Treatment of the Australian Aborigines

Who were the Aborigines in Australia?

The Aborigines were the native people of Australia.

How did the British colonists treat the Australian Aborigines?

The British settlers in Australia treated the Aborigines badly.

• ❖ The Aborigines did not have the same ideas about land ownership as the British. They believed that the land belonged to everyone.
• ❖ The British deliberately misunderstood the Aborigines' ideas, and interpreted them as meaning that they could take the land they wanted without paying compensation.
• ❖ In their hunger for more land, the British settlers ignored the protests of the Aborigines, and murdered many thousands of them.
• ❖ They also used laws to exclude the Aborigines, who became a minority people with fewer rights than the white Australians.