Australia on yesterday marked 40 years since a historic referendum granted Aborigines citizenship, but celebrations were muted by stark reminders the country's original inhabitants are still poverty stricken and die much younger than the rest of society.
An overwhelming 91 percent of Australians voted in favor of reforms in the 1967 referendum that gave the federal government the power to make laws covering Aborigines and to count them in the official census for the first time.
Before then, Aborigines' rights varied from state to state, with some jurisdictions including them in laws covering wildlife and plants.
Rallies, marches and other ceremonies were held in capital cities on Saturday and yesterday to mark the anniversary -- but the focus was on the Aborigines' continuing plight.
A minority of about 400,000 among a population of 21 million, Australia's Aborigines today suffer health and lifestyle problems more common to people living in the Third World than a fully developed countries like Australia.
On average, they die almost 20 years earlier than other Australians and suffer much higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, diabetes and heart disease. Many live in slums in or on the fringes of cities, or in poverty in tiny, remote Outback communities.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said at a function in Canberra to mark the anniversary that many of the improvements in Aborigines' lives that supporters of the referendum had hoped for have not happened.
Howard's conservative government plans to increase spending on programs for Aborigines to as much as A$3.5 billion (US$2.86 billion) a year, but many Aborigine leaders accuse him of trampling their hopes for special land rights that could give them an economic share of mining and farming developments.
Howard wants Aborigines to rely less on government handouts and to integrate more in the broader society.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said there had been enormous progress made in cities and major regional towns and thousands of Aborigines have been through university and have "all of the normal things that the rest of us take for granted."
"But then there is that other side of the coin," Brough told ABC television yesterday.
"Those in the remote communities and those in what is commonly known as the long grass, in other words the fringes of town, there has been not just no progress, but in some cases, we've gone backwards," Brough said.
About 150,000 Aborigines live in remote communities and on the fringes of towns, Brough said. They are consistently the nation's most disadvantaged group, with far higher unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence.
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