Nations across the globe each have laws on citizenship. While they possess an understanding of what it means to be a citizen, is there anything which could be considered wrong with being a citizen? This question, “What is wrong with citizenship?” is a broad question, but an understanding of the issue will be pursued. It is intended to discuss herein citizenship, within the context of Australia and its Indigenous peoples. It is necessary to explore the impacts of the laws and identify what it means to be a citizen, both in a historical and contemporary context. Examination of these laws would also reveal their impact upon the identity which citizenship infers. It is by necessity that the concept of citizenship be explored for Indigenous peoples, …show more content…
There are also conditions regarding children who are adopted and/or abandoned, and for people who are resident of a territory acquired by Australia. This is in addition to the set of procedures and conditions for those who seek citizenship in Australia voluntarily (Comlaw.gov.au, 2015).
Once, Australia was a proud member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and considered itself to be British first, and Australian second. Australia sent its sons overseas to fight in Europe because that is how Australia saw itself at the time, helping out the “Mother Country.” This sense of belonging to Britain went as far as allowing British nuclear weapon tests to be conducted on Australian soil. This was because the government at the time thought it was the right thing to do. It took the war with Japan in the Second World War, threatening destruction, to bring home that Australia needed to look to its own defences and its own identity on the world stage. The way Australians saw themselves changed slowly over the decades, becoming more independent in their view of the world. It is important to note that most indigenous Australians still saw themselves firstly as being indigenous, and this point of view has hardly changed since (Madden and Morris-Jones, …show more content…
McGregor Watson, a pastoralist from Burketown in Queensland spoke of the difficulties faced by the indigenous people to the NSW Select Committee on the Administration of the Aborigines Protection Board on the 30th of November, 1930. In regards to the local protector often being the local policeman, he spoke that when the policeman then decides to dislike the pastoralist for any particular reason, he would summarily arrest an indigenous employee of the pastoralist and deport them to Palm Island in Queensland. He also iterated that the policeman would often abuse his authority over the indigenous people, and thus exploit them (May,