The Nigerian Immigrant

When we migrated to Australia in 2007 as a 17 year old, I was asked to go back to high school to finalise my final year high school education. Because I had finished high school in Nigeria nearly 2 years prior I was not keen. Instead I chose to complete a 1 year College degree that was a bridging course to uni. This turned out to be a good decision. I met friends who I will hold in my heart forever and learned so much about my new home.  However one word that kept getting thrown about with every lecturer i had was how tolerating Australia was. I was almost always uncomfortable with the word tolerance until I realised why. Let's get into some technicalities shall we? Some definitions: To tolerate according to the Oxford dictionary is to “allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.” And: to “be capable of continued subjection to (a drug, toxin, or environmental condition) without adverse reaction. In or...

Indigenous Australians occupied the Australian territories 60,000 years before European settlement. When the Europeans arrived in Australia in 1788, they had declared the land terra nullius (land empty) because there were no inhabitants, Housing, legal system or evidence of European civilization.  Indigenous Australian culture was such that tribes relied on the land for sustenance but had no direct ownership of the land for land was life.  With the arrival of the first fleet saw the spread of small pox which devavsted the indigenous people and significantly reduced their population. Further, because indigenous Australians were perceived by the Europeans to be akin to animals they were killed in conflict without questions. Between 1910-1970, many Indigenous children were removed from their families as a result of an Australian Government policy now known as the stolen generation. The aim of this policy was to assimilate based on the assumption of black inferiority and white...