The Stolen Generations

Something that I hadn't heard of before reading up on Australian history was the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families between the 1890s and the 1970s, in many cases never to see their parents again. Children from as young as a couple of weeks old and up to the age of 5 were taken from their families and placed in girls and boys homes, foster families or missions. At the age of 18 they were 'released' into white society, often scarred for life by their experiences. They are now known as 'The Stolen Generations' as the period covered many decades.

It is well documented that when the Europeans settled, they did not want Aborigines to mix with white people as they were seen as an inferior race and wanted them to die out. Originally, the English were instructed to form a treaty with the Aborigines but since the vast number of colonies were small and each spoke a different language, this was difficult to do and so the land was classed as Terra Nullius (uninhabited). Captain Phillip estimated an Aboriginal population of 1,500 people living in the Sydney Region. The total Indigenous population is believed to be between 750,000 and 1 million speaking more than 250 different languages. The Aborigines were moved away to settlements far away from the European infrastructure where it was thought that they would cause less disruption.

The Europeans believed that the Aboriginal culture would die out within a short time if could not be passed along to the children. In three generations, they thought that the Aboriginal genes would have been 'bred' out' when Aboriginal people had children with white people. Adult Aboriginal people resisted efforts to be driven out of towns and simply returned. With the children away from their families, they were much easier to be controlled. Some of the children were told that their parents had died and most of the mixed race children with paler skin were never told that they were of Aboriginal descent and didn't find out until much later in life.

The children were raised on missions or by foster parents and were severely punished if caught talking their Aboriginal language. The girls were trained to be domestic servants and the boys as stockmen. Both were physically and sexually abused and many babies born to girls raped by white men were taken away from them, often as soon as they were born. The institutions have since been compared to concentration camps.

One source estimates that more than 6,200 children were stolen in NSW between 1883 and 1969 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that one in every ten Indigenous people aged over 25 had been removed from their families in childhood.

On 13th February 2008, the Australian Parliament apologises to the Stolen Generations Some Australians disagree that an apology was required in the first place, choosing to believe instead that the Stolen Generations didn't exist or were rescued as opposed to stolen. Only Tasmania is offering compensation to families affected by the actions of their predecessors.

Many Aborigines are still searching for their fathers, mothers and siblings.