The twentieth Century presents a complex story in which the thesis of Aboriginal disappearance either by cultural or biological assimilation disappears. Protection gives way to assimilation, and assimilation to the complex new situation of the late twentieth Century in which the relationship between White and Aboriginal has to be created anew in the context of legal changes and a powerful moral concern by the White population about the failures and brutalities of much of the earlier policies. None of the current policies is without its critics, or its drawbacks. And its most extreme is the critical view that the whole encounter between Whites and Aboriginals is a mistake. The entire history should never have happened at all.
Indigenous peoples ought to have been left undisturbed in their environmental paradise.
It will already be clear that there is no determinate moral answer to that question. And in public policy, the moral question is far from being the only consideration. In any case, what is best for the Aborigines is merely one among the moral elements at stake. When we act, we reveal what we are, or what we think we are. Morally, therefore, we must discard policies that would reveal us to be the sort of people we do not wish to be.