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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
no subject
In the 1960's they changed it so they could vote regardless of state right and got the vote in QLD and WA.
So really they were recognized for electoral purposes right since federation and not allowing them to vote was illegal under the laws of the time.
The legislation reclassifying them as people passed in 1967 and last year was the 30 year anniversary (I remembered it being in the paper)
Although it makes you think in NSW the 'fauna' had the right to vote in 1856 but the women only got it in 1902.
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But they got the vote before that.