[Music] in 1869 the aboriginal protection act was established this was the start of more than a century of policies and disagreements over the rights and freedoms of indigenous australians this act allowed the local government to regulate aboriginal people's lives the protection policy gave the power to the central board for the protection aborigines to control everything from housing employment relationships and everyday life at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th century it was commonly thought that indigenous australians would eventually die out this was until the government saw the growing population of so-called half-caste a term which is now considered derogatory meaning a person of different backgrounds they eventually decided to take the approach of assimilation assimilation is taking on the traits of the dominant culture to such a degree that the assimilating groups become socially indistinguishable from other members of the society in this context assimilation is dehumanizing and disregarding of cultural differences this approach had the mindset to let all of the full blood aboriginals die out and try encourage the so-called half-cars to assimilate into white culture white australians believe they were fundamentally higher or better than aboriginals this belief was rooted in white superiority which is the belief that people of darker skin color were inferior to those of lighter complexion assimilation assumed that aboriginals could live like white australians if they started to live more like europeans adopting their customs and way of life this discrimination wasn't based on skin color but rather directly targeting aboriginal way of life it was direct oppression to make a european way of living seems superior ruled out any option of people deciding if they want to transition to this new way of life this idea that the western culture was superior nowadays has a name eurocentrism a world view that is centered on western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-western civilizations in 1960 the assimilation approach continued with the release of the assimilation policy this policy was one of the sole reasons the stolen generation ever existed although from a distance the idea of assimilation might sound like pure evil it did have some good motives behind it such as providing better standards of health housing schooling and much more but this was far outweighed by the contradicted logic and poor foundational ideology the major flaw of many in trying to assimilate aboriginals into white society was simply because they weren't viewed as equals and the whole idea of trying to get them to join society was based on this belief that their way of life was superior the settlers never took into account whether they should be more accepting of different culture purely because they had this limiting mindset the european settlers forced their opinions and ideas on them and physically ripped their families apart in an effort to do so in the assimilation policy it says that in the view of all australian governments that all their aborigines were expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other australians and to live as members of a single australian community it goes on to explain that how they will conform to the western way of living in every part of their lives the 1960s was a big decade for both sides of the story welcoming a big push in indigenous right activism and petition the pressure to fix the policies of assimilation grew immensely the increasing awareness of injustice and oppression to the aboriginal community made people question the ideology of white superiority that had been completely ignored had such a big impact that it caused the australian government to call a referendum costing them around one million dollars and accounting for inflation that's around 13 million dollars the referendum asks do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the constitution entitled an act to alter the constitution so as to admit certain words related to the people of aboriginal race in any state so the aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the population the vote ended up being almost a staggering 91 in favor of yes the referendum gave indigenous people some of the rights they deserve like social security wage equality and more although it may seem as though we've finally reached a place where indigenous australians have equal rights there are still ongoing discrimination and problems faced in the real world