Immigrant Attitudes Towards Indigenous Australians START SLIDE Motivation My motivation for this research is to investigate the relationship

between Indigenous Australians and White Australia in a context that highlights the atrocities committed towards Aboriginals. As Indigenous Australians have only recently been granted rights in the Australian system, a huge portion of their history is sidelined or omitted in Australian records, especially those parts which demonstrate the continued racism and intolerance perpetuated by White Australia. Most Australian history is in fact White Australian history, As Indigenous Australians are still in the midst of integration into Australian society, it makes sense to understand what factors precipitate violence towards them. No research has been undergone in this area and if Australia is really attempting to move forward and allow Indigenous Australia to integrate, there should be a concerted effort to understand what causes violence between the two ethnicities so that measures can be taken to minimize risks of returning to the pre-1980s era. SLIDE Background Indigenous Australians migrated from Africa to Asia approximately 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia 20,000 years after that. The term Aboriginal is applied to indigenous inhabitants of mainland Australia and Tasmania, but the migrants also included migrants from the Torres Strait Islands. The population of Indigenous Australians is unknown, but is estimated at being between 318,000 and 1,000,000 according to COSMOS Magazine in 2011. These Indigenous Australians utilized over 250 languages with 600 dialects, and lived mainly in the south-east, centered along Australias famous Murray River. These first colonizers lived as hunter-gatherers in semi-nomadic societies, uprooting themselves completely in response to drought, food shortages, and changes in season. As far as ethnic roots, Indigenous Australians are believed to be closely related to Central and South Asian populations, with a divergence from other global lineages. A 2011 genetic study found evidence that Aboriginal peoples carry some of the genes associated with the Denisovan peoples of Asia, suggesting that modern and archaic humans interbred in Asia before the migration to Australia. SLIDE British colonization of Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The arrival resulted in both long term and immediate consequences. The most striking of these was the epidemic of diseases introduced to the Indigenous Australian population including measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox, which was the principal cause of Aboriginal deaths in the 19th century. Using diseases offensively was the first of hundreds of violent crimes against Indigenous Australians, as anthropologists Christopher Warren and Craig Mears conclude that the British may have deployed the virus as a form of defence against Indigenous Australians.

SLIDE The massacres of Aborigines were widespread. In 1834, Governor Stirling led a party of men to a site near present day Pinjarra and attacked 80 Aboriginal people. According to White Australian records, 14 Aborigines were killed, but according to Indigenous Australia, a whole can was decimated in the Battle. The Myall Creek massacre led to the death of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children in 1838. 150 Aborigines were killed resisting arrest in the Kimberleys in 1868. In 1876, the Tasmanian government declares no recognition of people of Aboiginal heritage and claims the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person Truganini has died. SLIDE These crimes continued into the 20th and 21st Centuries, but Aborigines began to pursue their rights with more force in the late 1900s. By 1900, the recorded Indigenous population of Australia had declined to approximately 93,000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002), but it is difficult to determine exact numbers as the Constitution read as follows until 1967: In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted. The 1967 Referendum overturned the Flora and Fauna Act, which mandated that Indigenous Australians were governed and managed under the same portfolio as Australian wildlife. Uluru was handed back to its traditional owners in 1985, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was established in 1989 and most importantly, 1992 saw the High court of Australia rule in the Mabo case that native title exists over particular kinds of land, and Australia was never terra nullius, or land belonging to no-one. Unfortunately, there is still violence committed against Aborigines today. Such violence comes in many forms, and due to the xenophobia prevalent in Australia, Aborigines are still targets for violence. The aim of this project is to determine whether there are other factors that increase rates of violence against Indigenous Australians. Specifically, I will be aiming to investigate whether communities with larger proportions of immigrants have lower levels of violence towards Indigenous Australians. Data available

SLIDE The Australian Census Bureau publishes Community Profiles on towns and cities in Australia for the years 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011. These profiles provide a comprehensive statistical picture of an area [through] characteristics relating to people, families and dwellings. Community profiles contain the following six profiles; 1) Basic Community 2) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 3) Time Series 4) Place of Enumeration 5) Expanded Community 6) Working Population. One of several variables could be used as a means of testing my hypothesis. The Community Profiles include several Topics that could be utilised Country of Birth, Proficiency in Spoken English and Language Spoken at Home. Country of Birth would not be useful in that it wouldnt

distinguish Indigenous Australians from White Australians. Language Spoken at Home and Proficiency in Spoken English would both be utilizable in that they distinguish Indigenous Australians from White Australians and from migrants and second and third generation Australians. Using Language Spoken at Home may not correctly represent migrants, as some may speak English at home depending on levels of integration into Australia society. Using Proficiency in Spoken English poses the same problem, but there does not seem to be a way past this. This data is available for all towns and cities in Australia. It may also be necessary to utilize data concerning rates of Indigenous Australian imprisonment in these towns and cities.

SLIDE Methodology The methodology would be repeated for each of the years where Census data is available to test a two-part hypothesis. It would involve statistical analysis of 21 towns in 7 states and territories, determining whether there is a positive or negative relationship between the proportion of English speakers and rates of violence towards Indigenous Australians. Data on rates of violence would be gathered from either protest rates or from data pertaining to violent occurrences involving Indigenous Australians in the same towns. This data would then be statistically analyzed to determine what type of relationship exists between the variables.

SLIDE Testable implications As far as testable implications, this project has two goals. The first goal would be to determine whether each year independently demonstrates that towns with a higher proportion of foreign populations see lower rates of conflict involving Aboriginals. The second goal would be to determine whether or not there is a sea change in rates of racism towards Aboriginals over the 15 years in question; that is to say, have Australians become more racist or less racist to Aboriginals since 1996? The data would be used from towns and cities with populations ranging from thirty thousand to one hundred thousand, in an attempt to control for population as a contributing factor to racism. With three cities per state, it would also be easy to identify whether state laws are a factor in contributing to racism. Through all of this, I would be able to conclusively identify whether the main perpetrators of violence towards Indigenous Australians are White Australians, Immigrants, or non-Aboriginals as an entire group.