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When Will the Stolen Generations End? a Qualitative Critical Exploration

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When Will the Stolen Generations End? a Qualitative Critical Exploration Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, June 2016, Volume 7(1): 51-58 When Will the Stolen Generations End? A Qualitative Critical Exploration of Contemporary ‘Child Protection’ Practices in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities Leticia Funston, Sigrid Herring & ACMAG Education Centre Against Violence, New South Wales Health The rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children currently being removed from their families into Out of Home Care (foster care placements) by the statutory child protection system is unprecedented in Australia. This mass removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Australia’s colonial era and specifically to the policies and practices that gave rise to the Stolen Generations. This article utilises The Circles of Acknowledgement Wheel, a qualitative, Indigenous research methodology developed by the Aboriginal Communities Matter Advisory Group (ACMAG) which incorporates the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and the perspectives of community members who have engaged with Education Centre Against Violence (ECAV) educators through the Strong Aboriginal Women, Strong Aboriginal Men, Domestic and Family Violence and Sexual Assault training programs. The key themes and recommendations explored in this article are primarily derived from two Yarning Circles (Aboriginal Professional Development Circle) held at the ECAV in 2013 and 2014 and a meeting with the ACMAG in 2014. In addition, this article is also informed by the activist work of the Kamilaroi and Gadigal based Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR) campaign, which was formed in January 2014 “in an effort to highlight the process of removal used by the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services” (Grandmothers Against Removals, 2014). Out of Home Care and the under-resourced Kinship care system, limits opportunities for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to connect with their kin and extended family networks and cultural heritage. Out of Home Care is also associated with early entry into the juvenile justice system and partially explains the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in juvenile detention. Children and young people in institutional care settings are at heightened risk of emotional, physical and sexual assault. The authors of this paper urge state and federal governments to alleviate poverty and the chronic under- resourcing of Aboriginal-led services to support families and communities living at the traumatic intersection between ongoing oppression, poverty and violence. By rendering visible some of these systemic and colonially rooted problems, this article aims to contextualise key recommendations for changing the child protection system and for building the capacity for embedding Aboriginal Worldviews within child protection, health and violence prevention sectors. On February 13 2008, the former Prime Minister, separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Kevin Rudd, delivered a formal apology to the children from their families (Human Rights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander survivors of the Commission, 1997) which warned that the child Stolen Generations and for past Australian protection system of the time was in danger of replicating Governments’ involvement in child removal practices, the dynamics of the Stolen Generations. As at June 30 promising “a future where this Parliament resolves that 2014, there were 14,991 Aboriginal and Torres Strait the injustices of the past must never, never happen again” Islander children in Out of Home Care placements (Rudd, 2008). However, the rate of Aboriginal and nationally (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2015). Torres Strait Islander children currently being removed This is approximately ten times higher than the national from their families and their country into Out of Home average for non-Aboriginal children who have been Care (foster care) placements is higher than the rate of removed from families based on ‘substantiated’ reports removal during the Stolen Generations (Gibson, 2013). of abuse and or neglect (Australian Institute of Family The rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child Studies, 2014; Steering Committee for the Review of removals has increased exponentially across all states Government Service Provision, 2013). This article and territories since the release of the Bringing them provides a critical exploration of contemporary child home report: Report of the national inquiry into the Correspondence: Leticia Funston, Address: NSW Health Education Centre Against Violence, Cumberland Campus, Locked Bag 7118, Parramatta, NSW 2124. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0833-8488 L. Funston, S. Herring & ACMAG removal practices in Aboriginal and Torres Strait (Buti, 1995 as cited in Australian Human Rights Islander communities. Commission, 1997, p. 24). The Stolen Generations refers to the period in Australian history where an estimated 100,000 While Kevin Rudd (2008) acknowledged “the pain, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their forcibly removed from their families, in the period descendants and for their families left behind” in the between 1910-1970 by statutory welfare bodies and National Apology, any explicit reference to genocide and church missionaries (Human Rights Commission, 1997). therefore to financial compensation for survivors was While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children had avoided. Genocide historian, Sven Lindqvist poses the been stolen from their families since the colonial question, “can the admission of historic debt or guilt invasion and occupation in 1788, the Stolen Generations foster new cooperation between the perpetrator and the were facilitated by explicit federal and state policies victim to throw off the curse of the past?” (Lindqvist, (Lindqvist, 2007). The mass removal of Aboriginal and 2007, p. 210). Many commentators have argued that Torres Strait Islander children was an attempt to ‘merge’ acknowledgement alone is not adequate for healing or or to ‘breed out’ Aboriginality through a process of for systemic change. For example, the Aboriginal assimilation into white society. The policies specifically activist slogan Saying Sorry Means You Don’t Do It focused on the removal of children of mixed descent, Again has been used extensively during recent those of both Aboriginal heritage and non-Aboriginal, Grandmothers Against Removal Campaign (2014), to Anglo-European heritage, as it was thought that these criticise the apparent hypocrisy of the National Apology children would assimilate into white culture and society in the context of the alarmingly rate of Aboriginal if placed with white families (Human Rights children who are being removed under the modern Commission, 1997). It is important to acknowledge that Australian child protection system. Similarly, Nicole all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were Watson (2011) argues that many contemporary impacted by these policies regardless of whether or not Australian policies and state interventions designed to children were taken during this period. Aboriginal respond to child abuse, domestic and family violence in families lived with the fear of their children being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities abducted by welfare workers and police, often having to continue to replicate colonial dynamics. Watson gives hide their children (Human Rights Commission, 1997). the example of the Northern Territory Emergency Many survivors of the Stolen Generations have Response (NTER) which was introduced in 2007 in disclosed being subjected to labour exploitation, response to the Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle, emotional abuse, sexual and physical assaults Little Children Are Sacred Report (Northern Territory perpetrated by white family members, mission and Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal welfare personnel with whom they were placed. Most Children from Sexual Abuse, 2007) which reported that Stolen Generations victims/survivors were denied any child sexual assault (CSA) and family violence were connection to their Aboriginal lands, Worldviews, highly prevalent in rural and remote Aboriginal languages and cultures with many only learning of their communities in the Northern Territory. The authors of Aboriginal heritage as adults. Whilst these child removal this report emphasise in their recommendations, “the policies and statutes officially ended in the 1970s it is critical importance of governments committing to within living memory of many of the survivors and their genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in kin. designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities, The forced removal of children from one socio-cultural whether these be in remote, regional or urban settings” group to another group is recognised as a crime of (Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection genocide under Article Two of the United Nations of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, 2007, p. 21). Convention on the Crimes of Genocide (United Nations Unfortunately the NTER policies were implemented General Assembly, 1948). The following text from an without meaningful community consultation. Instead, article in Brisbane’s Telegraph newspaper in May 1937 the federal government unleashed a raft of policies on exemplifies the genocidal intent behind the mass Aboriginal communities including; changes to removal
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