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

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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
Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation established

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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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