HEALING THE STOLEN GENERATIONS

Australia’s attempt to overcome a deep wound in its national life

‘True reconciliation between the Australian nation and its Indigenous people is not achievable in the absence of acknowledgement by the nation of the wrongfulness of the past dispossession, oppression and degradation of the Aboriginal peoples. That is not to say that individual Australians who had no part in what was done in the past should feel personal guilt. It is simply to assert that national shame, as well as national pride, can and should exist in relation to past acts and omissions, at least when done or made in the name of the community or with the authority of government. Where there is no room for national pride or national shame about the past, there can be no national soul.’
- Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia

Compiled by Dr Peter Read, Wayne Connop and John Bond.
Dr Peter Read of the Australian National University is widely regarded as the country's leading historian on the policies which separated Indigenous children from their families.Wayne Connop is a law student at the Australian National University, whose family has been directly affected by the policies outlined in this booklet. John Bond is the former Secretary of the National Sorry Day Committee

THE STOLEN GENERATIONS
Some Questions and Answers

What are the Stolen Generations?
The Stolen Generations is the name generally given to Aboriginal people – mainly those with some non-Aboriginal ancestry – who were removed from their families as children and sent to institutions or adopted into non-Aboriginal families as a result of government policies now recognised as misguided and destructive.

Why "Stolen"?
Because in the vast majority of cases, agents of government used compulsion, duress or undue pressure to remove these children from their mothers and communities. Sometimes the police would simply remove the child by force. Sometimes subterfuge was used. Sometimes the mother would be persuaded to sign a document of which she had little understanding, and certainly no concept that she was allowing her child to be entirely separated from her for many years.

Why "Generations"?
Because authorities began removing Aboriginal children early in the nineteenth century, and the practice went on into the 1970s.

How many children were taken?
The best estimates are between 45 000 and 55 000 children, mainly between 1910 and 1970.

What proportion of children were removed?
At the peak in the 1920s and again in the 1950s the numbers were close to one child in three. By this time, in southern Australia, almost all Aboriginal children were of part-descent. In northern Australia the authorities mainly targeted the part-Aboriginal children.

Why were the children taken away?
Since Britain’s colonisation of Australia began in 1788, the story of the Aboriginal people has been one of dispossession, massacre and disease, to the point where it was widely assumed that they would die out. But the number of people of mixed Aboriginal and white race grew steadily; and since they were usually born of white fathers and Aboriginal mothers, most of them grew up in Aboriginal communities.

This alarmed the white authorities, who looked on Aboriginal culture as worthless. In their view, if they denied these children access to Aboriginal culture, the children would turn naturally to Western culture, and Australia would soon become a wholly Western country. So, from the late 1800s, the authorities adopted a practice of removing the children from their Aboriginal families and placing them with white foster parents or in white institutions, often run by churches.

What was the effect of the separation on the children?
Experiences varied widely, depending on the situation to which the children were taken, and amount of the love and attention they received. Some coped with the trauma of losing their families, and flourished. They have still had to cope with the emptiness resulting from the silence about their birth families, and the denial of their Indigenous heritage. But their situation is far better than those who were placed with unsatisfactory foster parents or in institutions. Many of these children never overcome their traumatic loss, and their lives have become an anguished story of social malformation. At least one academic study has found that, after removal from their families, the children’s scholastic achievement deteriorated markedly.

The worst places were normally the institutions. The staff included many caring people. But they were unable to give the children the attention they needed, and many children grew up starved of affection. There were also staff who were wholly unsuitable, as the evidence of abuse, physical and sexual, makes clear. Some institutions were seriously under-resourced, and their living conditions were deplorable, even by the standards of the time.

Above all, however, the institutions were given an impossible task – to prepare part-Aboriginal children to take their place in a society which treated non-white people as second-class. In many institutions the children were taught to stay away from Aboriginal people. They learned to be ashamed that they were black. Most girls were trained with the expectation that they would become domestic servants, and boys were expected to become stockmen, or learn a simple trade.

Many who adopted or fostered these children tried to ignore the social attitudes to non-white people, reasoning that if they treated the child as an equal, the rest of society would too. Normally this did not happen. As the children reached twelve or thirteen they found their white friends dropping away. It became harder to get a friend of the opposite sex. Unwanted and alienated, the children couldn’t withdraw into Aboriginal company like their cousins back home.

Though their experiences were different, both the children from the institutions and those in foster homes shared the same problems. Not accepted by the whites, too ashamed to join the blacks, all too often the stolen generations were left in the middle.

What was the effect on the Aboriginal community?
Almost everyone was affected – those taken away, and the parents, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, left behind. Widely throughout the country, Aboriginal families lived, year after year, with the fear that their children would be snatched from them. When a Government patrol officer appeared, the children would scatter into the bush. Some families fled to isolated places or kept moving ahead of the authorities. This caused constant disruption to many Aboriginal communities, destroying any chance of the stability on which advances in health, education and economic development depend.

Was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights violated by the policies?
Australia appears to have been in clear violation of the 1949 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that:

4. No one shall be held in servitude.

9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence…

16(3). The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and state.

26(3). Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

What was "Bringing Them Home"?
In the early 1990s the Federal Government became alarmed at the rate at which Aboriginal people were committing suicide in prison. They established a Royal Commission which investigated 100 Aboriginal people who had died in prison. They discovered that 43 of them had been removed from their families as children, as a result of the separation and juvenile justice policies of the time. Clearly this factor needed further investigation.

In May 1995 the Federal Government directed the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission to investigate the past and present separation of Aboriginal children from their parents and communities, the need for any changes in current laws and practices, and principles relating to compensation.

The Inquiry travelled widely throughout the country, taking evidence or receiving submissions from 777 people or organisations. By the time it finished, the Labor Government had been replaced by a Coalition Government, and it was to this Government that the President of the Commission, Sir Ronald Wilson, presented the report, Bringing Them Home, in April 1997. Its findings were a feature of vigorous debate in the media from then on, and media specialists say that this was the biggest story to go from Australia to the world in 1997.

 What were the findings of "Bringing Them Home"?
The report is 689 pages long. It concluded: ‘Indigenous children have been forcibly removed from their families and communities since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia. In that time, not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects.’

It also concluded that forcible removal was an act of genocide contrary to the Convention on Genocide ratified by Australia in 1949. This Convention specifically includes ‘forcibly transferring children of (a) group to another group with the intention of destroying the group.’

To overcome the continuing harmful consequences of these policies, the report made 54 recommendations. These included apologies by State and Federal authorities, and measures for restitution, rehabilitation and monetary compensation. It proposed the establishment of centres for the study and preservation of Indigenous languages, culture and history, and for family tracing/reunion services and the protection of records. Rehabilitation measures included counselling services, and steps towards giving Indigenous communities responsibility for the welfare of their children. It also recommended that the Commonwealth legislate to implement the Genocide Convention and establish national Indigenous child placement principles.

What was the response of the State Governments to "Bringing Them Home"?
All State and Territory Parliaments have formally apologised to the stolen generations for past policies. . Representatives of the stolen generations have been invited to address their State Parliaments. Their speeches, and the speeches of Government and Opposition members in reply, have been heartfelt. This has done much to restore dignity to those whose dignity was trampled on by the removal policies.

Several Indigenous leaders have said that, since these apologies, there has been a noticeably greater understanding of, and concern for, the problems which their people face in areas such as health and employment.

Many of Bringing Them Home’s recommendations apply to State Government policy, and whereas some States have begun to implement these recommendations, there is still a long way to go.

And other institutions?
Many Australian churches have formally apologised for their role in the harm caused by the forced removal policies, as have the police services in two States, and other institutions which played a role in the policies. More recently the Chief Magistrates in two States have apologised to the Aboriginal community for insensitive conduct towards them. These have all played an important role in bringing the communities together.

The response of the Federal (national) Government?
In its formal response to "Bringing Them Home" in December 1997, Senator John Herron, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, presented a package of $63 million in "practical assistance". This included provision for the Australian Archives to copy and preserve files, the taped recording of life histories, development of family support programs, a national network of Link-Up services, the employment of new counsellors and the expansion of regional counselling centres.

The Government refused to apologise on behalf of the Australian people, and refused to consider other aspects of the recommendations of the report, notably compensation. By May 2000, only $13 million of the promised $63 million had been spent.

When the Government responded (in March 2000) to a Senate Inquiry into the implementation of Bringing Them Home, their submission suggested that the stolen generations had exaggerated their plight. ‘There never was a stolen generation of Aboriginal people,’ it stated, arguing that because only 10% of Aboriginal people were removed, and some of these for normal welfare reasons, it was wrong to speak of a ‘stolen generation’. A number of historians have said that the figure of 10% is too low. But most of the Australian media argued that even if it were only 10%, this would still be a matter of the utmost seriousness.

This lack of enthusiasm is consistent with the Prime Minister’s earlier attacks on a "black armband" approach to Australian history. But it has not pleased all Liberals. The previous Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, told a media conference in Melbourne on 4 May this year: ‘The removal of Aboriginal children from their families was one of the most painful acts in Australia's history.’ He went on: ‘We need a much greater national determination to address past wrongs and, symbolically, the most important element may be to address past wrongs in relation to the stolen generation.....A full apology is very significant.... An apology does not imply guilt. It implies a recognition that an injustice occurred. It implies we have a will and a determination to try to do something about the many people who have suffered as a result of that injustice.’

Why is the Federal Government reluctant to apologise?
Senator John Herron, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, stated in 1998:
‘The government does not support an official national apology. Such an apology could imply that present generations are in some way responsible and accountable for the actions of earlier generations, actions that were sanctioned by laws of the time, and that were believed to be in the best interests of the children concerned.’

What was Sorry Day?
The Bringing Them Home report received immense media coverage. It has sold far more copies than any comparable report, and has stirred many to think about their own experience of Aboriginal people. Why were the Aboriginals in the back row of the classroom so silent, and kept to themselves? Why is a quarter of our jail population Aboriginal, when they make up 2% of the population? Many began to understand aspects of our past which had passed them by, and wanted to express their pain. Over half a million people signed Sorry Books, and the messages are deeply moving.

A Sorry Day was launched. On 26 May 1988, Australians of all ethnicities came together in thousands of events in cities, towns and rural centres across the country, to express their sorrow, and offer their apologies, for the harm done to Aboriginal people. Schools, churches, local councils, organised events at which Sorry Books were handed to Indigenous leaders. In Melbourne thousands attended a service at the Anglican Cathedral, then walked to the City Hall, where the Lord Mayor handed the keys of the city to representatives of the stolen generations. In Queensland, every prison held a minute’s silence.

What is the Journey of Healing?
In numerous countries, governments struggle to heal wounds resulting from misguided past policies. No other country has seen hundreds of thousands of its people themselves accept moral responsibility for those policies.

This massive expression of empathy touched the hearts of many who suffer as a result of the removal policies. At the suggestion of members of the stolen generations, the National Sorry Day Committee decided to launch a Journey of Healing for the whole Australian community – in recognition that scars remain on all sides, and we need to heal together. Its first patrons were former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, and Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue, inaugural Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The Journey began at Uluru. On 5 May 1999, representatives of the stolen generations and non-Indigenous Australian from every State and Territory gathered there at the invitation of the Mutitjulu community. In a ‘welcome back’ to their Aboriginal roots, Mutitjulu elders invited the stolen generations to dance with them, and handed them music sticks, painted with messages depicting the steps needed to bring healing. The music sticks were shared with non-Indigenous participants, and brought back to the States and Territories, where they featured in the Journey’s national launch on 26 May, the first anniversary of Sorry Day.

Most cities chose a procession to symbolise the launch. In Adelaide, 1000 people walked to forgotten places such as the site of Piltawodli, a Kaurna school opened by German missionaries in 1839. School children sang there in Kaurna, perhaps for the first time since 1845 when troops demolished the buildings and the children were moved to an English-language school which banned their language. In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, hundreds took part in colourful processions through their city centres. In Canberra, a thousand people gathered in the Great Hall of Parliament.

Since then hundreds of Journey of Healing events have taken place across the country. A Journey of Healing music tour has travelled to five States and Territories. As Malcolm Fraser said, ‘The Journey of Healing offers practical ways in which everyone can help to shape a better future for us all.’

What is the "Sea of Hands"?
Other bodies grew, in response to community concern. Australians for Reconciliation and Native Title (ANTaR) initiated the Sea of Hands. Everyone who supports ANTaR’s aims can sign a statement, and their name is then attached to a plastic outline of a hand. 150,000 people have done so, and the resulting multicoloured Sea of Hands has travelled all over Australia. At crucial moments in the national debate, it has been set up in front of Parliament House, on Bondi Beach, at Uluru, or wherever it can draw attention, as a demonstration of the support in the community for reconciliation based on justice in native title issues. ANTaR is also pursuing this objective in many other ways – see www.antar.org.au

What is the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation?
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made many specific recommendations, but concluded that the underlying need was far greater understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It recommended that an organisation be established for this purpose. As a result the Federal Government set up the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1990, and gave it a ten-year mandate. See www.reconciliation.org.au

The Council was composed of eminent Australians, half Indigenous and half non-Indigenous. It organised study circles and day-long seminars throughout the country, bringing together members of the Aboriginal community in each locality with police, civic officials, and others. This steady work, through ten years, did much to create a greater awareness of Aboriginal perceptions among the wider community. From these meetings, a 'Document towards Reconciliation' was created, which was presented to the Prime Minister and all State Premiers at "Corroboree 2000" in the Sydney Opera House on 27 May 2000.

The Council organised a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 28 May, in which a quarter of a million people took part. It was easily the largest march in Australian history. Similar walks in other cities drew tens of thousands, and demonstrated the longing among many Australians for reconciliation with Aboriginal people. A feature of the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk was the word, ‘Sorry’, written in the sky by a signwriting plane.

Many people found new attitudes through this walk. 'The Bridge walk was a healing experience,' said Valerie Linow, one of the stolen generations. 'I had told the Sorry Day Committee that I could not walk behind their Journey of Healing banner because healing was impossible for me after all the abuse I have suffered. But when I looked up and saw the word 'Sorry' in the heavens, and looked around at the thousands of people, I found myself in tears. I know at last

I'm not alone and, seeing the white Australians joining in with the Aboriginals, I felt peace.'

The Council's mandate ended in December 2000. It has been replaced by a non-Government body, Reconciliation Australia, with the same web address - www.reconciliation.org.au

And the future?
Many who were removed as children are now trying to find their families. This is no easy task, as records have often been lost or destroyed. Organisations such as Link-Up, which is bringing together separated children with their families, have only a handful of workers in each State, and are overwhelmed by the demand for their services. In NSW alone, 1,500 people have asked their help.

Even when the family is found, rebuilding a relationship is a long and painful process. But overwhelmingly, those who have taken this step are grateful that they now know where they belong, and treasure their new friendships.

However, many of the stolen generations feel that the Federal Government has turned its back on them. As a consequence, some of them are seeking redress through the courts. The Government’s response has been to try and discredit them. The most recent case, in which two members of the stolen generations sued the Government for wrongful treatment, lasted 107 days, costing over $10 million. In his judgement, in August 2000, Justice O’Loughlin found the two had not proved that, under the laws of the time, they were unjustly removed. Crucial documents could not be found, and witnesses had died. However, the case exposed the shameful way in which they were treated in the institutions to which they were removed. It is becoming clear that the legal system cannot resolve this situation, and the calls are growing for an alternative to confronting the stolen generations in the courts.

There is a better way. The Government could offer the stolen generations the chance to help work out how the problems they face can be overcome. Other countries such as New Zealand have learnt to negotiate solutions to the grievances of their Indigenous people. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the National Sorry Day Committee have both proposed models for such a negotiation.

Conclusion
Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is vital to Australia’s future. One reason is the country’s ecological needs. Eighty-eight percent of Australians live below a line drawn from Adelaide to Brisbane. In the vast remaining area, Aboriginal people are a sizeable and growing portion. All Australians depend on the good management of that area. Who will manage the Darling River basin, for instance, in a way that answers it salinity problems?

In many parts of that river basin, Aboriginal people are in the majority. If they do not manage the land effectively, drawing on their traditional knowledge and the best Western expertise, all Australians will pay the price in ecological disaster and the collapse of rural centres. There is plenty of evidence around the country to show that they are equal to this task. Whether they take it on will depend on whether a new level of trust and co-operation can grow between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. And that will only come as Australians understand how Indigenous people view their encounter with non-Indigenous Australians.

Not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects of the separation policies. A new and inclusive initiative on this issue could alter the climate of relations, with immense benefit to the whole reconciliation process.

Reconciliation is a challenge both at community level and at Government level. It can be achieved. At present, Aboriginal Australians die 20 years younger than non-Aboriginal Australians. Countries like New Zealand and Canada which in the past had similar disparities, have brought dramatic change, so that today the life expectancy of Canadian Indians and of Maoris is only five or six years less than other New Zealanders. Australia can do the same. It will call for sustained initiatives both at community level and at Government level. A poll in April, conducted by Newspoll, found that over 80% of Australians believe that reconciliation is ‘important’ or ‘very important’. This suggests that the community is ready for bold Government leadership on the matter.

Appendix:

Extracts from the speech by Dr Mick Dodson at ‘Corroboree 2000’, 27 May 2000

Mick Dodson currently chairs the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit. He is a former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, and co-authored Bringing them Home.

I was born in April 1950 in the small town of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Fourteen months earlier, in Broome, Western Australia, my grandmother's application for a certificate of citizenship under the Native Citizen Rights Act had been refused. Among the magistrate’s reasons for the refusal was that she had not adopted the manner and habits of civilised life.

According to the Government policy at the time, my destiny as a native of Aboriginal descent lay in my absorption by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia. When I was 18 months old, absorption was changed to assimilation.

About that time, the Commonwealth Director of Native Affairs informed the Administrator of the Northern Territory that the policy, set down in 1931, was to collect half-castes and train them in institutions. He advised the Administrator that prior to the Second World War, half-castes were removed regularly whenever required.

My grandmother was taken from her father when she was very young and placed in a mission in Western Australia. My mother and my sisters all finished up in the same mission. Two of those sisters spent a considerable time in an orphanage in Broome, although they were not orphans. My father was jailed for 18 months for breaching the Native Administration Act of Western Australia, in that he was co-habiting with my mother. When he was released from prison, he managed to secure the permission of the Chief Protector of Natives to marry my mother.

In 1957 the Northern Territory Wards Ordinance came into force. A friend of mine, Joe McGinness, had four kids regarded by the ordinance as Aboriginal, and three regarded as non-Aboriginal.

Both my parents died in 1960. My aunt and uncle came and took us to Darwin on the back of my uncle's old truck. They had been mission victims and knew well the ways of the Native Welfare authorities. Then ensued a protracted battle with the authorities in and out of court, which in the end my family won. I became a State ward in my family's care. What kind of system would define the ownership of a child by the State while that child is still in the care of their kin?

My uncle and aunt are dead now. But their courage and persistence saved us from institutionalisation, and I will be forever grateful to them.

During the '60s Aboriginal kids were still being taken and put in institutions like the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin. I knew many of those children. In New South Wales, Aboriginal boys and girls were still being removed from their families and placed in institutions like Kinchella and Bombaderry.

In 1965 Charlie Perkins led the freedom rides through Western New South Wales. The Australian denounced him and other ‘slightly coloured’ people for identifying as Aboriginal only in order to seek sympathy. In 1967 a Referendum was held which arguably killed off the assimilation policy. But it didn't stop the removals, and it didn't stop assimilationist thinking. The Queensland Act, which controlled and regulated the lives of Aboriginals, was repealed in its entirety only in 1985.

In 1984 I returned to the Northern Territory. In that year, the infamous Retta Dixon Home finally closed its doors in Darwin. A monument was erected, not in honour of the children who suffered there over many years, not to the mothers who grieved the taking of those children, but to the people who ran the place. It is a monument to a very partial view of our history.

In 1997 the nation received the report on the stolen generations. Since then we've had the racially discriminatory Native Title Amendment Act, and the enactment of compulsory jailing laws in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

These are but a few things that occurred in my lifetime. Now who is this generation that took my grandmother, my father, my mother and my grandfather and my two sisters?

I know that there are many decent and honest Australians who accept the truth of our history. Hundreds of thousands feel sorry about what happened and have said so. They have demonstrated enormous collective courage and decency in accepting our collective historical reality, not out of blame or guilt, but from a deep sense of shame and loss, a sense that seeks to share and heal the pains of our past, and then to move on together.

I bear no grudge against those who made the policies and the laws that took my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, and placed them in a mission, and orphanages and government settlements. I don't hate those people who made my father's love for my mother a jailable offence. But no-one who lived through these times is entitled to suggest that they are too distant from us to have a shared responsibility. Denial is the enemy of reconciliation.

Let us not get hung up on one man's incapacity to bring himself to utter a simple human response to the suffering of others. Our task of national reconciliation is too important to be derailed by pettiness and denial. We can do much to prepare the groundwork for our future coexistence while we wait for a Prime Minister who will proudly lead us in the right direction.

This is where we start, today. We have to stoke those fires in our bellies, get our hearts burning and yearning for reconciliation. Let us smash the mould of assimilation that afflicts my generation of politicians. We must rid ourself of this psychological cloak of darkness before it becomes our shroud. If we cannot acknowledge the truth of our past, there is no hope for our future as a nation.

Each of us is unique. We're all Australians and we call this place home. Let us rejoice in our diversity and difference because it's they that will ultimately enrich us as peoples. So let us begin this journey, a journey of healing, healing the body, the soul, our hearts and the spirit of our nation.

In my view the central objective of the Reconciliation Foundation should be a Treaty. If we are to have words on paper, that is where those words have to first be. They have to be words that honestly reflect our histories and our hopes for the future, for our children and grandchildren. They must mean something, and deliver. They should be words that acknowledge and honour the first Australians, and unite the many peoples that live in this nation.