Humanities Test_Paperpedia

Candidate’s Name: Divyanshu Bawa

Date: 7th June 2019

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Topic: The impacts of the Stolen

Generations in Australia

“Stolen Generations” is generally referred to era

of Australian history in which government
policies & societal beliefs were made for
assimilation of Aboriginal breed into the noble
white race by removing Aboriginal children
from their families. This chain of events took
place in between in late 1890s and 1970s. This
event can be described as Australia’s own
attempt at genocide. “Today Indigenous
Australians assert that rather than referring to a
distinct policy governing a specific slice of time,
assimilation has persisted as core doctrine in
policy-making over the generations from first
contact to the present” (Anna Haebich 2008: 9).

How and Why were the children taken?

The answer lies in the fundamental inequality
enshrined in the Constitution of the
Commonwealth. In the early 20th century
Australia’s first Parliament sat in Melbourne and
many government offices, like old treasury
buildings which became concern of
Commonwealth.

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Aboriginal people were denied the basic rights

of citizenship. They could not vote; they had no
say at all over the laws that governed their lives.
Aboriginals were not even counted in the
census. The nation created in 1901 defined itself
as “white”. The legislations were made to
displace the Aboriginals from their traditional
lands and to drive them into missions. In early
20th century under the assimilation policy the
white Australian thought the Aboriginal will die
out. They thought in three generations, the
Aboriginal genes would have been bred out as
Aboriginal people will have children with white
people.
Protection Act of Victorian Parliament assumed
more and more control over the Aboriginal’s
children. The white state decided that where and
how children would grow up. The black
population was defined as “Full-blood” & “Half-
caste”. Taking of children of Aboriginal away
and encouraging the lightest in terms of colour
to marry into white communities, this was the
way, it was the thought, to blend black people
into white people and to breed out the black
colour out of them. The boys lived in one
dormitory and girls in the other. In bakehouse,
kitchen and laundry girls learnt the domestic
skills to work in the white households, boys
were given equally menial tasks on settlements
farms, training as future labourers. Children
used to face physical, mental & sexual abuses

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from the white managers. In present days people

who suffered due to such policies as children
said that it was merely a torture for them, and
they want to remove the scares which those days
had left on their lives. The authorities placed a
strict ban on any practice deemed to be
Aboriginal. They were not allowed to talk in
their Aboriginal tongue rather they were only
allowed to talk in English. Any traditional
practices such as, dances, singing and ceremony
were looked upon with hostilities & suspicion.
There are many arguments where people say
that children were not taken away, rather they
were rescued. This group of people believe that
the government of that time took corrective
action as the children were neglected and were
not provided basic rights and access to facilities.
There is also an assessment for the loss of
Aboriginal people by such policies. The first
loss the Aboriginal people suffered was the loss
of cultural value as they were not allowed to
follow their cultural practices. Aboriginal people
also suffered loss of being attached to their
traditional places. Aboriginal people also
suffered the loss of being taken away from their
families and forced to perform labour. In the
first half of the 20th century, Aboriginal
displacement was re-enforced and
institutionalised by state policies of
dispossession and removal inspired by late
Victorian eugenics, which foresaw no viable

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future for ‘primitive’ man in the face of Europe’s

civilisation and ‘racial superiority’. Aborigines
resisted the destruction of traditional means of
sustenance in the bush by their integration into
the pastoral industry based on underpaid,
unsteady seasonal work, and thus to some extent
managed to elude mainstream control and
interference.

Conclusion:
The discrimination based on colour caused many
lives and families. The sufferings of Aboriginal
people can never be paid off. Creating
supremacy of any community in the society is
harmful for the others because it can disturb the
balance of the society. The whole idea of
discrimination and assimilation of Aboriginals
into white people in name of civilising them was
never a truth. In 1997 a government
commissioned enquiry recommended
compensation and unreserved apology to the
“Stolen Generations”. By 2001 all State &
territory government had followed. In 2007 after
the events of ‘Sorry Movement’ across the
Australia, the government finally reached bi-
partisan consensus. A new Prime Minister-
Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology on the
behalf of the Parliament and the nation and it is
screened continuously in Indigenous Galleries of
the National Museum of Australia. The Kinchela

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Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation established

in 2001, It works to reconnect the members of
the “Stolen Generations”.

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References
1. ( 07: The Stolen Generations)
https://youtu.be/aDuxRddyZQY
2. A guide to Australia’s Stolen Generations
- Creative Spirits.
3. The Stolen Generations, a Narrative of
Removal, Displacement and Recovery-
Martin Renes.
4. Kevin Gilbert 1984 [1978]
5. Anna Haebich 2008

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