When I visited Australia in 1997 I saw an exhibition about the aboriginals in the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Sidney. The Bringing Them Home report had just been published. I learned about the ‘Stolen Generations’ for the first time. It was also the first time that this subject was thrown into the public in Australia. The citizens must have known about it, because many were involved. As foreigners, we know of some of the atrocities inflicted upon the original inhabitants of Australia, such as the ‘sunday afternoon’ hunting of farmers on aboriginals in Tasmania, which led to their extinction in 1876. Children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were brusquely removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The inhumane removals occurred in the period between approximately 1869 and 1969, although in some places children were still being taken in the 1970′s.
A fictional portrayal entitled The taking of the children on the recently installed (1999) Great Australian Clock, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, by artist Chris Cook.
They were put into institutions for schooling with the aim to place them in families to work as servants (girls) or farm hands ( boys). It became known that these children were misused (enslaved and sexually abused) by their caretakers. The aim of the Government was to take away the cultural heritage of the aboriginals and to make them useful for the western society. It is unbelievable that the church missions played such an active part in this brutal policy, by establishing the ‘schooling’ institutions. Since the exhibition, there has been a public debate about the Stolen Generations, but it took until February 13, 2008 for the Government to say “Sorry”. However, compensation for the aboriginal citizens or restoration of their culture is not thought of.
On August 30, 2009 the Australian government took a first step, announcing that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, would formally apologize to former child migrants, in a gesture similar to his acknowledgement last year of the wrongs inflicted on the Aboriginal “Stolen Generations”. Here, it concerns an estimated 10,000 British children shipped to Australia in the post-war years (1945 to the 1960’s), under a policy aimed at ridding the mother country of its war orphans and populating the former colony with “good white stock”. Here again it were the church missions both in Great Britain and in Australia, that executed this horrible plan. I wonder how long it will take this time to officially apologize.
It is not unique that religious groups, the ‘bearers of morality’, are involved in crimes against humanity. Jay Griffits describes in her impressive book ‘Wild, an Elemental Journey’ how missionaries are still paving the ways for modern-days colonialists and capitalists, to replace the adaptive, millennia-old cultures of people, who had the wisdom of living harmoniously in the last and threatened wildernesses of mother Earth.
This disrespect for people with other skin color, with other beliefs, with other culture, is making life miserable. One wonders what can be done to stop this brutal, inhumane and criminal behavior and to restore tolerance and mutual respect.
Wiete Westerhof
October 16, 2011 at 11:05 am |
A thought provoking piece; why oh why is mankind so cruel?