For example, many of the Eora people who lived on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour died from smallpox in the first years of the European occupation. Other effects of colonisation such as poverty and racism on Aboriginal health are less obvious but no less devastating. Aboriginal incomes are generally lower than the average for other Australians. Large proportions of Aboriginal people have inadequate housing, water quality, food supplies and sanitation. This seriously affects the health of children.
Aboriginal children are typically lighter in weight and shorter than non-Aboriginal peers.
Nothing could have prepared my mother for the experience of reading her files. The first entry in 1942 and the last 1974 - 32 years of surveillance . Until 1969, state-run Aboriginal Protection or Welfare Boards controlled and supervised the lives of Indigenous Australians. These boards, which began operating in the early 1900s, could decide where Indigenous people could live, whom they might marry or have relationships with and where and how their children could be raised. They also determined which jobs Indigenous people could have, and withheld their wages indefinitely.