Stolen Generation In Australia

Throughout the 1890’s and 1970’s the event of the Stolen Generation occurred. The Stolen Generation is where Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander children were taken out of their parent’s custody, by the Australian State and Federal agencies and church commissions. These children were forced to live in so called ‘white’ methods and were to follow their teachings and understandings. This presentation of the Stolen Generation will be demonstrating; what the stolen generation was, why the white’s only took away the Aboriginal children away from their families, how did the Stolen Generation affect the children and their families, what happened to the Stolen children and what happened to the family members that weren’t stolen.

The stolen generation has impacted the lives of countless Indigenous Australians. The common perceptions of the Aboriginal people are negative. We think they should get jobs and work as hard as most white Australians do today. We don’t consider the emotions and effects the stolen generation has had on our indigenous Australian’s. We understand the past events were bad but we can’t fathom why they don’t just move on, forget it and leave the past behind? By looking through sources, recounts and information we can mould our narrow ideas and preconceptions to be considerate, understand the horror and respond better towards our indigenous people.

Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.

After many years of European settlement in Australia, many Aboriginal people had been removed from their families and placed into schools with white Australians. This was due to the ‘protection policy’ laws that encouraged the removal of Indigenous children. Because fewer indigenous children were able to learn about their own culture, there was a slow decline in the culture of the indigenous people. As a result of this, there were continued tensions between the free settlers and Indigenous people as they had no roles in the government and couldn’t vote. This made them feel as if they were excluded from greater society and had long term negative impacts upon their sense of belonging to the new

The Stolen Generation has had a great effect on Aboriginal rights and freedoms as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders didn’t even have the rights to raise and look after their children and as a result 100,000 Aboriginal Australian’s were displaced and placed into white families. The lack of understanding and respect for Aboriginal culture also meant that many people who supported the removal of these children really thought they were doing “the right thing”. The impact on Australian life today is still being felt as the Stolen Generation is seen as a recent event has it only ended in the early 1970s. Children that where taken away back then now cannot trace back their roots and therefore have no record of their family history or where

The Stolen Generation has left devastating impacts upon the Aboriginal culture and heritage, Australian history and the presence of equality experienced today. The ‘Stolen Generation’ refers to the children of Aboriginal descent being forcefully abducted by government officials of Australia and placed within institutions and catholic orphanages, being forced to assimilate into ‘white society’. These dehumanising acts placed these stolen children to experience desecration of culture, loss of identity and the extinction of their race. The destructive consequences that followed were effects of corruption including attempted suicide, depression and drug and alcohol abuse. The indigenous peoples affected by this have endured solitude for many

Reconciliation with the Indigenous People of Australia Reconciliation is not only an issue for the indigenous people of Australia, but for every Australian. The a major step in achieving this is for an official apology to be made by the Australian Government to indigenous Australians - especially those of the Stolen Generation. But as with any controversial issue in our society there are many differing views on the matter, in support and not in support of such a move. This essay will briefly outline these arguments subjectively.

The Stolen Generation is the generation of children that were taken from their families and adopted by white families or placed in government-owned facilities. It was part of the assimilation process that aimed to make Aboriginal Australians blend into white society. It did not work and left the victims feeling neither white nor black, unable to fit in with either society (Australians together- no date). Children were made to forget about their Indigenous heritage and forced to adapt to white society. Their names were changed and it was prohibited for them to speak their original languages. The assimilation process focused more on “half-caste” children because they looked whiter than full blood children, so would be more accepted into white society. (Australians Together- no date). This meant that “half-caste” children were more at risk of removal. Nonetheless, anyone part of the Stolen Generation definitely suffered a great deal.

Reconciliation is the process of building respectful relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the wider Australian community. It is about understanding and respecting their culture and heritage and signifies ‘coming together’ to become one nation without racism and with equality for all. There are still vast differences in health, education, employment, and standards of living of the Indigenous peoples as compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. Even today Indigenous peoples have a significantly lower life expectancy, up to 11.5 years for men and 9.7 years for women . The infant mortality rate for the Indigenous peoples is double the rate for non-Aboriginal Australians. Understanding these inequalities is the first step to reconciling the differences. Policies such as the stolen generation and assimilation policy destroyed Indigenous identity and culture and justified the dispossession of Indigenous people and the removal of Indigenous children from their parents. We can’t change the past but we can make a better future by understanding and learning from the mistakes of the past, reconciliation is about that. Many practical and symbolic strategies have been implemented over the last 50 years to achieve reconciliation such as ATSIC, Northern Territory Intervention and the Mabo decision. However, the most significant ones are the 1967 Referendum, Closing the Gap framework in 2008 and the ‘Sorry speech’. The aim is to improve the five dimensions of reconciliation: race relations, equality and equity, institutional integrity, unity, and historical acceptance.

An example of anguish and suffering due to ‘white’ policy laws, was the attempted genocide era also known as ‘the stolen generation’ which lasted for decades (Krieken 2009).The stolen generation era was a “systematic annihilation for Aboriginal cultural identity” (Krieken 2009, p. 297) because children were forcibly taken from their families to institutional facilities that were either run by charitable or religious organizations with the intention of ‘civilizing’ them so they can integrate into white Australian society (Krieken 2009). The Australian government commissioners believed that ‘breeding mixed blood’ Aborigines with white settles will eventually lead to the “colour being bred out of them” (McCarthy 2000, para. 3) whilst those who

the Aboriginal Australians. In 1869 the aborigine’s protection act established the Aborigines protection board in Victoria, to manage the interests of the Aboriginal peoples. This then allows the governor to order the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, culture and tribes to a reformatory or industrial school to be housed in dormitories. Legislation was passed later in other colonies; NSW in 1883, QLD in 1897, WA in 1905, SA in 1911. The stolen generation was known to officially start in 1910 this is most likely as this is when approximately the last piece of legislation passed to make the stolen generation an official movement. The official end date of the stolen generation was 1970. But the stolen generation was still occurring

In conclusion the stolen generation was a traumatizing time for young indigenous children, as being a children were torn from families and forced to live with white people and forget their heritage and culture which lead to the aboriginal culture which would lead to the culture being forgotten. The policy assimilation was introduced by the government, individuals were traumatized by assiliamation. The stolen generation affected the whole indigenous

The recent Australian film, Rabbit Proof Fence, similarly condemns the social, political and cultural mores of colonial and post-colonial Australia in relation to its past treatment of indigenous Australians. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, it too, is set in the 1930’s and reflects similar attitudes and values whites have to black people. The film is a true story based on the book by Doris Pilkington Garimara, the daughter of one of the half-caste children in the film who, together with two other Aboriginal girls, was forcibly removed from her family in Jigalong, Western Australia. These children form part of what is now known as the “Stolen Generation”. They, like many others who lived in the first part of the 20th century, were the victims of the official government assimilationist policy which decreed that half-caste children should be taken from their families and their land in order to be made “white”. The policy was definitely aimed at “breeding out” Aboriginality, because only half and quarter caste children were taken.

In February of 2008, on behalf of The Australian Parliament, Prime Minister of the time, Kevin Rudd, presented a speech directed towards “the Stolen Generation”. This extract addresses the horrific losses that the Indigenous community has endured in the recent past, acknowledging the mistreatment and offering stories of the abuse.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the impact and effects The Stolen Generation has had on the Aboriginal people of Australia. More specifically, I will highlight how The Stolen Generation has impacted Aboriginal people’s health, by leading to mental illness and addiction. Next, I will assess the social effects the Stolen Generation has had on Aboriginal people through education and relationships. Additionally, I will discuss the effect The Stolen Generation has had on the amount of racial consciousness today.