Everything about The Stolen Generations totally explained
The
Stolen Generations (also
Stolen Generation and
Stolen children) is a term used to describe those children of
Australian
Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the
Australian and
State government agencies and
church missions, under
acts of their respective parliaments. The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1869 and 1969, although, in some places, children were still being taken in the
1970s.
The extent of the removal of children, and the reasoning behind their removal, are contested. Documentary evidence of a range of rationales exists in newspaper reports, reports to and appearances before
parliamentary committees. Motivations evident include
child protection, beliefs that given their catastrophic population decline post white contact that Aboriginal people would "die out", fears of
miscegenation and a desire to maintain
Caucasian racial purity.
Terms such as "stolen" were used in the context of taking children from their families - the Hon P. McGarry, a member of the
Parliament of New South Wales, objected to the
Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 which enabled the Aborigines' Protection Board to remove Aboriginal children from their parents without having to establish that they were in any way neglected or mistreated; McGarry described the policy as "steal[ing] the child away from its parents".. In 1923, in the
Adelaide Sun an article stated "The word 'stole' may sound a bit far-fetched but by the time we've told the story of the heart-broken Aboriginal mother we're sure the word won't be considered out of place."
Indigenous Australians in most jurisdictions were "protected", effectively being
wards of the State. The protection was done through each jurisdictions'
Aboriginal Protection Board, in Victorian and Western Australia these boards were also responsible for applying what were known as
Half-caste acts.
More recent usage was Peter Read's 1981 publication of
The Stolen Generations: The Removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969. brought broader awareness of the "Stolen Generations.
The acceptance of the term in Australia as illustrated by the
13 February 2008 formal apology to the Stolen Generations, led by
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and passed by both houses of the
Parliament of Australia. Previously apologies had been offered by State and Territory governments in the period 1997-2001.
There however remains opposition to acceptance of the validity of the term "Stolen Generations". This was illustrated by the former Prime Minister
John Howard refusing to apologise and the then Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs,
John Herron controversially disputing the usage in April 2000. Others who dispute the validity of the term include:
Peter Howson, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in 1971-72,
Keith Windschuttle and
Andrew Bolt Others argue against these responding to Windschuttle and Bolt in particular.
Emergence of the child removal policy
One view suggests that the motivation and purpose of the laws providing for the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents was
child protection, responding to an observed need to provide protection for
neglected,
abused or abandoned mixed-descent children. An example of the abandonment of mixed race children in the 1920s is given in a report by
Baldwin Spencer that many mixed-descent children 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.
Other
19th- and early
20th-century contemporaneous documents indicate that the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their parents related to different beliefs: that given the catastrophic population decline of Aboriginal people post white contact that they'd "die out", that the 'full-blood'
tribal Aboriginal population would be unable to sustain itself, and was doomed to inevitable
extinction. Ideas of
eugenics and fears of
miscegenation with a desire to maintain
Caucasian racial purity were related to the
ideology that mankind could be divided into a civilisational hierarchy. This supposed that the civilisation of
northern Europeans was superior to that of Aborigines, based on comparative technological advancement. Some adherents to these beliefs considered any proliferation of mixed-descent children (labelled 'half-castes', 'crossbreeds', 'quadroons' and 'octoroons') to be a threat to the nature and stability of the prevailing civilisation, or to a perceived racial or civilisational "heritage". For example, in the 1930s, the Northern Territory
Protector of Natives, Dr. Cecil Cook, perceived the continuing rise in numbers of "half-caste" children as a problem. His proposed solution was:
Similarly, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia,
AO Neville, wrote in an article for
The West Australian in 1930:
The policy in practice
The earliest introduction of child removal to legislation is recorded in the Victorian
Aboriginal Protection Act 1869. The Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been advocating such powers since 1860. This Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and 'half-caste' persons, including the forcible removal of children and, especially, of 'at risk' girls. By 1950, similar policies and legislation had been adopted by other states and territories.
The child removal legislation resulted in widespread removal of children from their parents and exercise of sundry guardianship powers by Aboriginal protectors over Aborigines up to the age of 16 or 21. 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 20th century for the reception of these separated children. Examples of such institutions include
Moore River Native Settlement in Western Australia,
Doomadgee Aboriginal Mission in Queensland,
Ebenezer Mission in Victoria and
Wellington Valley Mission in New South Wales.
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". The 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 judgement 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.
In
1915, in
New South Wales, the
Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 gave the Aborigines' Protection Board authority to remove Aboriginal children "without having to establish in court that they were neglected"; it was alleged by Professor Peter Read that Board members sometimes wrote simply "For being Aboriginal" as the explanation when recording a removal, At the time, some members of Parliament objected to the amendment; one member stated it enabled the Board to to "steal the child away from its parents", and at least two members argued that the amendment would result in children being subjected to unpaid labour tantamount to "slavery".
In
1911, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in
South Australia, William Garnet South, reportedly "lobbied for the power to remove Aboriginal children without a court hearing because the courts sometimes refused to accept that the children were neglected or destitute". South argued that "all children of mixed descent should be treated as neglected". His lobbying reportedly played a part in the enactment of the
Aborigines Act 1911; this made him the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in South Australia, including so-called "half-castes".}}
The report said that among the 502 inquiry witnesses, 17% of female witnesses and 7.7% of male witnesses reported experiencing a sexual assault while in an institution, at work, or with a foster or adoptive family. Although the stated aim of the "re
socialisation" programme was to improve the integration of Aboriginal people 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 Aboriginal people 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" Aboriginal people 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 Aboriginal people 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:
Bringing Them Home report condemned the policy of disconnecting children from their "cultural heritage". Said one witness to the commission:
Historical debates over the Stolen Generations
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 Generations has been exaggerated. Sir
Ronald Wilson, former President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a Commissioner on the Inquiry, has stated that none of the more than 500 witnesses who appeared before the Inquiry were cross-examined. This failure to cross-examine has been the basis of criticism by the anthropologist
Ron Brunton as well as by the conservative
Liberal Party Federal Government. An Australian Federal Government submission has questioned the conduct of the Commission which produced the report, arguing that the Commission failed to critically appraise or test the claims on which it based the report and fails to distinguish between those separated from their families "with and without consent, and with and without good reason". 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. 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 Generations amounts to a clear case of historical
denialism. Bolt argues that a key issue of the debate over the existence of a "Stolen Generations" is the identification of particular persons as having been 'stolen' and further that it would require that it be substantiated that children had been 'stolen' in such numbers as to justify inferring the existence of a policy to do so, as opposed to such cases being aberrations. He and other sceptics of the existence of such a child removal policy would require that the circumstances of the removal of such children be subjected to the standard of scrutiny found in a
court of law or a similar investigatory standard, and that it be shown that they were 'stolen' and not abandoned, given up or removed for legitimate reasons. Many documents in state archives detail the policies and events that come under the term "Stolen Generation".
In
April 2000, controversy stirred 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 had been a "Stolen Generation", on the semantic distinction that as "only 10% of Aboriginal children" had been removed, they didn't constitute an entire "generation". The report received media attention and there were protests. Dr 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%.
Genocide debate
Some commentators such as Sir Ronald Wilson have alleged that the Stolen Generations was nothing less than a case of attempted
genocide, because it was widely believed at the time that the policy would cause Aborigines to die out.
Robert Manne argues that the expressed views of government bureaucrats, such as A.O. Neville, to merge the Aboriginal race into the white population by means of "breeding out the colour", and therefore eventually resulting in the former being "forgotten", bore strong similarities to the views of the
Nazis in 1930s
Germany. Manne points out that, though the term 'genocide' hadn't yet entered the English language, the policies of Neville and others were termed by some contemporaries as the 'die out' or 'breed out' policy, giving an indication of their proposed intent. Nevertheless, he also states that it's now "generally acknowledged" by academics that the authors of the
Bringing Them Home report were wrong to argue that Australian authorities had committed genocide by removing indigenous children from their families, because assimilation has never been regarded in law as equivalent to genocide.
Conservative Australian historian
Keith Windschuttle contends that no genocide has ever taken place in Australia. He concedes there were "obnoxious" attempts to "breed out" Aboriginality in Western Australia and the Northern Territory but says those policies concentrated on intermarriage, not child removal, and were undercut by the ineptitude of the bureaucrats involved. In 2008 it was announced that the second volume of Windschuttle's work
The Fabrication of Australian History, would be published, which will address the issue of the removal of Aboriginal children.
Paul Bartrop, co-author of
The Dictionary of Genocide with US scholar Samuel Totten, rejects the use of the word genocide to describe Australian colonial history in general, but says the use of the term can be "sustained relatively easily" when describing the Stolen Generations. Dr Bartrop, who wrote the entry in the dictionary entitled "Australia, Genocide in:", said he used the 1948 UN
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as cited by Ronald Wilson in his 1997
Bringing Them Home report, as the benchmark for the use of the term genocide.
Historian
Inga Clendinnen suggests that the term genocide rests on the question of intentionality. "There's not much doubt, with great murderous performances that were typically called genocide, that they were deliberate and intentional," she argues. "Beyond that, it always gets very murky."
Public awareness and recognition
Historian Professor Peter Read, at the time at the
Australian National University, was the first to use the phrase 'stolen generation'. It was used by him first as a title for a magazine article which was followed by a book,
The Stolen Generations (1981). 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 Generations 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 2000 the actor
John Howard made a recording "for international release" of an apology to the Stolen Generation, ostensibly on behalf of the Australian people.
Australian federal parliament apology
On
December 11,
2007, the newly installed Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd announced that an apology would be made to Indigenous Australians, the wording of which would be decided in consultation with aboriginal leaders. On
January 27,
2008, Rudd announced that the apology would be made on or soon after the first day of parliament in Canberra, on
February 12. The date was later set to
February 13, when it was ultimately issued.
Stances on the proposed apology
For more than a decade since the
Bringing Them Home report on forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was handed to
Liberal prime minister,
John Howard, he and his conservative coalition colleagues consistently rejected calls for a formal government apology.
The announcement of an apology by the new
Labor prime minister led to a split reaction from the Liberal Party whose leader
Brendan Nelson initially said that an apology would risk encouraging a "culture of guilt" in Australia. However, other senior Liberals expressed support for an apology, for example,
Malcolm Turnbull,
Peter Costello,
Bill Heffernan and former Liberal prime minister
Malcolm Fraser. Former Liberal minister
Judi Moylan said: "I think as a nation we owe an apology. We shouldn't be thinking about it as an individual apology — it's an apology that's coming from the nation state because it was governments that did these things." Nelson himself later declared he supported the apology. Following a party meeting, the Liberal Party as a whole expressed its support for an apology, which thereby achieved bipartisan consensus. Brendan Nelson stated: "I, on behalf of the Coalition, of the alternative government of Australia, are [sic] providing in-principle support for the offer of an apology to the forcibly removed generations of Aboriginal children."
Tony Abbott defended
John Howard's rebuttal of the apology and was "absolutely right" to defend his record:
The text of the apology didn't make reference to compensation to Aboriginal people as a whole or to members of the Stolen Generations specifically.
Apology text
At 9:30am on
February 13, 2008, Rudd presented the apology to Indigenous Australians as a
motion to be voted on by the house. The form of the apology was as follows:
Opposition leader's parliamentary reply and reaction
Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson then also delivered a 20-minute speech in which he endorsed the apology, after which the House of Representatives unanimously adopted the proposed motion, although some members of the opposition made themselves absent in protest at the apology, and sections of Nelson's reply drew heavy criticism and anger.]]
People watching Nelson's reply speech protested nationwide. Thousands of people who had gathered in Canberra and Melbourne turned their backs on the screens displaying Nelson giving his speech; in Perth people booed and jeered until the screen was eventually switched off; those watching in Parliament House's Great Hall began a slow clap, finally turning their backs, with similar scenes and walk-outs in Sydney and elsewhere.
Senate consideration
Later that day, a motion for an apology in identical terms was considered by the Senate. The Leader of the Greens, Senator
Bob Brown, attempted to amend the motion to have it include words committing parliament to offering compensation to those who suffered loss under past indigenous policies, but was opposed by all the other parties. The Democrats opposed the Greens' amendment for compensation, saying the apology should be allowed to stand on its own. The original motion was passed unanimously.
Legal status and compensation
The legal circumstances regarding the Stolen Generations 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 authorised under
Australian law. Australian federal and state governments'
statute law and associated regulations provided for the removal from their birth families and communities of mixed-race Aboriginal children, or those who appeared mixed.
The apology isn't expected to have any legal impact on claims for compensation.
Cases
Cubillo and Gunner
In the
Federal Court of Australia cases of Cubillo and Gunner, their claims failed. The presiding judge, Justice Maurice O'Loughlin, noted in his summary judgment that he wasn't ruling that there would never be valid cases for compensation with regard to the Stolen Generations, only that in these two specific cases he couldn't find evidence of illegal conduct by the officials involved. Investigations revealed that Cubillo, aged eight years, was removed from a remote station in 1947 when her father went missing and her mother and grandmother were dead. Gunner, it turned out, had been sent to Alice Springs to get an education with the consent of his mother.
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 $775,000 compensation The SA government has announced that it'll pay the compensation awarded to Mr Trevorrow but at the same time, seek to review in the High Court to clarify the court's findings of law and fact.
The West Australian newspaper reported Bruce Trevorrow's story as follows:
Herald Sun newspaper stated:
(See
Bringing them Home,
Appendix 6
for a listing and interpretation of South Australian acts regarding 'Aborigines' and
Bringing them home education module:
South Australia laws regarding relevant South Australian law and policy.)
Films and books
Rabbit-Proof Fence
The 2002
Australian film
Rabbit-Proof Fence was 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 order to return to their Aboriginal families. In a subsequent interview with the
ABC, Doris recalled her removal from her mother at age three or four, arriving at the settlement in 1931. She wasn't reunited with her mother until she was 25 and, until that time, she believed that her mother had given her away. When they were reunited, Doris was unable to speak her native language and had been taught to regard Indigenous culture as evil.. Interviews have revealed that the movie wasn't true to real-life events in many ways, exaggerating the portrayal of poor treatment.
Documentary Kanyini
The principal persona of Melanie Hogan's film
Kanyini,
Bob Randall, is an elder 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' in 1999 and inducted into the
Northern Territory musical hall of fame for songs such 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.
Further Information
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