ABSTRACT
The Aboriginal genocide differs from other genocides. Physical killing, forcible removal of children, and incarceration on reserves amounted to the slow, sustained attacks on the cultural, religious, linguistic, and biological lives of a once hunter-gatherer people present on the continent for at least 60,000 years.
Aboriginal persons number only 750,000 in a population of 25 million Australians. They are not given to political demonstration or fighting their cause internationally, as they have a greater propensity to engage in reconciliation measures than their perpetrators. The latter remain in disbelief about Australia's dark history. Many are enraged that the word “genocide” is now in the political lexicon. They proclaim that such events could never have occurred in a democracy.
While a politics of apology began in the1980s, disdain still defines the national attitude, and discrimination remains the hallmark of Australian behavior. A symbolic form of constitutional recognition as a “First Peoples” is likely by 2020, but any form of national reparations for past depredations is not.
