Indigenous Knowledges, First Knowledges: Books of Australian First Knowledges看展覽
Today, there are about 980,000 people who identify themselves as Aboriginal Australian, accounting for 3.8% of the Australian population. The number of ethnic groups is estimated to be 350 to 750. There were once 250 aboriginal languages, 120 remain today, 45 are in continuous use, and about 13 are widely used.
They have been long time oppressed and discriminated, and are still not officially recognized by the government, so there are no official statistics. In 2008, the Australian Prime Minister formally apologized to ‘Stolen Generations’. From 1900s to 1970s, Australian Aborogines suffered from the assimilation policy. Children were taken away and fostered in white families, forced to rename as westerner, stop speaking their mother tongue, becoming the‘stolen generations’. In 2021 the government allocated funds for compensation after appology.