What Did The Stolen 3 Generation Affected The Australian Population

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.

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 Sapphires’ by Wayne Blair was the trigger that led my research into the effects of the Stolen Generation on Aboriginals in Australia. This film is about an Aboriginal singing group who want to make a name for themselves, but find it difficult because of the racism against them. This film also tells the stories of their cousin Kay, who was a half-caste and was stolen from her Aboriginal family at a young age to be taught the ways of white people, and forget her culture. This film made me realise that I am lucky to live in a country where racism of such an extent in which children are stolen from their indigenous families, isn’t part of our history, and has not affected me personally. From my research, I have found six main sources that have helped me to understand how large this problem was and continues to be. My sources: ‘The Sapphires’ by Wayne Blair; a film about a group of Aboriginal singers who are affected by racism which is based on a real life singing group; ‘The Sorry Speech’, by Kevin Rudd who was the Prime Minister of Australia in 2008 who explains the damage and apologises for the way that the actions of past governments tore apart the lives of their indigenous people. Then there is ‘Blind Eye,’ the documentary in which people who were stolen are interviewed and tell their stories. The film, ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ this tells the story of two girls who were stolen and gives us insight into how brutally that they were treated after being ripped apart from

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 is a term to describe aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from families by federal and state governments and by church missions. The aim of this was to bring aboriginal children up in white families and teach them to reject their original culture, therefore if they continued successfully there would eventually be no indigenous people remaining.

The Stolen Generation refers to the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families and assimilated into European communities between 1880 and 1970. These children were made to adopt white culture in attempt to allow aboriginal people to “die out”, through forced rejection of their heritage and banning the use of their own language. Children faced physical, psychological and sexual abuse, sexual and labour exploitation, racism, grief, and suffering. Between 1 in 10 and 3 in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were taken by government, church, or welfare authorities and placed into institutional or foster care with non-Indigenous families.

Throughout the early 20th century, the Australian public was led to believe that Aboriginal children were disadvantaged in their communities, and that there was a high risk of physical and sexual abuse. Aboriginal children were being removed in order to be exposed to ‘Anglo values’ and ‘work habits’ with a view to them being employed by colonial settlers, and to stop their parents, families and communities from passing on their culture, language and identity

Government policies authorising the removal of Aboriginal children have caused extensive and unrepairable damage to every aspect of Indigenous culture. It could be argued that the emotional turmoil which occurred as a result of this policy, is greater than any physical abused ever faced by the Australian Aboriginal people. The act of child removal would be a scarring experience for parents and children of any race or culture. This policy had a particularly damaging impact on the Indigenous people as their identity is based within a set of strong traditional guides and teachings. These lessons are not recorded, but can only be taught through speaking with elders and learning through a connection to others within the mob, connection to art forms

Contentious debate continues to rage in present society opening a floodgate of ethical issues which can have detrimental effects on all parties involved. Ethics vary from each individual and tend to stem from their own belief systems external to that person (Dosen, Harris, Brock, Imariso and Smith 2007:336). These ethics give rise to conflicting arguments in present society. 50 years ago, Indigenous Australians were not entitled to enter a bar, cafe, swimming pool, or a cinema, if that deprivation of basic rights wasn’t enough; they then took children from their mothers later on known as the ‘stolen generation’ (www.creativespirits.2008). The stolen generation, estimated at over 100,000 children were taken from their homes and placed in missions, reserves or dormitories (www.creativespirits.2008). “I feel our childhood has been taken away from us and it has left a big hole in our lives” an Indigenous Australian part of the stolen generation (www.creativespirtis.2008). The loss of ones culture and identity was deemed worse then being poor and living in sub standard living with their families.

The inequalities in today’s indigenous communities are still strongly evident. Heard, Khoo & Birrell (2009), argued that while there has been an attempt in narrowing the gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, a barrier still exists in appropriate health care reaching indigenous people. The Indigenous people believe, health is more than the individual, it is

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 stolen generations were a range of brutal removals of aboriginal children from their families between the late 1800s to the mid 1900s. The core goal in these removals was known as assimilation. Assimilation was based on the belief that aboriginals were to be treated unequally compared to the white people, and that the whites had the right to comprise Australia without aboriginals. The main beliefs behind these operations were that aborigines were inadequate as people and did not meet the borderline standards of civil human beings.

In the 1830's and ending in the early 1970's, many aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families, as the European settlement recognised Aboriginal’s for being flora and fauna and deemed them to be feral. European settlers aim was to supposedly enforce Aboriginal’s to be civil by assimilating them into European society and culture. However this was not the case as it was an excuse to wipe out the Aboriginal race and culture, which was ordered by the Australian Government at the time. The Government’s policies and practices regarding the removal of children, the ill treatment and the continuing effects eradicated many aboriginal generations. Government authorities claimed legal guardianship of all Indigenous children and

The idea of the stolen generations started in 1981, when a white academic, Peter Read, made the proposal that there was a policy to abduct Aboriginal children. Before this pernicious rumour began, nobody had ever heard of anyone stealing children

*During the Stolen Generation the indigenous were treated poorly including (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016):