It seems pretty accurate enough that I can state that no country on this Earth is perfect. In fact it seems that almost every country has some form of a social integration issue, and (unfortunately) it seems that Australia is not excluded from this. Actually it seems that they are slightly similar to the United States of America, because they have quite a few social integration issues that correlates along with their indigenous population. For instance, in recent Australian news Maria Bervanakis posted an article called "Australian indigenous land rights trail Africa and Latin America, finds study," discussing how the country should be ashamed of themselves. In more detail, LandMark compared the legal indigenous peoples' lands and natural resources within 113 different countries (ranking them by using 10 indicators) coming up with not so great news for Australia. Australia, the United States, Canada and Norway scored well behind countries like Bolivia, Columbia, South Sudan, Africa and more.
Upon reading where Australia and the other countries fell, I could not help but be in some shock. Countries like this, knowing since I've grown up in the United States, base themselves on equal rights for all. So how is this happening then? Well, within Australia, it seems that a few major acts that were put into place for the purpose of giving the Aboriginal People their land rights (Aboriginal Land Rights Acts of 1976 and the Native Title Act) have been "diluted and hollowed out right from the beginning." In reality most of the Aboriginal people actually only have access to an inferior form of a land title that in all reality only gives them the right of a native title holder.
Lastly, Bervanakis concludes her article by stating that, "studies show that indigenous people are estimated to protect more than 50 per cent of the world's land surface but have formally recognized ownership of over just 10 per cent." I would like to leave off with posing the question of; if indigenous people of the world were never stripped of their 50 per cent of land ownership would countries, like Australia, still be facing the same environmental problems? If so, than would the problems be as severe as so many of them are now?
Excellent exploration, reflection and commentary on social integration concerns. I strongly encourage you to incorporate this into your final paper as well - this is perhaps the best writing I've seen on your blog - and all it really needs is a formal citation to add into the research paper.
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