Stolen Generation In Australia

The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) was a law that changed Indigenous Australian lives forever. The act enabled the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines to essentially control the lives of Aboriginal people. It was the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) that had major provisions that resulted in the containment and suffering that Aboriginal people endured. This suffering included the practice of forcible removing Indigenous children from their families. These major provisions help us understand what the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) involved and the impact it has had on the daily lives and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples today.

Indigenous Australians have faced many changes to their original life style, with numerous policies being brought in. These policies had an incredible affect on how the indigenous Australians lived. The policies inflicted on the indigenous Australians varied widely and had numerous impacts. The policies of assimilation, protection and integration had mainly negative impacts on the community, causing loss of identity, language and religion. The policies of self-determination and reconciliation, had mostly positive effects to the indigenous Australian community, creating a stronger bond between black and white Australians, encouraging the concept of closing the gap between indigenous Australians and non-indigenous Australians. These

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 rights and freedoms of Aboriginals have improved drastically since 1945 with many changes to government policy, cultural views and legal rules to bring about a change from oppression to equality. Unfortunately on the other hand, some rights and freedoms have not improved at all or have even worsened.

At the turn of the twentieth century the systematic forced removal of Aboriginal children from their mothers, families and cultural heritage was commonplace. There were several reasons that the government and white society used to justify the separation but the prevailing ideology of nationalism and maintaining Australia for the ‘whites’ was the over-riding motivation and justification for their actions[1]. Progressive sciences such as anthropology espoused such theories as eugenics, miscegenation, biological absorption and assimilation which legitimated governmental policies relating to Aboriginal affairs[2]. It was

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

Kevin Rudd’s apology was to the Aboriginals; but in particular, to the Stolen Generations. From 1909-1969, the Australian Government forced a policy know as assimilation upon the Aboriginals. Assimilation is the forced integration of minority groups onto the dominant society. Inhumane acts were inflicted upon these proud people because of the ‘Aborigines Protection Board’ which entailed that the Australian Government had full rights to forcibly remove half-caste children from Aboriginal care without parental consent nor a court order.

Assimilation policies existed in purpose of allowing the removal of Aboriginal children legal and believed as to be the right thing. The removal policy was managed by the Aborigines Protection Board. The Aborigines Protection Board was a government board established in 1909 with the power to remove children without parental consent and without a court order. These policies were especially detrimental to the Aborigines as a ‘government’ act prevented them with having authority over their own children and having no power in stopping the abducting of their children. Over causing a significant discrimination against the indigenous race, breeding hatred and inequality in Australian society, the implementation of these policies caused immense heartache and anguish for the Aboriginal parents for losing their children, the children of the Stolen Generation experiencing solitude and confusion for majority of their lives and the rest of society,

The Northern Territory Intervention, a name commonly referred to as the NTER, was initiated as a response to investigations into allegations of serious sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal communities. An inquiry was subsequently established to find more effective ways to protect the children leading to the publication of the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report in 2007 (Anderson, P. and Wild, R., 2007). Following this report, the Federal Government sent army troops into the Northern Territory and proceeded to stage a massive intervention, which they called the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER).

By the 1950’s all state governments invoked a new policy called assimilation (1950’s – 1960’s), which aimed to eliminate Indigenous cultures, religion and languages. Assimilation was based on the belief that if living conditions were improved, Indigenous Australians were to be absorbed into White Australian society (Hampton & Toombs, Racism, colonisation/colonialism and impacts on indigenous people, 2013). After the failure of the assimilation policy, governments aimed their sights towards Integration (1960’s - 1980’s). Integration was a step towards

The CFCSA states in part 1, section 4, that “if a child is an aboriginal child, the importance of preserving the child’s cultural identity must be considered in determining the child’s best interest” (1996). In both cases, both youth had family members within their Indigenous culture that were willing to take them but due to unrelated circumstances these requests were not taken into consideration. The overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care is demonstrated here, where child protection workers are not equipped with the training or resources to adequately identify and address risk when dealing with Indigenous children. This is one of the recommendations within the TRC where “ensuring that social workers and others who conduct child

Governments soon felt that to banish Indigenous Australians, the children needed to be removed from their family and assimilated with non-indigenous families, believing this was the best option to breed out the aboriginal race and to fit them into mainstream society.

The impact of the Stolen Generations on Australian Indigenous peoples is seen in the sense of isolation and separation that overwhelms the children that were forcibly removed under the policies of the assimilation legislation. The children experienced not only separation from their family but also had their identity taken away, this includes not being able to speak their own language or practice their culture and religion practices.

Human rights are the rights of humans, regardless of nationality, gender, race, or religion. We should all have this in common as we are all part of humanity. However, Indigenous people did not always have these rights (Ag.gov.au, 2015). Aside from basic human rights, Indigenous people also have their own rights specific to their culture. Before 1967, Indigenous people had different rights in different states and the Australian federal government did not have any jurisdiction over Aboriginal affairs until Australia’s constitution was amended for this purpose in 1967 (Moadoph.gov.au, 2015). Between 1900 and the present time, there have been significant changes to the rights of Indigenous Australians. The effects of the European Settlement on the Indigenous people of Australia have been devastating. When white people began arriving in Australia, the Aboriginal people believed them to be ghosts of ancestor spirits. However, once they realised the settlers were invading their land, the Aborigines became, understandably, hostile (Slater & Parish, 1999, pp.8-11). In 1788, the total Indigenous population was believed to be between 750,000 and one million. By 1888, the Indigenous population was reduced to around 80,000 Australia wide (Korff, 2014). The three main reasons for this dramatic decline were the introduction of new diseases, violent conflicts with the colonisers, and settlers acquiring Indigenous land (Digital, 2015). In 1848, the Board of National Education stated that it