Invasion, Settlement or Colonisation
For over 60,000 years Aboriginal people lived on this continent, owning, caring for and being sustained by the land. With their deep knowledge of nature and respect for the environment in which they lived, they developed a successful economy and a rich spiritual and cultural life. 1788 saw the arrival of Europeans and the decimation of the aboriginal people.
1. Enter territory with armed forces to attack, damage or occupy it.
2. Crowd in; tourists invaded the city.
3. Penetrate harmfully; the disease had invaded all parts of the body.
Invasion suggests that there was already an inhabitant of the land and that the land of the inhabitants was. It also suggests that there was force used in claiming the land from its original inhabitants through use of military force.
The European government that came to colonise Australia referred to the land as "Terra Nullius", which means land that belongs to no one. They divided up land that was not theirs and built houses and farms. The aborigines were seen as savages.
1. Not civilized; barbaric: a savage people.
2. Ferocious; fierce: in a savage temper.
The Aborigines were forced off their native land and when they opposed they were shot, hung or executed by other means. One such occasion was the "Battle of Pinjarra".
'They might have called it the Battle of Pinjarra but like all of the massacres of the Aborigines it was more a case of wholesale slaughter than of some equally poised, European-style battle.'
Wrote Bruce Elder in his book "Blood on the Wattle: the massacres and maltreatment of Australian Aborigines".
Invasion, Settlement or Colonisation
When the continent was invaded by Europeans in the nineteenth century, the White historians who wrote about Australia included a section on the nati
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