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No. 38 Civil Liberties Australia

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No. 38 Civil Liberties Australia Submission No 38 INQUIRY INTO REPARATIONS FOR THE STOLEN GENERATIONS IN NEW SOUTH WALES Organisation: Civil Liberties Australia Date received: 13/01/2016 Submission from Civil Liberties Australia CLA Inquiry into Reparations for the Stolen Generation in NSW Civil Liberties Australia welcomes the opportunity to participate in the Inquiry into Reparations for the Stolen Generations in New South Wales. In so doing, we are aware that we are contributing to examining one of the most glaring episodes of the violation of human rights in Australia`s history. When considering reparations, all Australians must strive to understand how and why Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and homes over many decades, with the resulting pain and suffering for themselves and family members, spread over generations. At a time when most Australians were unaware of the ongoing plight of Aborigines, an overview of “Bringing Them Home”, on page 37 of the official Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, contained the shocking revelation that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities for more than half a century, between 1910 and 1970. The Separation Inquiry was established in 1995 by then-Attorney-General Michael Lavarch, who appointed Sir Ronald Wilson and Indigenous leader Mick Dodson as Commissioners. With a small secretariat, they undertook a nationwide hearing that, orally and in writing, took evidence from 535 indigenous people. Indigenous campaign The inquiry followed a hard-fought campaign by Indigenous leaders throughout the nation, who confronted an ill-informed white population, many influenced by embedded “White Australia” policies peddled by vote-seeking politicians, media and people who failed to agree with the High Court’s decision that Eddie Mabo’s land on Mer (Murray) Island in the Torres Strait belonged to Eddie and his family, and was not “terra nullius” (nobody’s land). For Australians to understand the need for reparations for the Stolen Generations, they need to read the many heart-breaking stories told by the stolen children in “Bringing Them Home”. Confidential Submission 314, on page 97 is typical: “I wasn`t allowed to go to the same school where my natural siblings were attending school. I knew my siblings` names but I didn`t know what they looked like. I was told not to contact my natural family … My foster family and the Welfare Officer said to me that I shouldn`t get in touch with my natural family because they were not ‘any good’.” There are many more sad accounts of personal experiences by Indigenous children who were taken away in the National Library publication ‘Many Voices’ by Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich, published in November 2002. An immediate forerunner to the “Bringing them home” inquiry was the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody established in October 1987 in response to a growing public concern that deaths in custody of Aboriginal people were too common and public explanations were too evasive to discount the possibility that foul play was a factor in many of them. In its report to the federal parliament in 1991 after an intensive inquiry into the backgrounds of the 99 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who died in custody, the Royal Commission revealed that 43 of them had experienced childhood separation from their natural families. Six Commissioners were appointed for this mammoth inquiry, which was to take four years. Their comprehensive national report of 11 volumes examined the lives of the 99 who died in custody. Of relevance are the recommendations from the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Inquiry, as well as an ‘overview’ by Commissioner Elliott Johnston QC that sheds light on the underlying cause of why so many Aboriginal people went to jail in the first place and why so many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and communities. It is important when considering Reparations in 2016 for the Stolen Children – as recommended in “Bringing Them Home” – that we read what Commissioner Elliott Johnston wrote in 1991 under the heading; ‘The Importance of History’: 1.4.1 I include in this report a chapter on that history (“…legacies of the history of two centuries of European domination of Aboriginal people” 1.3.7). I make no apology for doing so. I do so not because the chapter adds to what is known but because what is known is known to historians and Aboriginal people; it is little known to non- Aboriginal people and it is a principal thesis of this report that it must become more known. 1.4.2 That Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land without benefit of treaty, agreement or compensation is generally known. But I think little known is the amount of brutality and bloodshed that was involved in enforcing on the ground what was pronounced by the law. Aboriginal people were deprived of their land and if they showed resistance they were summarily dealt with. The loss of land meant the destruction of the Aboriginal economy which everywhere was based upon hunting and foraging. And the land use adopted by the settlers drastically reduced the population of animals to be hunted and plants to be foraged. And the loss of the land threatened the Aboriginal culture which all over Australia was based upon land and relationship to the land. These were the most dramatic effects of European colonisation supplemented by the decimating effects of introduced disease to which the Aboriginal people had no resistance. These matters are understood to a very imperfect degree by non-Aboriginal society. 1.4.3 But the facts of later policies and their effects are even less well known to the general population. Having reduced the original inhabitants to a condition, in many places, of abject dependency the colonial governments decided upon a policy of protection which had two main thrusts: Aboriginal people were swept up into reserves and missions where they were supervised as to every detail of their lives and there was a deliberate policy of undermining and destroying their spiritual and cultural beliefs. The other aspect of that policy as it developed was that Aboriginal children of mixed race descent--usually Aboriginal mother and non-Aboriginal father--were removed from their family and the land, placed in institutions and trained to grow up as good European labourers or domestics. Those outside the reserves were usually to be found camping on river banks or on the outskirts of country towns where they were under the eye of the non-Aboriginal police. Naturally, legislation varied from place to place and time to time but the effect was the same control over the lives of the people. A person could not live on a reserve without permission, or leave or return after leaving without permission, or have a relative to live with them without permission, or work except under supervision. The extent of control seems incredible today. It was an offence to encourage or assist an Aboriginal person to leave a reserve. There were special laws about alcohol. On the reserves and the missions the supervisors and missionaries had all power. 1.4.4 The theory was that the 'full blood' Aboriginal people would die out and they should be provided with a little care while they did so; and that the 'mixed blood' would be bred out. When these expectations proved ill founded, another policy was tried, that of assimilation. But the old supervisor remained in place; in the Northern Territory Aboriginal people remained wards of the State, in the States the Protectorate and the Boards remained in place with all their powers, children continued to be removed but the whole aim was now to assimilate the Aboriginal people by encouraging them to accept the Western culture and lifestyle, give up their culture, become culturally absorbed and indistinguishable, other than physically, from the dominant group. For a short time, integration replaced assimilation as the policy option with little change in any practical way. And that was the practice in 1967 when the Referendum was carried which gave power to the Commonwealth to make laws relating to Aboriginal people. 1.4.5 From that history many things flow which are of central importance to the issue of Aboriginal over-representation in custody. 1.4.6 The first is the deliberate and systematic disempowerment of Aboriginal people starting with dispossession from their land and proceeding to almost every aspect of their life. They were made dependent upon government or non-Aboriginal pastoralists or other employers for rations, clothing, blankets, education, living place and living conditions. Decisions were made about them and for them and imposed upon them. It was thought to be bad for an Aboriginal woman to be living with a non-Aboriginal man so that was outlawed; and when Aboriginal women disguised the fact by dressing in male costume that too was outlawed. Aboriginal people were made dependent upon non-Aboriginal people. Gradually many of them lost their capacity for independent action, and their communities likewise. With loss of independence goes a loss of self esteem. 1.4.7 Of course, I speak in general terms; in the most remote communities the society went as before and in all areas there were and are strong people, many of them, men and women, who kept alive the culture and pride in the Aboriginal society. Some of them strove to organise a better deal, to call for rights but the battle was uphill and while some slight gains were made it was a slow and painful progress. People were still not counted in the population, they were not entitled to and did not get social security benefits, mothers still gathered their children about them and ran into the bush when they heard 'the welfare' was about.
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