Indigenous Australians have experienced many difficulties and struggles related to the issue of their rights and freedoms. Since the white settlement, the indigenous population have been discriminated against, oppressed and denied basic rights. Throughout the twentieth century, the search for equality has undergone a variety of phases from the Protectionism to Assimilation, the period of dramatic change in the 1960s with the Referendum, the legal cases fighting for land rights and then to the current policy of Reconciliation.

During the late nineteenth century til the early twentieth century, the Protection Policy was implemented based on the belief that Aboriginal culture and society were primitive, backward and in desperate need of "Western" help. Fundamental to the white attitude to Aboriginal people was their unquestioned belief in the superiority of the white race. As the indigenous population started to exterminate, Aboriginal people were herded onto government reserves or church missions...