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The Impacts Of the Stolen Generation on Australian Life Essay
The Impacts Of the Stolen Generation on Australian Life Essay
Racism in Australia
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The Stolen Generation has left devastating impacts upon the Aboriginal culture and heritage, Australian history and the presence of equality experienced today. The ‘Stolen Generation’ refers to the children of Aboriginal descent being forcefully abducted by government officials of Australia and placed within institutions and catholic orphanages, being forced to assimilate into ‘white society’. These dehumanising acts placed these stolen children to experience desecration of culture, loss of identity and the extinction of their race. The destructive consequences that followed were effects of corruption including attempted suicide, depression and drug and alcohol abuse. The indigenous peoples affected by this have endured solitude for many years, this has only been expressed to the public recently and a proper apology has been issued, for the years of ignorance to the implementation of destruction of culture. The Stolen Generation has dramatically shaped Australian history and culture. Within Australia, beginning from approximately the time of European settlement to late 1969, the Aboriginal population of Australia experienced the detrimental effects of the stolen generation. A majority of the abducted children were ’half-castes’, in which they had one white parent and the other of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Following the government policies, the European police and government continued the assimilation of Aboriginal children into ‘white’ society. Oblivious to the destruction and devastation they were causing, the British had believed that they were doing this for “their [Aborigines] own good”, that they were “protecting” them as their families and culture were deemed unfit to raise them. These beliefs caused ... ... middle of paper ... ... respect and appreciation of the Aboriginal population and the entire Australian public. The Stolen Generation has had a profound impact on every aspect of the lives of Indigenous communities. It has jeopardised their very survival. It has impoverished their capacity to control and direct their future development. The Stolen Generation has corrupted, devastated and destroyed the souls, hopes and beliefs of many Australian lives through damaging assimilation policies established in an attempt to make a ‘White Australia’ possible. Discrimination, racism and prejudice are some of the many permanent scars upon Indigenous life that will never be repaired. However, recently Rudd and the Australian public have sincerely apologised for the detrimental effects the Stolen Generation had caused. The Stolen Generation has dramatically shaped Australian history and culture.
The stolen generation is a scenario carry out by the Australian government to separate most aboriginal people’s families. The government was enforced take the light skinned aboriginal kids away from their guardians to learn the white people’s culture in the campus around the country and then send them back to their hometown and prohibit them join the white people’s society after they turn be an adult. The
The Stolen Generations refers to the forcible removal of Aboriginal, mostly those who were not full blooded taken between the 1830’s and the 1970’s. They were removed due to their mixed heritage, consisting of Indigenous mothers and European fathers. The Stolen Generations have had a damaging effect on the native owners of Australia, their culture, their identity and most importantly, their sense of belonging,
He reiterates that both the phrase “Stolen Generations” and the corresponding assertion of genocide are unwarranted. According to Windschuttle, only a small number of Aboriginal children was removed from their family and it was based on the consideration of child welfare. Most of the removed children were orphaned, neglected, abandoned and homeless (Windschuttle, 2008). His own estimate of the total number of Aboriginal children separated from parents and placed into institutions in total is 8250, which accounted for 5.2% of the Aboriginal population at the 1976 census of 160,000 (Windschuttle, 2010). Of course, Windschuttle had to pick the lowest estimate mentioned in the HREOC report. It is indeed very difficult to precisely determine how many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed. However, in a survey conducted with 320 adults in Bourke NSW in the 1970s, Dr Max Kamien had come to a conclusion that the actual number could have been as high as “one in three” (Wilson, 1997). Clearly, Windschuttle relies completely and selectively on the statistics that serve his purposes. One of the main grounds for Windschuttle’s denial of the existence of the Stolen Generations is child welfare, claiming that the children are severely malnourished and neglected. With his exaggerated description and
As European domination began, the way in which the European’s chose to deal with the Aborigines was through the policy of segregation. This policy included the establishment of a reserve system. The government reserves were set up to take aboriginals out of their known habitat and culture, while in turn, encouraging them to adapt the European way of life. The Aboriginal Protection Act of 1909 established strict controls for aborigines living on the reserves . In exchange for food, shelter and a little education, aborigines were subjected to the discipline of police and reserve managers. They had to follow the rules of the reserve and tolerate searchers of their homes and themselves. Their children could be taken away at any time and ‘apprenticed” out as cheap labour for Europeans. “The old ways of the Aborigines were attacked by regimented efforts to make them European” . Their identities were threatened by giving them European names and clothes, and by removing them from their tra...
Residential schools undoubtedly created detrimental inter-generational consequences. The dark legacy of residential schools has had enduring impact, reaching into each new generation, and has led to countless problems within Aboriginal families including: chemical dependence, a cycle of abuse in families, dysfunctional families, crime and incarceration, depression, grief, suicide, and cultural identity issues (McFarlan, 2000, p. 13). Therefore, the inter-generational consequence...
“Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human History. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians” (apology by Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, 16th November 2009, Parliament House, Canberra.)
The traumatic experiences of the stolen generation have demonstrated that the removal of Indigenous children from their families has caused ongoing psychological suffering. McGlade, Hannah, Our Greatest Challenge (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012) provides a theoretical and practical perspective on the issues and concerns of Aboriginal Child abuse. The author considers her very own encounters from child abuse and claims that the criminal justice system is racist and paternalistic. In support of her claims, she delivers a deep analysis of the legal systems response to sexual assault, claiming that Indigenous Aboriginal women were excluded from society during the time of white politics, control, and violence. McGlade supports her arguments through
• Amnesty International: Australia- governments dismissal of UN criticism undermines hard earned credibility in human rights diplomacy.
The three main points that are to be looked at and mentioned today include; the Stolen Generation, the migration of people to Australia and racism as shown in modern day Australia. There are a number of different of poems and texts which talk about the racism in Australia ranging from the stolen generation to modern day speeches and texts. Stolen Generation by Daniel Kieg and Aboriginal Australia to the Others – Jack Davis are poems which show the truth about the stolen generation, the dispossession of children and the pain and suffering aboriginals had to endure through the history of Australia. Be Good Little Migrants – Uyen Nhu Loewald and Pauline Hanson’s Speech in the Maiden House – 1996 are the prime example of how since the stolen generation racism has still continued through time as Australia has become more multicultural and the rates of migration have increased. These texts show us how white Australians try to justify what has happened but without much evidence and supportive statements they don’t do a good job. The Apology by Kevin Rudd (2007) and State of Denial: Racist abuse in Australia by Waleed Aly are
To do this, Keating advocates the importance of acknowledging past events in order to re-build a future. He is using the past as a platform to ensure ALL Australians have to opportunity to prosper into the future. Keating acknowledged responsibility for the high incidence of violent crime, alcoholism and chronic drug use in Redfern when he referred to the ‘devastation and demoralisation’ evident within communities like Redfern as a ‘plight’ that ‘affects us all’. The combination of emotive and inclusive language effectively conveys his argument that our humanity and national identity will remain tarnished as long as Aboriginal Australians live in the metaphorical ‘shadows’. His rhetoric use of inclusive repetition – ‘We took the traditional lands… We brought the diseases…We committed the murders… We took the children’ – conveys an assertive tone which suggests that our national identity is burdened by past atrocities which ‘degraded all of
Parbury (1999:64) states that Aboriginal education “cannot be separated” from the non-Aboriginal attitudes (racially based ethnocentricity that were especially British ie. white and Christian) towards Aborigines, their culture and their very existence. The Mission Schools are an early example of the connection between official education policies and key events in Aboriginal history. Aboriginal children were separated from their parents and placed into these schools which according to McGrath (as cited by Parbury, 1999:66) it was recommended that these establishments be located ‘as far as possible’ from non Aboriginal residents so as to minimize any heathen influence that Aboriginal children might be subject to from their parents. Mission Schools not only prepared Aboriginal youth for the manual labour market but also, adds Parbury (1999:67) their aim was‘to destroy Aboriginal culture and replace it with an Anglo-European work and faith ethic.’ Despite the NSW Public Instruction Act (1880) which made education free, secular and compulsory for all children Aboriginal children could be excluded from public schools based on prevailing dominant group attitudes. Consequently, the NSW Aborigines Protection Act (1909) was introduced as a result of a perceived public education crisis and Laws had already been passed, similar to protectionist type policies. This Act gave the State the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families whereby this period of time has become known as ‘Stolen Generations.’ It was during this time that Aboriginal children were segregated from mainstream schools. (Parbury, 1999; Lippman, 1994).
In “Historicizing historical trauma theory,” Krista Maxwell examines the treatment of Aboriginal people by the government over the past few decades up until the present-day through one issue I find particularly important, which is that of child welfare.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been living in Australia for over 50,000 years before European Settlement and throughout these years they adapted their own cultures, traditions and way of life. However changes began with the arrival of European Settlement which traumatised and impacted
It is now acknowledged that past government legislation and practices enforced on Indigenous Australians- from the time of colonisation, through the protection era of the late 1900’s and the assimilation policies of the early 20th century which resulted in the discriminatory “White Australia” and “Stolen Generation” policies- have contributed to Indigenous Australians being one of the most socio-economically disadvantaged groups in Australia (Thomson et al., 2007). The social determinants of health of Indigenous Australians have been entrenched in the inequalities created and supported by racial and social discrimination (Larson, Gillies, Howard, & Coffin, 2007). The effects of these inequalities over generations, and the collective cultural grief caused by this disempowerment that is part of Indigenous culture today (DOCS, 2009), have further disempowered Indigenous Australians from the ability to self-improve their social determinants of
The polarisation of the Aboriginal community came after the Stolen Generation was removed from their indigenous families. The effect of removing these children was devastating, not only for the children that was removed, but also for the Aboriginal community that was left behind. The aborigines are a folk which depend largely on family and the strength of their kinship with one another. By removing the future generation of aborigines, the remaining people became insecure about the future of their heritage and about the relationship they had with those in