Stolen+Generations

Visit @http://stolengenerationstestimonies.com/index.php and choose three people from the front page. Listen carefully to their stories. Try to imagine their experience.

Visit the 'Dicussion' tab on the top right of this page and try to answer three of the questions there.

Indigenous children were taken from their families from the very early days of the colony. On the frontier there were many instances of children who were kidnapped by settlers who often became servants for the newcomers. On missions and reserves across the country children were often separated from their families. They slept in dormitories and had very limited contact with their parents. This system helped convert the children to Christianity by removing them from the cultural influence of their people. But the removal of Aboriginal children intensified at the end of the 19th century. There were a number of Aboriginal children being born of mixed race. Colonial authorities believed the children with training and education could be absorbed into the white population ridding them of the so-called ‘half caste’ problem.

Professor Anna Haebich – Historian. “Imagine this scenario of police patrolling and observing things and noting down who was where and looking out for half caste children and then they might do an early morning raid so there everybody is sleeping, they might be just starting to wake up and police come thundering in on their horses. Aboriginal families had developed over time little ways of trying to stop the children from being taken away. They had look-outs and warning systems and kids might rush off into the bush. Some families put them in suitcases, sat on the suitcase, they might have, if they knew about it might have the children blackened up with charcoal.”

Aboriginal children across the country were taken from their families and placed in institutions and foster homes, often not knowing their parents were alive or searching for them. They were taught to reject their Aboriginality, and often experienced abuse and deprivation.

In 1997 the Commonwealth Government undertook an inquiry into the Stolen Generations as these children had come to be known. Hundreds of Survivors gave evidence of their experiences and a report of the extent of these practices was made public.

Professor Marcia Langton- Anthropolgist – “If we were to compare the impact of these so called assimilation policies in their consequences to doing something similar to the Australian population today. Let’s say we’d leave one third of Australians living in their family homes, living their lifestyles. Another third we’d take out of their homes and we’d put them in the illegal immigrant detention centres and then the other third, take them away from their families, their children and we’d enslave them and we’d make them work on cattle stations and on mines or leave them with strange families to cook and clean.”

Many of the Stolen Generations are still finding their way home, still searching for the families they lost and putting together the pieces of their lives.

(from http://stolengenerationstestimonies.com/index.php/about_stolen_generations.html)