Warning: Stealing generations attracts a mandatory lifetime sentence

Well back in the blogs. Why not start again with a simple issue eh? Lets see… abortion, nuclear power, Palestine? Nah, closer to home. How about the Stolen Generation? Sweet.

I was discussing this with some colleagues this afternoon and I found myself automatically jumping to the defence of ‘the stolen generation’ and arguing that compensation be awarded to the poor buggers who were stolen. During the mini-shitstorm that followed I found myself sounding increasingly ignorant of the actual facts. So I’ve decided to start from scratch. What the fuck is going on here?

I am going to quote heavily from the 1997 report “Bringing Them Home : Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families”. I am relying on this report because it seems to be the most comprehensive examination of the ‘Stolen Generation’ that exists. It was commissioned by the Australian Attorney-General Michael Levarch.

So What Happened?

The history of White-Black Australian relations has undergone many phases. It was initially one of pure colonisation, but the problem of the blacks was both a physical and a political one for the early settlers. Various solutions to the ‘black problem’ have been proposed and implemented over the last two hundred years. Firstly it was ignorance, then assimilation, then integration, then seemingly ignorance again and most recently intervention.

The British rulers, unhappy with the way the settlers were dealing with the Indigenous population, created a protectorate system to improve the lot of the blacks. Thus we entered various periods of various approaches that actually resulted in the full blood population being resigned to the fate of extinction, while highlighting the new phenomenon of the ‘half-caste’. The non-full-blood population was recognised as showing none of the signs of extinction of their purer cousins and were thus seen as a problem that would have to be dealt with, rather than left to run it’s own course. Thus the process of assimilation was started.

Poverty Rampant? Was it in the best interests of the child?

A common argument is that the children were living in poverty and thus it was right to remove them from their parents. My research has concluded that poverty was not the main reason for the removal of children, assimilation was, but it has and continues to be used as an excuse, so lets look at that argument. I prefix this by saying that very few would argue that poverty did not exist amongst the Indigenous population at the time.

Under the general child welfare law, Indigenous children had to be found to be `neglected', `destitute' or `uncontrollable'. These terms were applied by courts much more readily to Indigenous children than non-Indigenous children as the definitions and interpretations of those terms assumed a non-Indigenous model of child-rearing and regarded poverty as synonymous with neglect. From here.

From the middle part of that article it seems clear that the aboriginal people were caught in a kind of Catch-22 situation. Traditional methods of child rearing were by definition neglectful, yet they were not given the same allocations of welfare as the white population until 1966 and they were constantly scrutinised on their level of poverty, having their children taken away as a result of not fitting the white minimal levels of it.

So while poverty most certainly existed, it was reinforced by the Government’s restriction of welfare to the population. It is also worth noting that we are not talking about Aboriginal people living traditionally on their lands here. In most cases they had been kicked off their productive lands by the settlers.

Is it ancient history? How long did this go on?

The process could be argued to have started from the moment of colonisation, but the legislation backing it up was probably most formalised at the beginning of last century. It is by no means a relic of the past though.

During the 1950s and 1960s even greater numbers of Indigenous children were removed from their families to advance the cause of assimilation. Not only were they removed for alleged neglect, they were removed to attend school in distant places, to receive medical treatment and to be adopted out at birth.

That is not ancient history by any stretch of the imagination. My parents were born in the 1950’s and they sure as hell remember their childhood.

How many were affected?

Here the figures are simply not available. Records were incomplete or have vanished over time. The report states:

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 in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970.

The report goes on to say that the actual number fluctuated during different periods, and also includes those removed for actual neglect and justice reasons (i.e. prison). It is undeniably a large number in relation to the Aboriginal population.

Is an apology is justified?

This seems to me to be a separate issue from whether compensation is justified. It represents an acknowledgement that the actions taken in the past are regretful and should not be repeated while also cementing in history the moving on from those times.

From the report we have the following study. Those persons removed from their families were found to be:

• less likely to have undertaken a post secondary education;
  
• much less likely to have stable living conditions and more likely to be geographically mobile;
  
• three times more likely to say they had no-one to call on in a crisis;
• less likely to be in a stable, confiding relationship with a partner;
• twice as likely to report having been arrested by police and having been convicted of an offence;
• three times as likely to report having been in gaol;
• less likely to have a strong sense of their Aboriginal cultural identity, more likely to have discovered their Aboriginality later in life and less likely to know about their Aboriginal cultural traditions;
• twice as likely to report current use of illicit substances; and much more likely to report intravenous use of illicit substances. From here.
  

That indicates clearly that the entire process was a monumental fuck up in terms of helping the individuals involved. They were much more likely to have a fucked up life as a direct result of being removed from their families. As such, and distinct from the intent of the authorities involved, it is a regrettable episode in history and the government should issue an apology saying sorry for the injustices that occurred.

Is compensation justified?

This is most certainly a matter for the lawyers, but I can offer a few pieces of insight.

While Indigenous children were being removed from their families at a young age, child welfare practice in relation to non-Indigenous children was being influenced by the work on maternal deprivation conducted by John Bowlby for the World Health Organisation and by a 1951 United Nations report which stressed that child welfare services should be focussed on assisting families to keep their children with them.

I’m sure a skilled lawyer could argue that this represented a failure of the provision of duty of care in relation to best practice, but I’m also fairly certain that the terms ‘duty of care’ and ‘best practice’ were not entrenched in law precedence until more recent times. Can’t really comment with confidence on that one.

More interesting is this; once the Whitlam Government increased the funding and availability of legal services to the Aboriginal population there was an immediate decline in the number of Indigenous children being removed. If there is an absence of legislative change relating to the removed of children and more specifically Indigenous children around that period then it seems to me that the removal of at least a portion of those children was illegal under the legislation at the time. Remember, this is 1972 we are talking about here. I was born seven years later.

Those are the arguments most suited to class action (do we have those in Australia?) type claims that point out systemic illegal or negligent behaviours, and are best suited to the high court. What is apparent from reading the report though is that there are specific cases that are clearly open to compensation claims.

From the wiki reference about Bruce Tervorrow who was awarded $525,000 in compensation.

Mr Trevorrow was separated from his mother in December 1957 after he was admitted to Adelaide's Children's Hospital with gastroenteritis. More than six months later, his mother wrote to the state's Aboriginal Protection Board, which had fostered him out, asking when she could have her son back. "I am writing to ask if you would let me know how Bruce is and how long before I can have him back home," she wrote in July 1958. "I have not forgot I got a baby in there". The Court was told the board lied to her, writing her son was "making good progress" and that the doctors still needed him for treatment.

More still from the submission to the report:

My mother told us that the eldest daughter was a twin - it was a boy. And in those days, if Aboriginals had twins or triplets, they'd take the babies away. Mum swore black and blue that boy was alive. But they told her that he had died. I only found out a couple of years ago - that boy, the nursing sister took him. A lot of babies were not recorded.

I remember another friend of mine in St Ives. She wanted to adopt a little Aboriginal baby. And she was telling me when she got this little one that she went out to the mission and said she wanted a little baby boy. The mission manager said, `Mrs J has a couple of boys [already], we'll take her third one'. So they adopted that child. If Mrs J would have objected, she said the welfare officer says, `Well, if you don't give us that child, we'll take the other two'.

Now these are clear cases of illegal activity. If the actions of the authorities were entirely legal then there would be no cause to lie to the parents. These are, along with the rest of the five hundred submissions to the inquiry, entirely anecdotal, but if investigated through the rigors of a courtroom I’m sure they could be substantiated, as was the case in the Trevorrow matter.

I urge you to read this page of the report containing the submissions I have quoted and many more. It is saddening and heartbreaking stuff.

In conclusion:

It occurred in the early stages in good faith, albeit completely racists and ignorant good faith. In the later stages, it occurred though deceit and wilful ignorance. There is no double that a formal apology is needed, and that compensation is required in specific cases. I stop short of pushing for a blanket class action type compensation response because actions that occurred under the legislation of the time, however abhorrent, will most probably not win in a court.

That said, I think it would be a great idea to create a fund to provide support to those affected by the removal of Aboriginal children, in a similar way to those supporting returned veterans.

As a final note, I also add that any argument stating that the government cannot easily provide for this compensation, in the era of $10 billion plus budged surpluses and $50 billion plus election promises simply has their priorities wrong.

Please provide sensible critiques here. If you have to play devil’s advocate then back it up with a reasonable argument and not controversial comments for the sake of controversy.