What is the Stolen Generation

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What is the Stolen Generation?

• Aboriginal Australian and
• Torres Strait Islander children
• were forcibly removed from their
• families to be used for labor, educated in
  Christian schools, or adopted by Christian
  families.
• The following quotations help tell their story.

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.. the aboriginal inhabitants are treated
exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or
birds the settlers may find there ... Their goods
are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their
women carried away, entirely at the caprice of
the white men.The Queenslander newspaper, 1883
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When did this happen?

• As early as 1880
• Became official in 1910 with nationwide
  assimilation and protection of Aboriginal
  children laws
• Laws and forced removal were abolished in 1970

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How could this happen?
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Eugenics and Social Darwinism
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How was this accomplished?

• Assimilation of children
• Languages and ceremonies forbidden
• Taken miles from their country
• Parents not told where children were and could
  not trace them
• Children told that they were orphans
• No family contact

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Conditions at the Settlements

• Education for menial labor
• many never received wages
• 62 reported physical abuse
• 13 reported sexual abuse
• authorities failed to protect children from abuse.

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Why did it stop?

• It wasnt working.
• Facilities were too full.
• It was too costly.

Did it really end? Many Indigenous Australians
argue that their children are continuing to be
removed through culturally biased child welfare
and juvenile justice systems
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In Their Own Words

• "Almost half of the Aboriginal people who died
  in custody and were investigated by the Black
  Deaths Royal Commission, had been removed from
  their families as children..." - Kirsten Garrett,
  Background Briefing, Sunday, 11 February 1996

• "They would not let us kiss our father goodbye,
  I will never forget the sad look on his face. He
  was unwell and he worked very hard all his life
  as a timber-cutter. That was the last time I saw
  my father, he died within two years after." -
  Jennifer
• Bringing them Home - Full report

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I've often thought, as old as I am, that it
would have been lovely to have known a father and
a mother, to know parents even for a little
while, just to have had the opportunity of having
a mother tuck you into bed and give you a
good-night kiss - but it was never to be.
(Confidential evidence 65, Tasmania child
fostered at 2 months in 1936.)

• It never goes away. Just cause we're not
  walking around on crutches or with bandages or
  plasters on our legs and arms, doesn't mean we're
  not hurting. Just cause you can't see it doesn't
  mean ... I suspect I'll carry these sorts of
  wounds til the day I die. I'd just like it to be
  not quite as intense, that's all. (Confidential
  evidence 580, Queensland)

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The Effects of Institutionalization

• As a group children were at a disadvantage
  regarding health, physique, educational progress
  and a wide range of social conditions -
• High level of emotional disorder was present,
  especially conduct disorders',
• More likely to suffer severe reading and language
  skill disabilities
• Lacked social skills and ability to bond and make
  friends

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• There's still a lot of unresolved issues within
  me. One of the biggest ones is I cannot really
  love anyone no more. I'm sick of being hurt.
  Every time I used to get close to anyone they
  were just taken away from me. The other fact is,
  if I did meet someone, I don't want to have
  children, cos I'm frightened the welfare system
  would come back and take my children.

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Loss of Cultural Identity

• I had to relearn lots of things. I had to
  relearn humour, ways of sitting, ways of being
  which were another way totally to what I was
  actually brought up with. It was like having to
  re-do me, I suppose. The thing that people were
  denied in being removed from family was that they
  were denied being read as Aboriginal people, they
  were denied being educated in an Aboriginal way.
  (Woman who lived from 5 months to 16 years in
  Cootamundra Girls' Home in the 1950s and 1960s)
• You spend your whole life wondering where you
  fit. You're not white enough to be white and your
  skin isn't black enough to be black either, and
  it really does come down to that. (Confidential
  evidence 210, Victoria.)

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• I felt like a stranger in Ernabella, a stranger
  in my father's people. We had no identity with
  the land, no identity with a certain people. I've
  decided in the last 10, 11 years to, y'know, I
  went through the law. I've been learning culture
  and learning everything that goes with it because
  I felt, growing up, that I wasn't really a
  blackfella. You hear whitefellas tell you you're
  a blackfella. But blackfellas tell you you're a
  whitefella. So you're caught in a half-caste
  world.
• Confidential evidence 289, South Australia
  speaker's father was removed and the speaker grew
  up in Adelaide.

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Effects on Family and Community

• I remember my Aunty, it was her daughter that
  got taken. She used to carry these letters around
  with her. They were reference letters from the
  white fellas in town ... Those letters said she
  was a good, respectable women ... She judged
  herself and she felt the community judged her for
  letting the welfare get her child ... She carried
  those letters with her, folded up, as proof,
  until the day she died. (Quoted by Link-Up
  submission 186 on page 21)

• My parents were continually trying to get us
  back. Eventually they gave up and started
  drinking. They separated. My father ended up in
  jail. He died before my mother. On her death bed
  she called his name and all us kids. She died
  with a broken heart. (Woman removed at 11
  months in the late 1950s with her three siblings
  children fostered in two separate non-Indigenous
  families)

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If you grow up with no love ... I thought sex
was love. That's why I probably had all those
kids, cause I was trying to get all this love,
y'know. Cause I never got it when I was in the
Home. (Woman removed at about 4 years in the
1940s and raised largely at Koonibba Lutheran
Children's Home) We wasn't told
anything about the facts of life. When we left
the Home they didn't tell us anything about sex
and that. All us girls, when we all come out the
Home, we were all just, bang, pregnant straight
away. (Confidential evidence 170, South
Australia)
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Reunions

• It was this kind of instant recognition. I
  looked like her, you know? It was really nice.
  She just kind of ran up to me and threw her arms
  around me and gave me a hug and that was really
  nice. And then suddenly there was all these
  brothers coming out of the woodwork. I didn't
  know I had any siblings. And uncles and aunts and
  cousins. Suddenly everyone was coming around to
  meet me. (NT woman removed to Garden Point
  Mission at 3 days in the 1960s adopted into a
  non-Indigenous family at 3 years reunited with
  her birth mother in the presence of her adoptive
  mother at 21)

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• I arranged to make contact with her as soon as
  possible. Now I blame myself for what has
  happened. Because after 52 years I was so anxious
  that my mother would accept me with open arms,
  put her arms around me and be happy that she'd
  found me again. I got onto the Salvation Army
  Missing Persons. They went around to see her. I
  believe she got very upset and was shaking and
  was crying and denying. She said she didn't
  know any woman that'd be looking for a mother.
  She was crying and shaking, didn't want to know,
  didn't want to see me. (Woman fostered at
  about 5 years in the 1960s)

• I've seen the old lady four times in my life.
  She's 86 years old. We were sitting on the bench
  the first time. I said, I'm your son'. Oh',
  she said, and her eyes just sparkled. Then a
  second later she said, You're not my son'. Well
  mate, the blinking pain. Didn't recognise me. The
  last time she saw me I was three years old.
  (Quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on page
  108)

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Reunions

• The only problem which I had at that
  Aboriginal TAFE was that the Aboriginal
  community there wanted me to go to these dances
  and get involved in Aboriginal dances in the
  community and all that sort of thing. But I
  couldn't do it because I hadn't had any contact
  with people before and all the whites told me
  they were this and this and that I should stay
  away and all that sort of thing they're bad
  people. So it was sort of very difficult to get
  involved with Aboriginal people at that stage
  still. (Confidential evidence 441, New South
  Wales.)

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But a lot of girls didn't know where home was
because their parents were moved and resettled
miles away from their traditional homelands. They
didn't know where their people were and it took
them a long time to find them. Some of them are
still searching down to this present day.
(Confidential submission 617, New South Wales
woman removed to Cootamundra Girls' Home at 8
years in the 1940s.)
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Dealing With the Past

• Archive to find lost relatives
• Undoing the effects of forced removal
• Reparations
• National Sorry Day -May 26th

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(No Transcript)
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• We, the 24763 undersigned people of Australia,
  believe an apology is owed to those of our fellow
  citizens who were separated from their families
  as a direct result of government policy.
• We offer that apology

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Additional Resources

• Read
• Wandering Girl- by Glenyse Ward
• My Country - by Sally Morgan
• Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith- by Thomas Kennealy
• View
• Fringe Dwellers