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On the stolen generation
Something I've seen a few people imply about the Stolen Generation, and something I used to believe myself, was that while regrettable it was just the result of an unfortunate combination of children taken into care being badly cared for in the past, and non-specified racism making government agents more likely to assume indigenous parents were incompetent.
While both of these factors come into it, afaict it went well beyond that (anyone who knows more about this is VERY welcome to pipe up)
EDIT: and they did! You're probably better off just reading the comments than my badly expressed blargle.
Most of this I got from Wikipedia and then this article.
The aim was no just to protect badly treated children. For a start, these kids were not treated the same as white orphans etc, or the way aboriginal kids adopted by white families are now. They were fast-tracked through a bare bones education into becoming servants, in effect creating a nicely demoralised underclass. Families were deliberately broken up, parents were lied to and kept from their children, and every attempt was made to destroy any remaining vestiges of aboriginal culture the kids held on to.
Secondly, while I'm sure some of these kids were pretty malnourished etc with their parents (I've heard horror stories of the way a lot of indigenous kids live now1) if things were so bad that one in three kids needed to be removed then presumably their parents were starving too, and "we've set things up so that either we steal you or you starve to death" is not an excuse. And from the sounds of things the kids were malnourished in the institutions too, so how is that an improvement?
Of course people said it was in the best interests of the children, even back then you had to have a nice sounding explanation, look at The Belgian Congo. But I'm sure enough people could see how terrible it was that if enough people had really cared then things would have stopped, or been done better. And it did not improve the children's lives, statistically they're worse off (in terms of health, education, and criminality) then the ones left behind.
Sorry to rant, but it bugs me. Also there's a somewhat personal connection, since my grandad is proof of how nasty things were even for the white kids caught in the system: he was removed from his loving family (a ukranian uncle) and pushed into an orphanage "for his own good" (by his english speaking relatives2) and it made him bitter, angry, and paranoid his whole life (well, until he got alzheimers anyway)
I will admit that since the whole thing came out there's claims that child services etc are too reticent to take genuinely maltreated kids into care3. But that doesn't negate anything, any more than claims that the Germans were too open with their immigration after the war somehow negates the holocaust. (Yes, Godwin's law, I know. But it's relevant!) (nb, to anyone who disagrees with both "over-reactions": I'm not saying they're necessarily true, just that even if they were it wouldn't matter)
(1) Apparently things were actually better then they are now. Yay progress.
(2)Who then disowned him completely when he married a jew. We don't speak to the canadian side of the family much...
(3) Yeah, I wasn't sure how true this was, and apparently it's not. Have rewritten this paragraph, it refused to come out right the first time.
While both of these factors come into it, afaict it went well beyond that (anyone who knows more about this is VERY welcome to pipe up)
EDIT: and they did! You're probably better off just reading the comments than my badly expressed blargle.
Most of this I got from Wikipedia and then this article.
The aim was no just to protect badly treated children. For a start, these kids were not treated the same as white orphans etc, or the way aboriginal kids adopted by white families are now. They were fast-tracked through a bare bones education into becoming servants, in effect creating a nicely demoralised underclass. Families were deliberately broken up, parents were lied to and kept from their children, and every attempt was made to destroy any remaining vestiges of aboriginal culture the kids held on to.
Secondly, while I'm sure some of these kids were pretty malnourished etc with their parents (I've heard horror stories of the way a lot of indigenous kids live now1) if things were so bad that one in three kids needed to be removed then presumably their parents were starving too, and "we've set things up so that either we steal you or you starve to death" is not an excuse. And from the sounds of things the kids were malnourished in the institutions too, so how is that an improvement?
Of course people said it was in the best interests of the children, even back then you had to have a nice sounding explanation, look at The Belgian Congo. But I'm sure enough people could see how terrible it was that if enough people had really cared then things would have stopped, or been done better. And it did not improve the children's lives, statistically they're worse off (in terms of health, education, and criminality) then the ones left behind.
Sorry to rant, but it bugs me. Also there's a somewhat personal connection, since my grandad is proof of how nasty things were even for the white kids caught in the system: he was removed from his loving family (a ukranian uncle) and pushed into an orphanage "for his own good" (by his english speaking relatives2) and it made him bitter, angry, and paranoid his whole life (well, until he got alzheimers anyway)
I will admit that since the whole thing came out there's claims that child services etc are too reticent to take genuinely maltreated kids into care3. But that doesn't negate anything, any more than claims that the Germans were too open with their immigration after the war somehow negates the holocaust. (Yes, Godwin's law, I know. But it's relevant!) (nb, to anyone who disagrees with both "over-reactions": I'm not saying they're necessarily true, just that even if they were it wouldn't matter)
(1) Apparently things were actually better then they are now. Yay progress.
(2)Who then disowned him completely when he married a jew. We don't speak to the canadian side of the family much...
(3) Yeah, I wasn't sure how true this was, and apparently it's not. Have rewritten this paragraph, it refused to come out right the first time.
no subject
They are more conscious of where Aboriginal kids are placed now - but again the gap in equality of education limits the number of Aboriginal social workers, health workers that the families would trust and other Aboriginal families that can afford to be fostering kids.
re: the Stolen Generation, have you read the full Bringing Them Home report? Or Robert Manne's "In Denial" in the Quarterly Essay series? They cover the evidence of it being totally genocidally motivated and used to capitalise on "free" labour of the stolen children. Not that everyone knew this because my Dad lived up North and he believed the newsreels that were shown in the whites cinemas about "saving" the poor Aboriginal "orphans".
Which reminds me that I meant to add some print resources to your DBW Australian resources post *toddles off to do that*
no subject
have you read the full Bringing Them Home report? Or Robert Manne's "In Denial" in the Quarterly Essay series?
*blinks*
You know, it never occurred to me that people other than government ministers could read that sort of thing. And there it is, on the internet, for anyone to read.
Though *cough* as a rule I actually really suck at reading dry formal non-fiction over about a page. It caused me no end of trouble during my Phd. I've spent the last three weeks trying to get the energy to read a travel guide book. Still, I'll try to at least skim the introduction or something.
*start to read dedication*
*feels sniffly*
*decides to read the rest when I'm not at work*
As I expected, this post has largely highlighted my own ignorance rather than fixing anyone else's, but hey, that's still a good thing :)
Thanks for the resources! I'll add them to the post when I get to that section of my inbox.