Aborigines have populated Australia for over forty thousand years; it is believed that they originated from Asia at about that time. Australia, the last discovered continent, was found by the Spanish in the mid 1500's, but they did little with that knowledge. After capturing a group of Spaniards in 1767, the British learned of its existence. The British rediscovered it in 1770. In 1788 the British began colonizing the continent with convicts in the area known as Botany Bay, in New South Wales. Their thoughts for creating the penal colony were that it was inaccessible and therefore difficult to escape, and that the small group of natives

Clark, Geoff. http://www.atsic.gov.au/default_ie.asp:1999

Now the Government has announced that it will make available $50 million over four years for counseling and family reunion services. Not only this, but on May 26, 1998 Australia observed it's inaugural National Sorry Day and week of reconciliation. The whole point was to apologize to the natives for how they had been treated by the government. The entire country observed a minute of silence and many different activities were held throughout the nation. Sorry Day was suggested by Wilson in the end of his report, though the government tabled the whole idea when they first heard it, they ended up having it one year after they had dismissed his findings.

"I grew up sadly not knowing one Aboriginal person and the view that was given to me was one of fear towards [my] people. Not once was I told that I was of Aboriginal descent . . . We were told our mother was an alcoholic and that she was a prostitute and she didn't care about us. If you were white you didn't have that dirtiness in you ... It was in our breed, in us to be like that . . . . I went through foster homes, and I never stayed in one any longer than two months before you'd be moved onto the next place and it went on and on and on . . . . They [foster family] started to get very nasty towards me. Every time I would sit down at the table for meals they would always have something mean to say to me. If I would make a mistake they would pull my hair bending my head until it hurt. A lady from the welfare came to see me, she took no notice of me and in her reports said I was very happy with them" (National ).

National Report Volume 4 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/national/vol4/index.html

This strategy, designed to absorb the Native Americans into the society of the United States, turned out to be a monumental disaster. In addition to losing their "surplus" tribal land, many Native Americans families lost their allotted land as well, despite the government's twenty five-year period of trusteeship. The poorest people of the nation, many of them now homeless and the majority still resisting assimilation reached their lowest population. In June 1924 the U.S. Congress granted these original Americans United States citizenship. Aborigines in Australia were not eligible to receive citizenship until 1967.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Aborigines Australia, Aborigines October, Australia Natives, Australia Policy, Native Americans, South Wales, Sorry Day, Assimilation Policy, Advancement Science, Ronald Wilson, assimilation policy, australia policy, white australia, native americans, white australia policy, government policy, william ferguson jack, ferguson jack, native people, denied existence, south wales, foster, forced live reserves, population estimated,
Approximate Word count = 2562
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)