Stolen Generation/Talk

I'm launching a major rewrite of this article - I just finished reading the official report from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. In order to avert accusations of lack of NPOV I am going to quote from the official government report heavily - the accusations of bias might come because it is so appalling... Christ I had no idea how horrific it actually was... MMGB

Unfortunately this type of thing wasn't just happening in Australia. I believe that illegitimate children and orphans were being sent from British children's homes to Canada and Australia -- without meaningful consent from the children -- from the 1900's until the early 1960's. In theory it was supposed to give them a chance of a better life but in practice many of the children were very badly treated by strangers who took them in for a variety of reasons. -- Derek Ross

I know... it's amazing that these things could happen. Did you know that the Pope issued an official apology today for the involvement of the Catholic church in these forced removals?

Not relevant, but read this direct quote from the Stolen Generation report:

As Brisbane's Telegraph newspaper reported in May 1937, "Mr Neville (the then Chief Protector of Western Australia) holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population. Sixty years ago, he said, there were over 60,000 full-blooded natives in Western Australia. Today there are only 20,000. In time there would be none. Perhaps it would take one hundred years, perhaps longer, but the race was dying. The pure blooded Aboriginal was not a quick breeder. On the other hand the half-caste was. In Western Australia there were half-caste families of twenty and upwards. That showed the magnitude of the problem".

WHen I read that my blood went cold... - MMGB

I agree that it is quite appalling. As a non-Australian, I am curious as to how much that past racism is connected to the modern racism of the One Nation party. -- Egern.

What One Nation party? hehe - they don't exist anymore... the party fell apart about a year ago, and lost the only seat in government they had (in Queensland... our version of Alabama). The foreign media made such a big deal of the One Nation party, but they were always nothing more than a trivial and irrelevant movement. Certainly their views were racist, but then so are the views of the White Nazis or other such lunatic fringe organisations. The entrenched racist views would still exist in rural Australia, no doubt, but they are an incredible minority. All nations have racists, but it seems that the foreign media particularly like focusing on ours. - MMGB

Media particularly like focusing on other countries racists. Authorities were pretty fast and loose with children generally, shipping them about the world, sometimes even telling their parents the child had died... when you've done stolen generation, take a look at child migrants: http://www.childmigrants.com

Oh jeez... do I have to? I'm depressed enough as it is... :) I'm finding this article REALLY difficult to write well, by the way. -- MMGB

I think you're doing a great job, Manning. I've never heard of this before; it makes me angry to read about it. It's going to be very difficult to keep things NPOV, but I think you have the right idea with heavy quoting of government officials and documents. --STG