Rise And Upsurge Of Australia’s Aboriginal Movement After World War Ⅱ

Australia’s aboriginal movement, which means a social movement leaded by aboriginal activists and white democratic personages to fight for political, social and economic rights and interests of the Australian aborigines, has been started rising in the 1920 s and 1930 s, but become increasingly boomed after World War II.After World War II, "Assimilation Policy" imposed by the Australia government on the aboriginal, had been not only made them suffer from discrimination with on political rights, but also tremendously damaged aboriginal culture. Young generation of the aboriginal has been politicized and actively responded to domestic racial problems by the influence of the Black Power Movement in the USA and the struggle against racial discrimination in South Africa. Along with the Australia aboriginal and white people leaders establishing organizations for safeguarding legal rights of aborigines, the aboriginal movements began to rise, and soon afterwards entered into an upsurge as the aboriginal people striving for their rights in the 1960 s and 1970 s. In 1965, the aboriginal activist directly protested the long-existed racial segregation against aborigines during "Freedom Ride" in New South Wales. Therefore, a constitutional amendment had been passed by an Australian referendum to amend the clauses of Australia constitution that denied citizenship of the Aboriginal and further admit their legal citizenship in 1967. Aboriginal Australians set up Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside of the parliament building to complain of sluggish action made the government on changing the Aboriginal policy in 1972, which received a huge response.Under the pressure of the Aboriginal movements rising increasingly, the Australian government gradually altered its policies on the aborigines, to give up the assimilation policy and carry out integration policy while establish a new management system for and endow various rights and interests to the aboriginal. Thus the political and social status of the Aboriginal people had been preliminarily improved. Gough Whitlam, a leader of the Labor Party, immediately started undertaking affairs of managing the Aboriginal after coming to power in 1972. He had speeded up transferring administration authority of the aboriginal people’s affairs from the states to the federation, abolished discriminatory law against the aborigines through legislation, and meanwhile implemented a welfare scheme to revitalize them. After succeeding Whitlam as prime minister, John Malcolm Fraser had been positively promoted solving aboriginal problems by following the solution for the rights of the aboriginal people specified by his predecessor in general. On the issue about land right of the aborigines, Whitlam appointed the judger, A. E. Woodward, as a member of the investigation committee on land right of the aborigines, to investigate the Aboriginal people’s land right of Northern territory and conclude a report, which was mainly about the North territory. However, this report still contributed a positive effect on issuing the Aboriginal land Rights(NT) 1976. The government granted a complete property in land to the Aboriginal through the legislation in 1976, but there were some limits. Even so, this was still a remarkable progress for the Aboriginal to strive for land rights and interests. The post-World War II era was a waking time for the Australia Aboriginal, who tried hard to win civil rights, social rights and land right. All of these movements have been brought great influences to Australia’s political life.