Abstract
This article will discuss the respective assimilation laws and practices of the United States and Australia and how they relate to the Native American Indians (Indians) and the Native Australian Aborigines (Aborigines). In particular, this article will discuss the Anglo-European legal thought and doctrine used to rationalize and legitimize the process of assimilation. From the implementation of the Doctrine of Discovery, to the forced migration away from traditional lands to the mandatory education of Indigenous children, Anglo-European legal, social, and philosophical dogma was imposed upon the Indigenous peoples of both the United States and Australia. The assimilation policies destroyed cultures that had existed for tens of thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.
The policies in the United States and Australia, and the rationales behind them, are too consistently similar to be merely coincidental. Furthermore, there are striking similarities between the people who colonized the United States and Australia. These similarities compel the conclusion that there is a predetermined Anglo-European world view of non-Europeans. This view allowed the European colonists to strip Indigenous people in the United States and Australia of their land, religion and culture in furtherance of Christianity and the Crown. Although the motivations behind particular assimilation laws and policies may have differed, the ultimate goal of assimilation was the same – to "civilize the savages." Despite all of the legal and governmental efforts to eradicate the "inferior" Indigenous cultures of the United States and Australia, these cultures survive.