This year National Reconciliation Week begins as the 2017 First Nations National Constitutional Convention came to its conclusion.
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May 27 marked 50 years since the referendum of 1967, and 25 years since the High Court of Australia recognised its Indigenous peoples had enjoyed rights to their land according to their own laws and customs before colonisation.
Half a century ago, while 91 per cent of Australia voted ‘yes’, 22 per cent of the Bega population voted against the proposed changes to the constitution allowing Indigenous people to be counted in the Census as human beings.
In news reports, Bega mayor Dudley Goldberg disagreed with a process in which Indigenous families would be allowed to live in town for the first time.
“They should be taught to observe standards of hygiene, perhaps foreign to many of them,” he said.
He labelled the move an “experiment”, where the “hereditary characteristics, instinct, established habits and behaviour common to their race” would be lost in favour of “standards more acceptable to the white community”.
Bega news articles drew the attention of so-called “social agitator” Olaf “Michael” Sawtell, who had helped abolish the use of chain gangs in the Kimberly in 1910.
“Spread the Aboriginal houses around town,” Mr Sawtell said, disagreeing with what he saw as a move akin to segregation.
An article published in the Bega District News by contributor Dan Weeks the day before the referendum stated, “there has always been racial discrimination – and always will be.”
A resident of the Glebe, where fourteen families were to move to from their forced homes at the Angledale tip, while saying they supported “assimilation” said the Glebe development would be “a gross mistake”.
The resident was concerned property values would drop, and had been advised by a real estate agent not to sell their property, as nobody was willing to buy.
Indigenous residents forced to live on the outskirts of town talk of not being allowed on school buses, and living in fear after relatives were taken from their families and placed in homes.
This year also marks 20 years since the Bringing them Home report acknowledging children were forcibly separated from their families and communities since the early days of colonisation by both governments and missionaries.