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 '