Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
End Date
12-6-2011 12:00 PM
Abstract
The Indigenous Stolen Generations have cast a long shadow over Australian culture and society. In this paper, we give consideration to some of the implications of this and to some effects of this ‘long shadow’ on the treatment of non-Indigenous children and their families. In particular, this paper examines the complex cultural and gender politics surrounding the demands of non-Indigenous mothers and children separated by past adoption practices for a formal apology comparable to that given to the Stolen Generations. While the primary lens through which to view the Australian Stolen Generations remains that of settler-Indigenous relations, when we widen the lens we begin to see that past policy and practice in this area has had impact well beyond Indigenous Australia and confirms Deborah Bird Rose’s hypothesis that the violence of dispossession impacts on both colonised and coloniser.
Keywords
Stolen Generations, Forgotten Australians, Lost Innocents, child removal, Autralian Indigenous child removal, adoption, national apology, race and gender.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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In the shadow of the Stolen Generations…: Forced child removal, national apologies and the case of non-Indigenous mothers separated from their children by past adoption practices
The Indigenous Stolen Generations have cast a long shadow over Australian culture and society. In this paper, we give consideration to some of the implications of this and to some effects of this ‘long shadow’ on the treatment of non-Indigenous children and their families. In particular, this paper examines the complex cultural and gender politics surrounding the demands of non-Indigenous mothers and children separated by past adoption practices for a formal apology comparable to that given to the Stolen Generations. While the primary lens through which to view the Australian Stolen Generations remains that of settler-Indigenous relations, when we widen the lens we begin to see that past policy and practice in this area has had impact well beyond Indigenous Australia and confirms Deborah Bird Rose’s hypothesis that the violence of dispossession impacts on both colonised and coloniser.