The relevance and purpose of social work in Aboriginal Australia – post- or decolonisation

A postcolonial Australia is both questionable and hugely contested (Heiss and Minter, 2008) because unlike most colonised countries, in Australia the colonisers did not leave. Australia was never handed back to Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants and a treaty was never formed or signed. Since 1788, the officially recognised year of colonisation, the colonisers and subsequent Australian governments have struggled in their relationships with Aboriginal Australians as the First Nation peoples of this country. All calls and requests by Aboriginal people for improvements and changes to the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been met with resistance; responses have become highly politicised and polarised or simply ignored and weakened. From the moment Captain Cook claimed Australia for the British under the policy of terra nullius, the rights of Aboriginal Australians as First Nation peoples were made invisible and non- existent.