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First Nations Rights and Freedoms: Stolen Generation

Vocabulary

Colonialism

Colonialism is a particular relationship of domination between states, involving a wide range of interrelated strategies, including territorial occupation, population settlement, and extraction of economic resources by the colonising state. 

Stolen Generations

Stolen Generations, refers to those Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were taken from their indigenous families and communities as children. In its widest interpretation, Stolen Generations might encompass all those indigenous children taken away from their communities from the earliest days of British settlement to the present day, but it is more generally understood to refer to the estimated 100,000 people taken forcibly under extraordinary government legislation targeting children of Aboriginal descent.

Assimilation

Assimilation is a much contested notion whereby on entering a new country immigrant groups are encouraged, through social and cultural practices and/or political machinations, to adopt the culture, values, and social behaviors of the host nation in order to benefit from full citizenship status. In this view of assimilation, over time, immigrant communities shed the culture that is embedded in the language, values, rituals, laws, and perhaps even religion of their homeland so that there is no discernible cultural difference between them and other members of the host society. 

Books in the Library

Took the Children Away by Archie Roach

How were the children removed

Each state had an 'Aboriginal Protector' appointed, who then had government authorized guardianship over the Indigenous youth up to the age of 16- 21. This person could say where Indigenous people lived, worked, and most other aspects of their lives. Soon, the widespread state's removal of (mainly) mixed-race children from their Aboriginal mothers by the policeman or other government agents began. Babies and children of mixed descent were sent to government and church institutions for care; there were 24 such locations in WA by 1915 (like Sister Kate's Home in East Perth, Moore River Native Settlement, Mount Margaret Mission, Beagle Bay, and New Norcia Mission).  

 

 

The term “Stolen Generations” was coined by Australian historian Peter Read in 1981. The term refers to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were legally taken away from their families by the government of Australia. As a project of assimilation, children were put up for adoption or sent to institutions in order to forget and reject their Indigenous knowledge.

Introduction

March 2014 Protest. https://www.findandconnectwrblog.info/2016/06/the-stolen-generations-never-stopped/

Beginning in the late 1800s, Australian Federal and State government agencies implemented policies that allowed them to remove Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Driven by ideas of assimilation, children were placed in institutions or adopted by white families in order to have them reject their indigenous knowledge and transition into white culture. Still attempting to recover from the trauma induced by the government, organizations are highlighting the stories and histories of the families affected in order to bring awareness and ensure that these stories remain relevant.

Bring Them Home Report

     

Bring Them Home Report (1997)

In 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission) released its report Bringing them home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.

This report by the Australian Human Rights Commission was made in order to honor those taken away from their families and Aboriginal peoples. Stories were collected in order to complete this report. This document was found through Australians Together and should be considered an important document as it was one of the first acknowledgments by the state of their wrongdoings.

Us Taken-Away Kids

Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Bringing Them Home Report.

Websites

Stolen Generations - AIATSIS

Thousands of children were forcibly removed by governments, churches and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families, nationally and internationally. They are known as the Stolen Generations.

The Stolen Generations

The Stolen Generations refers to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. This was done by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, through a policy of assimilation.

The Stolen Generations: The forcible removal of First Nations Children from their families

Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families?  It was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.

Adoption of First Nations Children

Adoption of Indigenous Children. (1967). ABC. Retrieved 9 May 2023 from https://www.abc.net.au/education/four-corners-adoption-of-indigenous-australian-children/13819250

Imagine being taken away from your family and forced to live with people from another language, place and culture. This interview, recorded a week before the 1967 Referendum, captures an the perspective of Margaret Valadian, a prominent young Aboriginal Australian, on the practice of adoption and the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

A Voice from the Stolen Generation. 2010). ABC. Retrieved 7th October 2018 from https://www.abc.net.au/education/the-making-of-modern-australia-a-voice-from-the-stolen-generati/13890824

This clip features as interview with a Gamilaroi woman Donna Meehan, who was taken from her family in 1960 and adopted by a white family. In this clip Donna explains how confused and isolated she felt as a teenage Aboriginal woman growing up in non-Aboriginal family and community.

Sorry

My Stolen Childhood, and a life to rebuild

The Stolen Generations

Moore River Aboriginal Settlement

Kevin Barron, who was born at Moore River, and some of the children who lived, and died there. (ABC News)

The Moore River Aboriginal Settlement: A journey into 'hell on Earth'.

Hundreds of children lost their lives in brutal conditions at the Moore River Aboriginal camp, a dark period of Australia's history that Kevin Barron hopes the new research will ensure no one ever forgets.

To some who lived there, it was known as "hell on Earth".

To others, it was simply "home" — a refuge from even worse living conditions elsewhere.