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G4EBT > HEALTH 17.06.07 15:59l 140 Lines 5520 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 2F5659G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: RE: Stolen Generation (VK2TV)
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Sent: 070617/1320Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:34765 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:2F5659G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : HEALTH@WW
Ray, VK2TV wrote:-
> Whilst I don't go along with the "we should say we're sorry for the
> stolen generation" brigade,
Me neither, although that's just one issue of the last 200 years of
disturbance and disposession of people who had self-determination for
the previous 40,000 years.
As I understand it, in 1999 John Howard did express "deep and sincere
regret" for injustices suffered by aborigines over past generations, but
stopped short of using the word "sorry" .
>I do have sympathy for the greater Koori population.
We can't do anything about past injustices, but we can shape the future.
It's one thing to express regret - quite another to apologise for previous
generations, for the actions of others in which they themselves played no
part?
Tony Blair, UK P.M, has been pressed to apologise for British involvement
in the slave trade, but IMHO there's no reason why he should. Slavery was
the norm throughout history.
Countries all over the world engaged in the slave trade, including African
nations who provided slaves. It was Britain who brought it to an end, due
to the single-minded 20-yr campaign of William Wilberforce, Hull MP, who
dedicated his life to the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago this
year.
It was the might of the Royal Navy on the high seas that put a stop to it.
>The stolen generation is just another example of bureaucrats carrying out
>the prevailing law.
I'm not sure how many on packet outside of Oz will understand the term
"Stolen Generation" Ray, but you're right - the bureaucrats were simply
enforcing the law and Acts of Parliament.
By the standards of the day they considered those laws to be in the best
interests of the Indigenous people - that's how the laws came to be
passed.
The Stolen Generation describes Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children - usually of mixed descent, taken from their families
by Australian government agencies and church missions.
Under various state acts of parliament the rights of parents were denied
and all Aboriginal children made wards of the state from around 1915 until
(officially) 1969. The children were sent to internment camps, orphanages
and other institutions.
The Stolen Generation received much public attention following the 1997
publication "Bringing Them Home - Report of the National Inquiry into the
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their
Families".
That report and others can be had from the Oz Human Rights and Equal
Opportunities Commission (HREOC) at:
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/stolen_children/
The removal of Aboriginal children from parents was based on Eugenics
theory of the late 19th/early 20th C. It held that 'full-blood' tribal
Aborigines were unsustainable and doomed to inevitable extinction.
That ideology held that mankind could be divided into a civilisational
hierarchy. This notion supposed that Northern Europeans were superior in
civilisation, and Aborigines were inferior, so should not be masters of
their own destiny.
(Echoes of Nazi Germany "untermenchen" and Aryan superiority).
According to that view, mixed-descent children in Australia labelled
'half-castes' (or 'crossbreeds', 'quadroons' and 'octoroons'), were
seen as a threat to racial purity.
This led to policies and laws that resulted in removal of children from
their parents with the stated aim to assimilate mixed-race people into
contemporary Australian society.
In all states and territories laws were passed in the early years of the
20th C giving Aboriginal protectors guardianship rights over Aborigines up
to the age of sixteen or twenty-one.
Police or other agents of the state (Aboriginal Protection Officers), had
the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from
their mothers, families, or communities into institutions.
According to the Bringing Them Home Report, at least 100,000 children were
removed from their parents, but the figure may be substantially higher.
(formal records of removals were poorly kept).
It stated:
Nationally we can conclude with confidence that between one-in-three and
one-in-ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families
and communities from approximately 1910 until 1970.
The report examined 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 surrendered their children for all sorts of reasons (sickness,
poverty, living arrangements, racism...). Some voluntarily sent their
children to religious missions hoping at least that way they'd retain
contact with their children and know of their whereabouts.
The report also acknowledged that in some cases the state took
responsibility for children who were orphaned or in a state of
neglect.
Despite present day condemnation of those policies, I guess that many of
the children were lifted out of poverty and had better lives as a result.
And no, I'm not "digging the dirt" to denigrate Australia - I'm saying
this was a dark period in relatively recent *British* history. I don't
think it does any harm to draw lessons from it.
> I'd better get off this soapbox.
I only meant you to borrow it - not to keep it Ray:-)
Best wishes
David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 15:33 on 2007-Jun-16
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