market exclusion. As a direct result, many young Aboriginals, particularly those in urban and metropolitan settings, have sought refuge in a subcultural lifestyle characterised by crime, drug abuse and