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overtly, as the issues of land rights, frontier conflicts and traditional way of life is mitigated
through comparison with that of the “new settlers” (Lawrence et al., 1986, p. 274). To
illustrate this point, the entire passage that includes Indigenous Australians is copied below.
• Although relations with the Aborigines were at first good, they quickly
worsened as it became apparent that the British had not come to pay a visit, or to
trade, but intended to deprive the Aborigines of their land. Aborigines, unlike the
British settlers, did not believe in individual ownership of land. Rather, the land
belonged to the tribe. The European settlers did not recognize such ownership of
land. They seized the land and gradually drove the Aborigines out of their traditional
areas. At least 20 000 Aborigines were killed while fighting to stay on their land.
Today Aborigines are attempting, by peaceful means, to regain a small proportion of
the land that was originally their own. Laws have been passed by the federal
government, and by some state governments, that recognize the Aborigines’ rights to
the land. The “land rights” issue is a direct result of the European takeover two
hundred years ago.
A further cause of poor relations between the Aborigines and the new settlers was the
clash of cultures. The British settlers came from a society that was in the process of
industrializing and had built huge cities; the Aborigines belonged to a nomadic
hunting and gathering society. Most of the new settlers were not interested in the rich
mythology of the Aborigines, their complex society, or their close relationship with
the land. The settlers assumed their ways were superior, and the Aborigines suffered.
The population of full-blood Aborigines, estimated at over 1 million in 1788, was
fewer than 60 000 by 1900. (Lawrence et al., 1986, p. 274)
7.8.2 Discourses of the tent embassy.
The black and white photograph included as Source 7.35, originally published in the
Melbourne Herald and included in Crossroads: Imperialism and race relations (Cowie,
1982) shows a group of people (primarily Indigenous Australians, with some non-Indigenous
supporters included) gathered on the lawn outside the then Australian Federal Parliament
House. This image demonstrates the participation of Indigenous Australians in contemporary
politics and unlike the majority of images across textbooks from this era, represents
Indigenous Australians in contemporary society, rather than a stereotyped traditional, tribal
environment. The image, taken at about head level showing people informally gathered,
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