Half-Caste Act

Back when Ned Kelly was alive in Australia, some people thought that if you had parents from two different races or cultures, you weren't as good as other people. The government made a law called the half-caste act that said if you had a white parent and an Aboriginal parent, you were called a "half-caste" and you had to follow different rules than other people.

These rules meant that if you were a half-caste, you might be taken away from your family and put in a special school where they tried to make you more like white people. They called this "assimilation", which means turning you into someone who is more like white people in the way you look and act.

This law was really unfair because it meant that half-castes couldn't live their lives the way they wanted to. They couldn't be with their families or their communities and they had to follow rules just because of who their parents were. Today, we know that everyone should be treated equally no matter where they come from or who their parents are.