Opinion | Australia’s abominable treatment of its Indigenous people

Australia’s treatment of its original inhabitants has been and is abominable. The original English settlers who arrived around 1800 expelled them forcibly from the Eastern Crescent, which contains every major city except Perth, and the only significant river system on the continent. Fortunately, the early White Australia Policy, which forbade Asian immigration, and the miscegenation (anti-White-Black-marriage) laws have been rescinded, but the Aboriginal people are still second-class citizens — although they have settlements on the three-quarters of the continent that is desert, with poor educational opportunities (what teacher wants to work in a desert?) and opportunities for even servant-level jobs. Some move to the big cities; a very few rise to the middle class or above.