What is the relationship between official education policies and key events in Australian Aboriginal history? How did the Aborigines react to these policies? Key events in Aboriginal Australian history date back to when Australia was first discovered in 1788. For example, when Federation came into existence in 1901, non-Aboriginal Australians believed that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005: 259), which resulted in the exclusion of Aboriginal people from the constitution, with the exception of two mentions: section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and section 51 , part 26, which instead gave power over the aborigines to the States. than the federal government. Native people were officially excluded from voting, civil service, the armed forces and pensions. The White Australia mentality/policy Australia is considered "white" and unfortunately this policy was only abolished in 1972. REFERENCE Parbury (1999:64) states that Aboriginal education "cannot be separated » non-native attitudes (racial ethnocentricity which were particularly British). that is to say white and Christian) towards the aborigines, their culture and their very existence. Mission schools are an early example of the connection between official educational policies and key events in Indigenous history. Aboriginal children were separated from their parents and placed in these schools which, according to McGrath (quoted in Parbury, 1999: 66), it was recommended that these establishments be located "as far away as possible" from non-Aboriginal residents in order to minimize any risk pagan. the influence that Aboriginal children might be subject to from their parents. Mission schools not only prepared indigenous youth for the manual labor market, but, Parbury (1999: 67) adds, their aim was also to "destroy indigenous culture and replace it with an Anglo-American work ethic and faith." European”. Despite the New South Wales Public Education Act (1880), which made education free, secular and compulsory for all children, Aboriginal children could be excluded from public schools due to the prevailing attitudes of the dominant group . Consequently, the NSW Aborigines Protection Act (1909) was introduced following a perceived crisis in public education and laws had already been passed similar to protectionist type policies. This law gave the state the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families, during which this period became known as the "Stolen Generations". It was during this time that Aboriginal children were separated from mainstream schools. (Parbury, 1999; Lippman, 1994). According to Keefe (1992: 53) "Indigeneity is a complex social reality, artificially explained only by the abstract divisions of resistance and persistence" and modern history demonstrates the links between official education policies (or attitudes used by the dominant group) and key events in Aboriginal Australian history.