Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 32

The Plight of Africans in Australia
Race, class and gender in Cuba and the world

Christine Ayorinde
Professor and writer
Great Britain

A

recent genetic study has revealed that the indigenous peoples known as Australian Aborigines left Africa 75,000 years ago. "[The
discovery] strongly supports the idea that Aborigines
were [part of] an early and separate wave of human
expansion out of Africa, before the subsequent wave
that established Europeans and Asians," said Professor Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for
Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. The study
also notes that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples have kept alive what is probably one of the
oldest continuous cultures on earth.1 One important
aspect of their culture is "dreaming" - stories handed
down from generation to generation over thousands of
years that relate physical features of the landscape to
mythology.
Sadly, like Afro-descendants around the world, they
are the most disadvantaged group in their own country, suffering higher rates of unemployment, poor
health and imprisonment. Their life expectancy is, on
average, 17 years shorter than that of other Australians. In his recent documentary, Utopia, journalist,
filmmaker and campaigner John Pilger depressingly
concludes that far too many Aboriginal individuals
still live in extreme poverty in ‘the richest land on
earth’.2
The Great Australian Silence
Like other post-colonial nations, Australia was
founded on the appropriation of territory, accompanied by the exploitation and genocide of the indigenous peoples. Aboriginal peoples probably numbered
around one million at the time of British settlement in
1788. Today, there are only 470,000, around 2% of a
total population of 23 million. One of the worst cases

of genocide was in Tasmania, an island to the south of
Australia, where just over 200 years ago there was
population of about 6000-7000 indigenous inhabitants. Within just 30 years, that society had been destroyed by colonial settlement and the people were almost wiped out.3
Australia was originally settled by convicts who were
deported from Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Transportation, as this forced migration was
called, was a common punishment for minor crimes
such as stealing low value items or livestock. In the
20th century, emigration from Europe was encouraged
in order to populate the country. People from Britain
were offered “assisted passages” - help with the cost
of traveling to Australia - to seek a better life in the
sunshine. This, coupled with its rich natural resources, meant that Australia became known as the
‘Lucky Country.’
The Australian Constitution, which came into force in
1901, did not acknowledge that the country’s history
began long before the arrival of the white settlers. As
with other histories written '