The stolen generation: impact and legacy in Australia

Stolen Generation

Conflict Resolution for Indigenous Peoples in the 21st Century

Perhaps as no other time in history, people around the world are reexamining how their countries can into existence and what types of actions were taken to achieve nationhood. In many cases, these reexaminations of the past have required a stark analysis of how indigenous people were adversely affected by these nation-building activities and what can be done to day to make things right. This process has taken place around the world in places such as the United States in their efforts to resolve a collective national guilt over slavery and the Indian Removal Act, as well as in Canada for their treatment of indigenous people. Likewise, Australia is attempting to resolve its own collective national guilt over its notorious treatment of Aboriginal peoples throughout the country over the past 220 years, but not everyone is of a like mind concerning how best to resolve these longstanding issues. Indeed, like those who would deny the Holocaust ever occurred, there are some observers today who suggest that the issue of the "Stolen Generation" is exaggerated or overblown, while still others would simply like to see the whole thing go away (Neill, 2002).

According to Burgmann (2003), although 26 May 1998 became the first National Sorry Day, there was still no apology forthcoming from John Howard. "After the federal election on 3 October 1998," Burgmann adds, "Howard's victory speech said: 'I also want to commit myself very genuinely to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people of Australia'" (p. 88). Shortly after his reelection, Howard advised Aboriginal people that they should consider themselves as being "part and parcel of a harmonious Australian community" (quoted in Yu 1998 at p. 15).

As Brooks (2004) points out, "Prime Minister Howard opposed having whites apologize because he did not want them to 'embroil themselves in an exercise of shame and guilt'" (Henderson, 1999, p. 39). This recalcitrant view was certainly not universal throughout Australia, though, and community groups across the country published more than 120,000 so-called "Sorry Books" in which some 400,000 whites signed their names and "expressed in their own words their sorrow for the forced removal policies" (Brooks, 2004, p. 153). According to this author, "On National Sorry Day in 1998, sponsored not by the government but by these community groups, the books were given to elders of the 'stolen generations' in hundreds of cities, towns, and villages throughout Australia" (Brooks, p. 153).

In his book, Taking a Stand: Land Rights to Reconciliation, Tickner (2001) reports that, "At first, Mr. Howard and his government defended the refusal to make a formal government apology on the grounds that it would be an admission of liability that would require compensation to be paid, contrary to their announced policy. It then emerged that the government's chief general counsel had advised that an apology could be framed to avoid legal liability" (p. 56). As a result, Howard came to embrace the notion of an apology to these indigenous people; however, he maintained that such an apology should not be from the people of Australia but rather from the Australian Parliament (Brooks). As this author emphasizes, "Consistent with this restriction, the apology had to simply 'acknowledge' that past atrocities were committed in the name of the Australian people. It could not express the sentiment that the Australian people individually or collectively 'regret' acts for which they were not directly responsible" (p. 153). Moreover, and notwithstanding the historic evidence to the contrary, not everyone agreed with this approach. For instance, Neill (2002) emphasizes, "Writing about the first national Sorry Day in May 1998, Frank Devine, a conservative columnist for the 'Australian,' declared that 'speaking of a 'stolen generation' is propagandistic exaggeration. No such 'generation' exists" (p. 124). Recently, though, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology on national television. According to the editors of the Australian (2008), "Kevin Rudd has offered a broad apology to all Aborigines and the Stolen Generations for their 'profound grief, suffering and loss' in a carefully worded statement that was greeted by a standing ovation. Thousands of Aboriginal Australians gathered in Canberra to watch the historic apology, which was televised around the nation and shown at special outdoor settings in remote indigenous communities" (Kevin Rudd's national apology to Stolen Generations, p. 2). Nevertheless, the historical record on these issues is clear and the impact of the Australian government's actions over the past two centuries is discussed further below.

2. Historical and social background.

2.1 Indigenous Australians and the impact of British settlement (1788). According to U.S. government analysts, even though Aboriginal settlers arrived on the Australian continent from Southeast Asia approximately 40,000 years before the first Europeans began exploration in the 17th century, these indigenous peoples failed to file a formal claim for their property with the British government so they were apparently out of luck when Captain James Cook sailed into port and took possession of the entire country in the name of Great Britain (Australia, 2008). The British certainly did not waste any time in disrupting the lives of thousands of indigenous people when they first arrived in Australia. According to Wilson (2004), "From almost the first moment they set foot, in 1788, on the land, British colonists separated Aboriginal children from their families" (p. 78). It would seem reasonable to suggest that 40,000 years of continuous occupation would entitle these long-term residents to some fundamental civil rights in their own country, but it took almost two centuries before the Australian government acknowledged their basic equality and granted them equal rights. In this regard, Neill (2002) advises, "On 27 May 1967, a referendum was held which led to Australia's Aboriginal people being recognised as full citizens in their own country for the first time in almost 200 years of white settlement" (p. 1). Unfortunately, this recognition is too little far too late for thousands of Aboriginal people today, and these issues are discussed further below.

2.2 "Protection" and segregation of Aboriginal people in the 19th century. One of the overriding themes that emerges from the literature concerning the "protection" of Aboriginal people in the 19th century is the hypocrisy and greed involved in the practice. While it may be true that Australian colonists initially sought to protect Aboriginal children they found all alone in the bush by "rescuing" them, it would appear that the vast majority of these children did not need rescuing or protection at all. As Wilson emphasizes, "Historically, the aims of and reasons for separation have varied. In the early years of colonization, Europeans occasionally found Aboriginal children in the bush. The colonists presumed the parents had died in battle or from disease, and kept the children in order to find out whether it was possible to train an Aboriginal child to fit into white society" (p. 79). Over time though, the goals of this segregation became more self-serving and even downright evil in nature. In this regard, Wilson reports that, "Throughout the nineteenth century, missionaries tried to entice Aboriginal parents to send their children to board at mission schools, in the hope that children would be more receptive to Christian civilizing than adults. Colonial government officials explored the possibility of separating Aboriginal children to train them to meet the demand for cheap labor" (p. 80). In reality, "cheap labor" translated into virtual slavery for many of these unfortunates, but their problems did not end there but extended throughout their entire culture in ways that would have a lasting and severe impact as discussed further below.

Stolen Generation.

3.1 Emergence of the child removal policy and policy in practice. Not surprisingly, the impact of these early "protection" and segregation policies on the Aboriginal people of Australia was immediate and profound. "Throughout this period," Wilson advises, "Aboriginal adults and children have resisted separation -- by hiding children, by running away, by petitions to government officials and politicians, and by calling for inquiries and changes to legislation and policy" (p. 80).

Unfortunately, the legacy of this forced separation of children from their families is equally grim. In fact, today, Wilson emphasizes that, "Thousands of Aboriginal children have suffered intentional, and irreparable damage to their relationships with parents, extended family, and communities, and at the turn of the twenty-first century Aboriginal children are still far more likely to spend time in 'alternative care' or juvenile justice custody than any other Australian children" (p. 78). Likewise, Neill (2002) reports, "The disturbing rate of contemporary removals has led inevitably to talk of a new 'stolen' generation. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has railed against increasing 'intrusion' by State and Territory governments into the lives of indigenous children" (p. 169). What makes these trends and statistics all the more disturbing is the cold-blooded manner in which the process was carried out, but is was all done nice and legal-like in traditional British-inspired fashion so everyone could rest assured that the government knew what it was doing and could rest easy about any rumors they might hear to the contrary and these issues are discussed further below.

3.2 Consequences and effects of the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869. The Aboriginal Protection Act of 1869 (hereinafter "the Act") made Victoria the first Australian colony to promulgate a framework in which to officially regulate the lives of Aboriginal people. According to the National Archives of Australia (2008), "This Act gave powers to the Board for the Protection of Aborigines which subsequently developed into an extraordinary level of control of people's lives including regulation of residence, employment, marriage, social life and other aspects of daily life" (Aboriginal Protection Act, p. 2).

The Act was passed during a period in Australia's history when the country was seeking to implement more enlightened laws for almost everyone else concerning the right to a popular and universal vote and the need for a free public education for all citizens - except Aboriginal people. In this regard, the Archives notes that, "For Aboriginal people, however, there was no such progress. The powers this Act gave to the Board for the Protection of Aborigines developed into controls over where people could live, where they could work, what kinds of jobs they could do, who they could associate with and who they could marry" (Aboriginal Protection Act, p. 3). The Act of 1869 was just the beginning, though. In this regard, Broome notes that, "Aboriginal children of mixed descent were always in danger of being taken from their mothers. The Western Australian Aboriginal Act of 1905, the Northern Territory Aboriginal Ordinance of 1911, and the Queensland State Children's Act of 1911, made the Chief Protector of Aborigines the legal guardian of all Aboriginal and 'half-caste' children. He had the right to remove them from their parents to an institution" (p. 1387).

According to Broome (2002), this approach to dealing with the indigenous people of Australia became standard over time.".. As protectors scoured the camps for light-skinned children to remove them and absorb them into the general population. The policy reached its height in the 1930s when increasing numbers of children were rounded up and sent to missions or south to Adelaide, far from traditional influences" (p. 138). In some cases, these forcibly removed Aboriginal children were subjected to the worst environments conceivable, including sexual and physical abuse (including flogging and death) (Attwood & Markus, 1999), as well as being denied freedom of movement in their own homeland (Broome). The impact of these early policies on the Aboriginal people of Australia today remains severe: "Although Aborigines are comparatively less disadvantaged in the early 1990s than they were a decade earlier, their hospitalisation and death rates were still four times higher, their infant mortality was three times higher and their life expectancy was about 20 years lower than other Australians" (Broome, p. 218).

Moreover, these historic disparities in treatment have resulted in some other adverse social outcomes as well. For instance, Broome emphasizes that, "Such disadvantages create stress and emotional problems. These are increased by alcoholism and substance abuse, cultural change and a breakdown in traditional values among some people" (p. 218). Although cultural change is a natural concomitant of life in the modern era characterized by globalization, these changes have been less than desirable among many Aboriginals and have contributed to an inordinately high incidence of violence and sexual abuse among these people. As Broome points out, "In 1990 the Queensland Aboriginal Coordinating Council reported some Aboriginal communities had very high rates of domestic violence, an alarming use of pornographic mail-order videos leading to sexual abuse of children, and rates of assault, rape and homicide 50 times higher than the average Queensland rate" (p. 218).

Reparation.

4.1 Public awareness. Over the past four decades or so, the Australian general public has become increasingly aware of what transpired with the Aboriginal people of Australia over the past two centuries. According to Wilson, "Since the mid-1970s, Aboriginal adults who were taken from their families as children have increasingly used mass media to tell other Australians about the experiences and the ongoing effects of separation on generations of Aboriginal families. At the same time, historians have uncovered archival evidence that separation was nationwide and systematic" (p. 79). Indeed, in his essay, "The Return of the Stolen Generation," Read (1996) reports that public awareness concerning the manner in which the states and territories of Australia have historically treated the people who were there before them has reached a peak in recent years:

Aboriginal singer Archie Roach was one of many thousands of Aborigines removed from his parents when he was a child. By the age of sixteen he was living homeless and hopeless on the so-called Charcoal Lane, in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Other children, removed like Archie Roach from their parents when they were babies, were raised by non-Aboriginal parents, or in an institution. In Australia such men and women have become universally known as the Stolen Generations and their lives and histories seem at present to be the most frequently discussed topic in the whole of Aboriginal Australia. (p. 8)