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Stolen generation essay introduction
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The stolen generations, the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children that occurred in the late 19th Century to the 1970s have had effects on Indigenous people of Australia today. The 1997 report Bringing Them Home, from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, reports that up to one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed during this time period. The vast number of indigenous children stolen and the immense amount of sorrow that had been caused has left a lasting impact in today’s Indigenous society. The physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was faced by the overwhelming number of members of the stolen generations has left some incapable of loving and maintaining relationships, leading to …show more content…
The missionaries and foster homes they were put into, often miles away from their real family did not offer a fraction of the love of their own family. Instead, they suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse from their foster families, leaving behind deep scars that often did not heal. Therefore, many did not experience a healthy family and never learnt good parenting skills. They witnessed and suffered abuse that left scars so deep that their relationships would suffer for the rest of their lives. “As a child I had no mother’s arms to hold me. No father to lead me into the world… No-one showed us how to be lovers or parents.” (Alec Kruger) As a result, they did not know how to love and bring up their own children. Their personal trauma became a transgenerational trauma, where the trauma suffered by the members of the stolen generations transferred to the second and further generations. Furthermore, it is not just their children who have to face this, but also their partners. Many relationships became abusive as they did not know love. The experiences of their childhood, and a lack of a loving role model had left a lasting impact on the relationships and unable to love. This suffering is therefore being passed down from generation to generation, and can be found in today’s society, and will be present in the …show more content…
The distress of the loss of their children, the abuse faced in the missions and foster homes and the rage that they felt for the government caused depression and anxiety among the people. This depression, anxiety and rage was often numbed by the use of alcohol and drugs. Alec Kruger recounts that the children “…grew up just struggling to cope at all. They found their peace in… alcohol.” The depression among those who were affected then, and the results of depression, post-traumatic Stress and alcohol and drug abuse can be seen today. The poem, 1899, written by Sandra McBride describes the hard, loveless life of her Aunt who was part of the Stolen Generations. The lines, “God granted you mercy, and they called it suicide,” highlights the horror of the life she lived. She tells us of the abuse she had to endure and the motivation that led her to commit suicide. But to emphasize the abuse that she suffered and the horrors of her life, she portrays death as an escape from this abusive
The stolen generation is a scenario carry out by the Australian government to separate most aboriginal people’s families. The government was enforced take the light skinned aboriginal kids away from their guardians to learn the white people’s culture in the campus around the country and then send them back to their hometown and prohibit them join the white people’s society after they turn be an adult. The
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government began abolishing the compulsory residential school education among Aboriginal people. The government believed that Aboriginal children could receive a better education if they were integrated into the public school system (Hanson). However, residential schools were later deemed inappropriate because not only were the children taken away from their culture, their families and their people, but the majority of students were abus...
As of 2005, 16.6% of children experience physical abuse and 9.3% experience sexual abuse (USDHHS, 2007). Besides bruises and scars, the effects of physical abuse are long lasting. Children are physically taught to be submissive to others, so they often become more reserved socially. In relation to sexual abuse, children often say that being raped causes them to feel “dirty,” meaning that they are, from that point on, corrupted. Unfortunately, very few realize that this abuse is not their fault. Since all children are taught that punishment is given because they did something wrong, foster children often believe that they deserve to be beaten or raped. Due to
Residential schools undoubtedly created detrimental inter-generational consequences. The dark legacy of residential schools has had enduring impact, reaching into each new generation, and has led to countless problems within Aboriginal families including: chemical dependence, a cycle of abuse in families, dysfunctional families, crime and incarceration, depression, grief, suicide, and cultural identity issues (McFarlan, 2000, p. 13). Therefore, the inter-generational consequence...
There have been many unanswered questions in Australia about Aboriginal history. One of these is which government policy towards indigenous people has had the largest impact on Indigenous Australians? Through research the Assimilation Policy had the largest impact upon Indigenous Australians and the three supporting arguments to prove this are the Aborigines losing their rights to freedom, Aboriginal children being removed from their families, and finally the loss of aboriginality.
Kids were scattered across the country and family ties were obliterated forcing families to grieve their lost relatives This was devastating because in the First Nations culture, children are valued very highly, and those without children are viewed as being disadvantaged. The removal of children introduced problems of alcoholism, emotional stress and low self-esteem in Aboriginal communities. The events that played out “weakened the traditional family structure, and in doing so, weakened Aboriginal society as a whole”. An entire generation was not taught about their Aboriginal culture , traditions, customs or values, and this played a major role in the shaping of their
Brave Heart clarifies, “when we talk about historical trauma I am referring to the theory that lifespan trauma is passed down generation to generation” (2011). Brave Heart illustrates that any trauma that is passed down generation to generation is historical trauma and therefore the trauma will continue, unless some interferes to stop the trauma affecting the next generation. The trauma that came out of the boarding schools is the trauma that was caused by Native American children being taken from their loving homes and placed into institutions that all they did was to take every cultural connection they had to their home and forced them to learn the American culture and the language. If that was not enough what the Native American children went through in the boarding schools when they came home was worst. This children felt like they did not belong because they had learn some of the American culture and at the same time they lost their own culture. As a result of the changes it made it hard for them to go back to the way it was before the went to boarding school. Brave Heart mensions, “ boarding school attendance affected entire family systems; individuals and family relationships; family, community and cultural attachments; and interpersonal communication” (2011:287). Brave Heart enlightens us that the damage of boarding schools caused Native American children to feel disconnected to their own community. Many of the children in boarding schools do not know how a family should be or how they should behave with their parents and loved ones. In addition, to the family relationships these children lack parenting skills that are thought throw them see how their parent treat them and their siblings, but for someone who was at a boarding school for the majority of their childhood they did not learn this skills. Brave Heart emphasis “ clinical
yourself in the shoes of the Aboriginal children and families who are experiencing these root
The Stolen Generation has left devastating impacts upon the Aboriginal culture and heritage, Australian history and the presence of equality experienced today. The ‘Stolen Generation’ refers to the children of Aboriginal descent being forcefully abducted by government officials of Australia and placed within institutions and catholic orphanages, being forced to assimilate into ‘white society’. These dehumanising acts placed these stolen children to experience desecration of culture, loss of identity and the extinction of their race. The destructive consequences that followed were effects of corruption including attempted suicide, depression and drug and alcohol abuse. The indigenous peoples affected by this have endured solitude for many years, this has only been expressed to the public recently and a proper apology has been issued, for the years of ignorance to the implementation of destruction of culture. The Stolen Generation has dramatically shaped Australian history and culture.
Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.
The rights of Indigenous Australians were restricted by the Government policy of protection and assimilation. The Aboriginal Protection Act was passed in 1869, which gave power over the lives of Aboriginal people to the government, such as where they could live or work. They removed mixed decent Aboriginal children from their families in an attempt to assimilate them into white society. The Child Welfare Act 1939 abandoned this policy and gave Indigenous parents the right to take their children back. But the children were moved far away, and even if they were found and returned, many of them were mistreated and didn’t return the same to their families. This had devastating effects on Indigenous parents, and many white Australians didn’t understand this impact at the time.
When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,
“About two-thirds of children admitted to public care have experienced abuse and neglect, and many have potentially been exposed to domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse” (Dregan and Gulliford). These children are being placed into foster care so that they can get away from home abuse, not so they can move closer towards it. The foster children’s varied outcomes of what their adult lives are is because of the different experiences they grew up with in their foster homes. The one-third of those other foster children usually has a better outcome in adult life than the other two-thirds, which is a big problem considering the high percentage of children being abused in their foster homes. Although, the foster care system has most definitely allowed children to experience the positive home atmosphere that they need there is still an existed kind of abusive system in the foster care program that is unofficial but seems to be very popular. Foster care focuses on helping children in need of a temporary stable environment; however, foster care can have negative impacts to the children and the people around them concerning the foster child going through the transition, the parents of the foster child, a new sibling relationship, and problems that arrive later influencing the foster child long-term.
Through diction, the tone of the poem is developed as one that is downtrodden and regretful, while at the same time informative for those who hear her story. Phrases such as, “you are going to do bad things to children…,” “you are going to suffer… ,” and “her pitiful beautiful untouched body…” depict the tone of the speaker as desperate for wanting to stop her parents. Olds wrote many poems that contained a speaker who is contemplating the past of both her life and her parent’s life. In the poem “The Victims,” the speaker is again trying to find acceptance in the divorce and avoidance of her father, “When Mother divorced you, we were glad/ … She kicked you out, suddenly, and her/ kids loved it… ” (Olds 990). Through the remorseful and gloomy tone, we see that the speaker in both poems struggles with a relationship between her parents, and is also struggling to understand the pain of her
The Stolen Generations refers to the forcible removal of Aboriginal, mostly those who were not full blooded taken between the 1830’s and the 1970’s. They were removed due to their mixed heritage, consisting of Indigenous mothers and European fathers. The Stolen Generations have had a damaging effect on the native owners of Australia, their culture, their identity and most importantly, their sense of belonging,