The Stolen Generations:
Most blemished chapterin Australian history
Dr. Ruwan M Jayatunge
The Stolen Generations 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 government under
Parliamentary Act in 1869. The forcible removals occurred from 1869 to
1970 that given the catastrophic population decline of Aboriginal people
and disintegration of their cultural roots leading to numerous
psycho-social problems.
Preserving Australian Aborigins’ identity and culture no
easy task. Courtesy: Google |
The children were removed forcefully and against the will of their
parents.
Over 100,000 children were brutally and forcibly removed and in some
cases the infants were removed soon after their birth. There are no
genuine statistics about the stolen generations today. Many records have
been lost or destroyed. Most of the parents whose children were taken
never saw them again. One in ten Aboriginal children were separated from
their mothers during these years. Such removals were made by the Police
Officers or Aboriginal Protection Offices who were white Australians.
The children were held in Government institutions and subjected to
inhuman conditions. The aboriginal children were prevented using their
native languages and rituals. Often they were severely punished for
using their indigenous languages. They were prevented being socialized.
The siblings were deliberately separated from each other. The children
were taught to reject their Aboriginality and to regard Indigenous
culture as evil. The aboriginal boys were trained to become agricultural
labourers and the girls as domestic servants to serve in the White
Australian households.
According to the comments made by some Historians and Sociologists
the Stolen Generation represent a cultural genocide. They argue that the
Australian Government literally kidnapped these children from their
parents as a government policy which was managed by the APB or
Aborigines Protection Board. The ABP gave the power to remove children
without parental consent and without a Court order. Therefore it was an
institutionalized atrocity against the Aboriginal people which based on
racial grounds. This policy made tens of thousand of Aboriginal families
to suffer and breaking up of important cultural, spiritual and family
ties. It affected individuals as well as the community hence creating a
collective trauma. Sir Ronald Wilson the President of Australia’s Human
Rights Commission once called it as an attempted genocide.
As the Psychiatrist Dr. Jane McKendrick of Melbourne University
points out high proportion of people from the Stolen Generations were
psychologically, physically or sexually abused while in care. Many
victims suffer from anxiety, depression and post-trumatic stress. The
repercussions of the stolen generations still echoes the Aboriginal
community. They have high prevalence of alcoholism, suicides, domestic
violence and child abuse.
The average Aborigine life expectancy is 17 years shorter than the
rest of the countries’ population.
The victims still have Inter-generational effects with poor parenting
skills, behavioural problems, unresolved grief and trauma due to the
institutionalization upbringing. People who experienced forcible removal
in childhood experience blunt emotions, insecurity and they have lack of
trust in the outside world. They even pass down negativity to their
offspring. The stolen generation lacked socialization which includes
processes of being nurtured. They often found difficulty in sustaining
and developing good constructive family relationships with their own
children.
Therefore the collective trauma became a vicious cycle.
Traumatic removal of Aboriginal children from their parents at young
age with no substitute attachment figures resulted a social calamity.
The common psychological impacts have often manifested in isolation,
drug or alcohol abuse, criminal involvement, self harm and suicide.
Trauma experienced in childhood embedded in the personality and
physical development of the victims. It destroyed Aboriginal identity
and knowledge of Aboriginal culture. The mental anguish they suffer is
directly linked to being taken from their parents. Indigenous
Australians suffer disproportionately high rates of psychological
ailments.
The Aborigines of Australia were the first people to set foot on the
continent, somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago. Europeans
settled in Australia in 1788.
The colonists battled natives for their land. A hundred years later
Aborigines no longer held much of the continent and many Aboriginal
groups were struggling for survival. There may have been between a half
million to a full million Aborigines at the time of European settlement;
today about 350,000 live in Australia.
Following the European interventions Aborigines lost their spiritual
homes as well as their source of food. Hunger, disease and armed attacks
killed thousands of Aborigines. They lost their lands, cultural links
and eventually their children.
The APB policy affected not only the aboriginal victims even the
enforcers for some extent. According to an article written by Lang Dean
in 1997 describes the anguish of his father a Victorian policeman from
1922 until 1946 who made over 343 removals. As the author describes
after such removals the policemen was crying and sobbing as a child. He
removed aboriginal children against his conscience and repented until
his last days.
On February 13, 2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd asked for
an apology from the victims of the stolen generation even though the
former Premier John Howard rejected calls for a formal government
apology. Some political analysts criticized John Howard who had been a
Member of Parliament in the 1960s - when forced removal was still a
government policy.
Although many Indigenous Australians welcomed the official government
apology they highlight that it does not pay any compensation for the
suffering that they underwent.
As a result of the government made disaster they are still
experiencing the anguish.
The apology was sweet but it was merely nothing but words which will
not resolve their current problems. |