Indigenous Australians

On my first day in Australia, I was walking around to see the area and went into the Sydney Museum.  They had a section on the Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal people).  At first it looked like an interesting thing to learn about.  It caught my attention right away because it had documented the struggles that these people had in their country.  They were the original inhabitants of the land and were there for tens of thousands of years.  The Europeans (specifically the British) came, didn't understand their lifestyle, forced them off the land, attacked them, stole their children for slave labor use, spread diseases to them through blankets, etc...

As I looked at these exhibits and read the stories, it sounded all too familiar to me.  It reminded me of the the Native Americans and African Americans.  The story is very similar, as well as the tactics.  There is something called The Stolen Generation, which basically comprises of Aborigines who were stolen from their family at a young age (less than a year, sometimes less than a month), put into European families to be taught the "white/right" way of life.  Many of them ended up becoming the troublesome part of society (no sense of their history, depressed, adopted criminal lifestyle, etc.).

The annoyed me because I grew tired of learning these types of stories a while ago.  As the same time, I felt and still feel a connection with these people because the story of their people is similar to mine.