Before 1788, about 300,000 aborigines populated Australia. This was a fact that the colonies tried to remove from the new found identity. These nomadic people had inhabited the world's oldest continent for more than 10,000 years. They are a significant part of our identity today, though many important events allowed us to think and act differently from our embarrassing history. For more than a century and right up to the late 1960s, on government orders, Aboriginal children with white blood in their veins were snatched from their mothers and placed in orphanages, mission stations or with foster families who were supposed to make good little Australians out of them. The slogan in those days was "keep Australia white". After the genocide by the early settlers and the semi-slavery of the reserves, all that remained in order to have done with these "sub-humans" and make them forget where they came from and who they were, was to assimilate them by force right from the cradle. This was our history, and our aim at creating a “white identity”. But today we are moving toward and have established recognition of the rights of Aborigines as the occupiers of Australia long before 1788 and respect for Aboriginal culture.
These we have established a multi-cultural identity, including “The policy of multiculturalism”: meaning the approval given by successive governments and the people to the settlement, in our midst, of divers ethnic groups with different cultures. The policy discloses to the world that we are a tolerant nation. Although multiculturalism certainly demonstrates the element of tolerance in our identity, there are some people who seem to be suggesting that Australia's identity, whatever it might have been, has been wholly given over to an identity which is nothing more than that of a multicultural nation. This is quite a large change from our past image!
I believe the change of focus and tolerance changed during the early 70’s through to the 80’s when Australia’s immigration policy no longer discriminated against non- - Europeans. The new image tried to bring forth people with skills, which were needed here, in Australia. The Year of Citizenship in 1988/89 was a fantastic message sent from all Australians – that Australian citizenship is available to all people if the choose to make it their home
It is the year 2001 and we are an immigrant society, derived from others. According to the statistics in 1996, nearly 42% of Australian's population was born overseas or has one or both parents born overseas. The nation comprises of many, many ethnic groups and different cultures, all of which make up our Australian identity. Though our history may be shameful and although we haven’t officially said “sorry”, we are tolerant and want Australia to be the best it can be, even if we need help from people we never considered Australians previously. Today, all Australians, of all colours and nations march together – abolishing our old identity, renewing and unifying our new identity. We all identify ourselves toward out beautiful homeland, which is widely regarded as safe and opportunistic. We include our native animals in our identity, we succeed in areas of sport and technology and have a range of food, clothing and music which is “stereo –typically” Australian. All this makes up who we are. We are all Australian’s.
