The Algorithm Age

Australia’s first truth-telling inquiry has found the British committed genocide of the Aboriginal people in Victoria during their colonisation of the country. The Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report, tabled in the parliament on Tuesday, detailed atrocities like “mass killings, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption, assimilation”. The “decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria ”, the report said, “was the result of a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups”. “This was genocide .” The report recommended that the Victorian First Peoples be compensated, including financially, and asked the government to use a treaty framework to “provide redress for injustice which has occurred during and as a result of the colonial invasion and occupation of First Peoples’ territories”. This would entai...

After more than four years and over 1,300 submissions, Australia's first Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry has handed down its final report. It has found the First Peoples of Victoria have endured crimes against humanity and genocide since the beginning of colonisation in Victoria — and they are still being impacted by systemic injustice today as a result. The report has outlined 100 recommendations aimed at redressing these injustices. Here are some of the key takeaways. What did Yoorrook find? The commission concluded that colonisation in Victoria involved widespread massacres, cultural destruction, forced child removals and economic exclusion . "Yoorrook found that the decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria … was the result of a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups," it said. "This was genocide." Th...