Question for Australians here: is racism against aboriginals widespread in Australia? How does the govt work to prevent it?
On the plus side many Australians have a deep respect for Aboriginals that's a mixture of genuine, idealised, etc.
You can see working evidence of Government working to correct aspects of racism in things such as the Coronial inquest into death of an indigenous 19-year-old K.Walker at the hands of police.
The uncovering of attitudes with the Territorial police toward aboriginal people has been slow but steady with more to come next month.
Mind you, not the first inquest or royal commision into aboriginal deaths in custody and I doubt it will be the last.
I grew up around indigenous kids in Townsville several decades ago (shoes at our school were optional which I thought was a win for everyone). Honestly didn't consider the black kids any different, despite my actively racist parents.
The general consensus now is that the indigenous population is no doubt disadvantaged, but there's still an undercurrent of it being perceived as a self inflicted situation due to poor choices / victim mentality / whatever. A common story that does the rounds is of government provided housing having campfires lit in the living room.
I'd say it's a pretty universal opinion that all gov policy on the matter has been, and still is, ineffective or wasteful. I have no idea how you'd actually legislate effective change here though as it's most certainly not a matter of just throwing more money at the problem.
It's the same way in the US with native Americans. They teach you about the genocide committed. What they don't teach you is that the government aggression towards natives didn't actually "stop" until Kennedy (and even then I'm still in doubt)
Earlier today I was looking for some information about geology in British Columbia and clicked a link about an abandoned town. The last line of the wikipedia entry was enough to give me a pause and look up more. The entire entry is:
> Kimsquit is a former village of the Nuxalk[1] at the mouth of the Dean River on the northeast side of Dean Channel in the Central Coast region of British Columbia, Canada.[2] Kemsquit Indian Reserve No. 1 is nearby at 52°49′00″N 126°58′00″W,[3] which is on Kimsquit Bay; Kimsquit Mountain is nearby.
> The village was shelled by the Royal Navy in 1877.[4]
The BC Geographical Names site includes a little more information:
> Kimsquit was the site of one of the last gunboat actions on the BC coast when, in 1877, HMS Rocket, under Lt Cdr Charles Harris, shelled and burned the Nut’l village. Several of its residents had allegedly murdered the survivors of the wreck of the George S Wright in Queen Charlotte Sound in 1873 – though his charge was never proven.
It is still very much in progress. Native American activists are not exaggerating when they describe reservations as third-world countries located in America. The sovereign status of first nations is in many ways used against them and prevents real help from arriving (e.g. the horrendous alcoholism and abuse that exists in some areas).
It was a big deal that US President Joe Biden named a person with indigenous background (Deb Haaland) to be Secretary of the Interior, as the Bureau of Indian Affairs exists under that function.
As they say, politics is war by other means.
If you want to read about things that are even more truly horrific, read up on the history of Tasmania. It was even worse there.
(I'm of course not saying that bad things stopped happening after the 1970s)
As to the second question, for most of Australia's history much of the most consequential pieces of racism were government policy. To get a sense of injustices inflicted on indigenous Australians, do some reading on the Stolen Generations (for a start).