Stolen Generation Totally Explained

ť Stolen Children redirects here. For the film, see The Stolen Children.

The Stolen Generation (or Stolen Generations) is a term used to describe the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, usually of mixed descent who were removed from their families, under the rationale of protecting their interests, by Australian government agencies and church missions, under various state acts of parliament, denying the rights of parents and making all Aboriginal children wards of the state, between approximately 1869 and (officially) 1969. The policy typically involved the removal of children into internment camps, orphanages and other institutions. The Stolen Generation has received significant public attention in Australia following the publication in 1997 of Bringing Them Home - Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.. Questions regarding whether the Stolen Generation actually occurred or to what scale it occurred, remain controversial topics within Australian political discourse.

Emergence of the child removal policy

The policy of removing Aboriginal children from their parents is supposed by some to have emerged from an opinion based on Eugenics theory in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Australia that the 'full-blood' tribal Aborigine would be unable to sustain itself, and was doomed to inevitable extinction. An ideology at the time held that mankind could be divided into a civilisational hierarchy. This notion supposed that Northern Europeans were superior in civilisation and that Aborigines were inferior. According to this view, the increasing numbers of mixed-descent children in Australia, labelled as 'half-castes' (or alternatively 'crossbreeds', 'quadroons' and 'octoroons'), were widely seen to be a threat to racial purity.
   The earliest introduction of child removal to legislation is recorded in the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 . The Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been advocating for such powers since 1860. The Act gave the state of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and 'half-caste' persons including the forcible removal of children, and especially 'at risk' girls.
   By the first half of the twentieth century, similar policies and legislation had been adopted by other states, and resulted in widespread removal of children from their parents. The stated aim was to culturally assimilate mixed-descent people into contemporary Australian society. In all states and territories legislation was passed in the early years of the twentieth century which gave Aboriginal protectors guardianship rights over Aborigines up to the age of sixteen or twenty-one. Policemen or other agents of the state (such as Aboriginal Protection Officers), were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent, from their mothers or families or communities into institutions. In these Australian states and territories, half-caste institutions (both government and missionary) were established in the early decades of the twentieth century for the reception of these separated children.
   Some commentators argue that the impetus for at least some of the various pieces of legislation was an observed need to provide protection for neglected, abused or abandoned mixed-descent children. Mixed-descent children were not wanted or welcome in some Aboriginal groups and communities. In the 1920's, the Baldwin Spencer report made it known that many mixed-descent children who had been born during construction of the Ghan railway were abandoned at early ages with no-one to provide for them. This incident and others spurred the need for State action to provide for and protect such children.

The policy in practice

According to the Bringing Them Home Report, at least 100,000 children were removed from their parents, and the figure may be substantially higher (the report notes that formal records of removals were very poorly kept). It stated:
The report closely examined the distinctions between "forcible removal", "removal under threat or duress", "official deception", "uninformed voluntary release", and "voluntary release". It noted that some removals were certainly voluntary. Mothers may have surrendered their children for any number of reasons (due to sickness, poverty, living arrangements, racism, etc). There was also evidence that some Aboriginal parents voluntarily sent their children to religious missions, in the hope that at least in this way they'd be able to retain contact with their children and some knowledge of their whereabouts. Furthermore, the report acknowledged that in several cases the state took responsibility for children that were genuinely orphaned or in a state of neglect.
Conversely, evidence indicated that in a large number of cases children were brutally and forcibly removed from their parent or parents, possibly even from the hospital shortly after their birth. Aboriginal Protection Officers often made the judgment on removal. In some cases, families were required to sign legal documents to relinquish care to the state, though this process was subverted in a number of instances. In Western Australia, the Aborigines Act 1905 removed the legal guardianship of Aboriginal parents and made their children all legal wards of the state, so no parental permission was required.
The report also identified instances of official misrepresentation and deception, such as when caring and able parents were incorrectly described by Aboriginal Protection Officers as not being able to properly provide for their children, or when parents were told by government officials that their children had died, even though this wasn't the case. One first hand account referring to events in 1935 stated:
The report discovered that removed children were, in most cases, placed into institutional facilities operated by religious or charitable organisations, although a significant number, particularly females, were "fostered" out. Children taken to such places were frequently punished if caught speaking local indigenous languages, and the intention was specifically to prevent them being socialised in Aboriginal cultures, and raise the boys as agricultural labourers and the girls as domestic servants.
A common aspect of the removals was the failure by these institutions to keep records of the actual parentage of the child, or such details as the date or place of birth. As is stated in the report:
Further, the report found that incidence of sexual abuse were disturbingly high. Overall 17% of females and 8% of males reported experiencing some form of sexual abuse while under institutional or foster care.

Social impact on members of the Stolen Generation

The social impacts of forced removal have been measured and found to be quite severe. Although the stated aim of the "resocialisation" programme was to improve the integration of Aboriginals into modern society, a study conducted in Melbourne and cited in the official report found that there was no tangible improvement in the social position of "removed" Aborigines as compared to "non-removed", particularly in the areas of employment and post-secondary education. Most notably, the study indicated that removed Aboriginals were actually less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use illicit drugs. The only notable advantage "removed" Aboriginals possessed was a higher average income, which the report noted was most likely due to the increased urbanisation of removed individuals, and hence greater access to welfare payments than for Aboriginals living in tribal communities.
By around the age of 18 the children were released from government control and where it was available were sometimes allowed to view their government file. According to the testimony of one Aboriginal person:
The Bringing Them Home report condemned the policy of disconnecting children from their "cultural heritage". Said one witness to the commission:
On the other hand, some Aboriginal people don't condemn the government’s past actions, as they see that part of their intention was to offer opportunities for education and an eventual job. According to the testimony of one Aboriginal person:

Historical debates over the Stolen Generation

Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the Bringing Them Home report, the nature and extent of the removals documented in the report have been debated and disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned (critics often quote the ten percent estimate, which they say doesn't constitute a 'generation'), but also the intent and effects of the government policy.
   Some conservative journalists, such as Andrew Bolt, have publicly questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt considers that it's a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children. He has also labeled the Stolen Generation as a "theory" and "propaganda". Professor of politics at La Trobe University, Robert Manne, has responded that Bolt's failure to address the wealth of documentary and anecdotal evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generation amounts to a clear case of historical denialism. Bolt has publicly challenged Robert Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justifies the claim that they were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for legitimate reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argues that Robert Manne's inability to produce as few as ten credible cases is a good indicator of how unreliable the claims that there was policy of systematic removal are.
   Some commentators such as the former president of Australia's Human Rights Commission, Sir Ronald Wilson, have alleged that the Stolen Generation was nothing less than a case of attempted genocide, because it was believed that doing this would cause Aborigines to die out.
   In April 2000 a scandal occurred when the then Aboriginal Affairs Minister in the conservative Howard Government, John Herron, tabled a report in the Australian Parliament that questioned whether or not there ever actually had been a "Stolen Generation", on the semantic distinction that as "only 10% of Aboriginal children" has been removed, they didn't constitute an entire "generation". After a week of scathing media commentary and the attempted invasion of parliament by scores of protestors, Mr Herron apologised for the "understandable offence taken by some people" as a result of his comments, although he refused to alter the report as it had been tabled, and in particular the (disputed) figure of 10%.

Public awareness and recognition

Widespread awareness of the Stolen Generation, and the practices which created it, only began to enter the public arena in the late 1980s through the efforts of Aboriginal activists, artists and, (Midnight Oil's famous track "The Dead Heart" being one example of the latter.) The extensive public interest in the Mabo case had the side effect of throwing the media spotlight on all issues related to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and most notably the Stolen Generation.
   This inquiry commenced in May 1995, presided over by Sir Ronald Wilson, the president of the (Australian) Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, and Mick Dodson, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). During the ensuing 17 months, the Inquiry visited every state and Territory in Australia, heard testimony from 535 Aboriginal Australians, and received submissions of evidence from over 600 more. In April 1997 the official Bringing Them Home Report was released.
   Between the commissioning of the National Inquiry and the release of the final report in 1997, the conservative government of John Howard had replaced the Keating government. The report proved to be a considerable embarrassment for the Howard administration, as it recommended that the Australian Government formally apologise to the affected families, a proposal actively rejected by Howard, on the grounds that a formal admission of wrongdoing would lead to massive compensation litigation. Howard was quoted as saying "Australians of this generation shouldn't be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies." As a result Commissioner Dodson resigned from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, saying in a newspaper column that "I despair for my country and regret the ignorance of political leaders who don't appreciate what is required to achieve reconciliation for us as a nation."
   As a result of the report, formal apologies were tabled and passed in the state parliaments of Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, and also in the parliament of the Northern Territory. On 26 May 1998 the first "National Sorry Day" was held, and reconciliation events were held nationally, and attended by over a million people. As public pressure continued to increase, Howard drafted a motion of "deep and sincere regret over the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents" which was passed by the federal parliament in August 1999. Howard went on to say that the Stolen Generation represented "...the most blemished chapter in the history of this country."
   In July 2000, the issue of the Stolen Generation came before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva who heavily criticised the Howard government for its manner of attempting to resolve the issues related to the Stolen Generation. Australia was also the target of a formal censure by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Global media attention turned again to the Stolen Generation issue during the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. A large "aboriginal tent city" was established on the grounds of Sydney University to bring attention to Aboriginal issues in general. The Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman (who was chosen to light the Olympic Flame and went on to win the gold medal for the 400 metre sprint) disclosed in interviews that her own grandmother was a victim of forced removal. The internationally successful rock group Midnight Oil obtained worldwide media interest when they performed at the Olympic closing ceremony wearing black sweatsuits with the word "SORRY" emblazoned across them.
   Prior to the Sydney Olympics a mockumentary called The Games was broadcast on ABC TV. In the episode shown on 3 July the actor John Howard made a recording "for international release" of an apology to the Stolen Generation, ostensibly on behalf of the Australian people.

Legal status and compensation

The legal circumstances regarding the Stolen Generation remain unclear. Although some compensation claims are pending, it isn't possible for a court to rule on behalf of plaintiffs simply because they were removed, as at the time, such removals were entirely legal under Australian law. Likewise, even though the actions may have contravened International Law, ruling on such a basis is outside the jurisdiction of Australian courts. At least two compensation claims have passed through the Australian courts and failed. The presiding judge noted in his summary judgement that he wasn't ruling that there would never be valid cases for compensation with regard to the Stolen Generation, only that in these specific two cases he couldn't find evidence of illegal conduct by the officials involved.

Bruce Trevorrow

On 1 August 2007, in a decision in the Supreme Court of South Australia by Justice Thomas Gray, Bruce Trevorrow, a member of the Stolen Generation was awarded $525,000 compensation ($450,000.00 for general damages and $75,000.00 for exemplary damages) after a 10 year battle with the Government of South Australia in the courts. The SA Government has said that'll pay Mr Trevorrow the compensation which has been awarded, but hasn't yet indicated if it'll appeal the decision's findings of law and fact. The West Australian newspaper reported Bruce Trevorrow's story as follows:

Rabbit Proof Fence book and film

In 2002 the Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence was released, based on the book Follow The Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It concerns the author's mother, and two other young mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, in which they were placed in 1931, in order to return to their Aboriginal families.
In an interview with the ABC, Doris recalls how she was removed from her mother at the age of about three or four. She wasn't re-united with her mother until she was twenty-five, and up until that time she believed that her mother had given her away. When they were re-united Doris was unable to speak her mother's language and had been taught to regard her culture as evil.

Kanyani SBS Television documentary

In August 2007 SBS Television Australia screened a profile on a member of the Stolen Generation.

Bob Randall is a member of the Yankunytjatjara people, and one of the listed traditional owners of Uluru. He was taken away from his mother as a child. He remained at the government reservation until he was 20, working at various jobs, including as a carpenter, stockman and crocodile hunter. He helped establish the Adelaide Community College, and lectured on Aboriginal cultures. He served as the director of the Northern Australia Legal Aid Service, and established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander centres at the Australian National University, University of Canberra and University of Wollongong. He was named 'Indigenous Person of the Year', and inducted in the NT music hall of fame for such classic songs as Brown Skin Baby, Red Sun and Black Moon, about the Coniston massacre. He is also the author of two books: his autobiography "Songman", and a children's book 'Tracker Tjginji". (From Australia, in English) (Documentary) WS

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