Australian History Timeline
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HISTORY TIMELINE Regarding the removal of First Nation Australian Citizens from their Families of Origin QuickTime™ and a QuickTime™ and a decompressor decompressor are needed to see this picture. are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Supplementary submission in response to part (a) of the Inquiry into the role of commonwealth in contributing to forced adoption, by Origins in Partnership with the Stolen Generations Alliance and Origins HARP (Healing and Recovery Project for Forgotten Australians) Introduction We, the partners to this submission, believe that the following information contains evidence not only that “forced adoption” of First Nation Australians occurred, but that the Commonwealth is responsible for such. The distinction between the act of taking a child without legal authority of a court of law and those acts implied by the phrase “with a view to adoption” is linked, we believe, with the social policies of assimilation and rehabilitation – separation policies of commonwealth and state governments of the 20th century, regarding eugenic ideas about race, morality, economic status, and health. Those subjected to these policies now identify as members either of the Forgotten Australians, the Stolen Generations, or Australians Separated by Forced Adoption (or a combination of the latter). Forgotten Australians This group includes indigenous and non-indigenous newborns who were rejected as “unadoptable”, consequently spending time in State / other institutions, and indigenous and non-indigenous unmarried mothers who spent time in maternity homes as minors. A distinction especially needs to be made between the Stolen Generations and Australians Separated by Forced Adoption (AASW), in view of opinions popularized in media circa 2010 regarding the Rudd Government Apology to the Stolen Generations as wrongly exclusive of “whites”. Stolen Generations Members under this umbrella also identify as Australian indigenous who were subjected to an official assimilation policy of the Commonwealth Government, which led to the separation of their family members. They also identify as people who suffered the extinction and segregation of their families and family members. Australians Separated by Forced Adoption (ASFA) This group includes mostly unmarried indigenous and non-indigenous parents who were separated from their children at birth (but also those who conceived outside of an existing marital relationship), who were subjected to an official rehabilitation policy of the Commonwealth Government. Numerous examples of both the assimilation and rehabilitation policies have been provided in timelines prepared by Origins SPSA Inc and submitted to the current Inquiry into forced adoption. Indigenous identification with also with the Forgotten Australians and ASFA Despite the distinctions between the Stolen Generations, Australians Separated by Forced Adoption and the Forgotten Australians, there are similarities which effect individual identification of indigenous Australians with the latter groups. The notion of a “white stolen generation”1 – an umbrella implying reverse discrimination by the Government in its offering of an Apology to the Stolen Generations – should be rejected along with its implied exclusion of “whites”; the Stolen Generations, Australians Separated by Forced Adoption (ASFA), and Forgotten Australians (separated by forced 1 http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/mothers-demand-adoption-apologies/comments-e6frewt0- 1225957369988 2 adoption) definitively include indigenous Australians. In contrast, non-indigenous Forgotten Australians and ASFA cannot identify as members of the Stolen Generations; the Stolen Generations umbrella does not exclude people on the basis of ethnicity but opposes ethnic racism. Highlighting the ethnic racism that manifested in the separation of indigenous family members by ‘forced adoption’, the theme of respectable “white” families is evident in the following extract from “Bringing them home”: I was taken off my mum as soon as I was born, so she never even seen me. What Welfare wanted to do was to adopt all these poor little black babies into nice, caring white families, respectable white families, where they'd get a good upbringing. I had a shit upbringing. Me and [adopted brother who was also Aboriginal] were always treated different to the others ... we weren't given the same love, we were always to blame. ... I found my mum when I was 18 - she was really happy to hear from me, because she didn't adopt me out. Apparently she did sign adoption papers, but she didn't know [what they were]. She said to me that for months she was running away from Welfare [while she was pregnant], and they kept finding her. She remembers being in - it wasn't a hospital - but there were nuns in it, nuns running it. I was born at Crown Street. They did let her out with her brother one day and she run away again. Right from the beginning they didn't want her to have me. --(Bringing them Home Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander Children from Their Families, April 1997, Confidential evidence 657, New South Wales: woman taken from her mother at birth in 1973 and adopted by a non-Aboriginal family. Aboriginality is equated with the ‘morally unfit’, in the following commentary implying eugenics in the removal of aboriginal children from their families: The governments in the 1930s said children had to be taken away from their parents because the influence of their own communities was immoral and they were in danger of abuse and neglect, but the real agenda then was to de-Aboriginalise them.2 The Rehabilitation Policy Notably, the Australian Government did not take the advice of Miss Constance Duncan of the Commonwealth Department of Health in 1944: With this comment on illegitimate children in her report to the National Health and Medical Research Council, Miss Constance Duncan, of the Commonwealth Health Department, urged measures to protect the child and prevent the mother becoming dissolute. All authorities were agreed that not only was it beneficial from the baby's point of view that the mother should keep the child, but to ensure the rehabilitation of the girl it was essential that she assumed responsibility for her baby, said Miss Duncan. Medical testimony was that most prostitutes began by having an illegitimate baby, and that if there had been provision for such unmarried mothers to retain the children and be employed many would not be so engaged.3 2 Aboriginal Timeline, Creative Spirits, retrieved 17th October, 2011, from <http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal-history-timeline-early-20th.html#ixzz1b5YxF16H> 3 1944 'PLEA TO ASSIST SINGLE MOTHERS.', The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld. : 1933 - 1954), 9 December, p. 2, viewed 23 September, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48958239 3 Origins submissions to the current Inquiry have established that in 1946, An Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) was formed ‘…at the inter-state conference of social workers in the Commonwealth Department of Social Services’, to be ‘a coordinating body for the State associations of social workers’ and ‘to speak for them on matters that affect the Commonwealth, and speak for the Commonwealth in international affairs connected with social work.’4 In 1947 the Director General of the Commonwealth Department of Social Services, Mr. Rowe spoke about of the role of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) as official mouthpiece of the Commonwealth Department of Social Services:5 Mr. Rowe pointed out that councils of social service and such groups as the Australian Association of Social Workers could do a great deal to influence public opinion in a way which Government officers could not, by calling attention to existing evils and helping to decide what was the best way to deal with them.6 In an article titled, “The work women do”, the objectives of the AASW are also defined: It is those who have diplomas in social science who are eligible for membership of the Australian Association of Social Workers. It is therefore a professional body, its objects including the promotion of professional social work throughout the Commonwealth; interpretation of the aims and objects of social work to the public; the co-ordination of activities in various States; and representation in matters pertaining to the Commonwealth in the international sphere.7 In Australia in 1953, Fullbright scholar Miss Margaret Thornhill unveiled for consumption by the Australian public, US Government policies deeply steeped in eugenics: practice and experience over many years have shown that adoption is in the best interests of both mother and child. The woman whose behaviour deviates from the moral code is under a social handicap that is very difficult to overcome, and in the majority of cases a handicap that is personal as well as social. In the past it was assumed that the only psychological difference from the normal relationship of mother and child was in the absence of the marriage certificate. Our experience has disproved that assumption as a general thing...8 For a comprehensive overview of the treatment of “existing social evils” by the AASW, see Origins submission to the Inquiry into commonwealth contribution to forced adoption, titled “An Experiment of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Sydney Metropolitan Region in 1953”. 4 1946 'Women's News Association Formed By Australian Social Workers.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 12 September, p. 7, viewed 19 September, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27910131 5 Numerous examples of the rehabilitation policy of separating ‘illegitimate’ newborns from their mothers at birth, are included in Timelines submitted by Origins to the current Inquiry. The psychopathology of the unwed mother was a pseudo-science promoted by both the medical and social work professions across English-speaking, nations circa 1920s – 1970s. It was imported to Australia long before 1946. 6 1947 'Importance Of Voluntary Organisations.', The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954), 25 June, p.