Here in Part 2, the blame lies with parliament, it does not does not lie with a court. The kidnapped child did not get as far as a court. Could a parent have gone to court in behalf of the child? I am not sure what year that became impossible due to the legal technique known as placing a person under guardianship. Once the state is the guardian the PARENT IS NO LONGER THE GUARDIAN.
In contemporary Australia, even if the guardianship is temporary the parent loses control over, say, medical treatment for the child. Why? Because it is the guardian that has the legal right to act on behalf of minors (and seniors, by the way but this series is focused on children).
Although we must therefore let the court off the hook, this part of Gumshoe’s Proof Enough series is very relevant to the Protective parent’s dilemma. It shows how a government can operate on the thinnest of societal “permissions” to do something that goes against the normal values of humanity.
By the way, the excuse of “assimilation” is not necessarily what drove this operation. The 1915 amendment cracked down on Aborigines. Ask why?
The following (the rest of this article) is taken from “Defining Moments” at the National Museum of Australia website nma.gov.au. No author’s name is mentioned.
Defining Moments: Aborigines Protection Act
The 1915 amendments to the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 gave the New South Wales (NSW) Aborigines Protection Board the power to remove any Indigenous child at any time and for any reason.
The phrasing of one amendment was so broad as to enable any interpretation by the Board’s inspectors, and led to thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their parents on the basis of race alone.
This government-sanctioned practice was widespread across Australia, and created tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of what are now known as the Stolen Generations.
Section 13A, Aborigines Protection Amending Act, No.2 of 1915:
“The Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry if is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best.”
Establishing the Board
The Board for the Protection of Aborigines was established by the NSW Government on 2 June 1883. As described by then Premier Alex Stuart in a Cabinet minute, the Board was to fulfill:
the duty of the State to assist in any effort which is being made for the elevation of the race, by affording rudimentary instruction, and by aiding in the cost of maintenance or clothing where necessary, …
The Board operated without legislative authority until 1909.
Initially, its activity was limited to those areas identified by the Premier, such as issuing rations (though the amounts issued were less than those issued to whites), clothing and blankets, and the creation of reserves for Indigenous people. It also purchased boats and fishing equipment for coastal Aboriginal people, and occasionally seed and farming equipment for those who lived on inland reserves.
The Board was keen to support the creation of reserves, especially if there was the potential for agricultural production, which they saw as a civilising activity.
Seeking greater control
Growing increasingly ambitious, the Board began to seek greater control over the lives of Indigenous people. It achieved this with the 1909 Act, which provided for all reserves and stations and all buildings to be vested in the Board.
The Board had the power to: move Aboriginal people out of towns; set up managers, local committees and local guardians (police) for the reserves; control reserves; prevent liquor being sold to Aboriginals; and to stop whites from associating with Aboriginals or entering the reserves. It even retained ownership of the blankets it distributed.
The Board had sought the power to remove children, but the 1909 Act only gave it the same powers that applied to neglected white children. The 1915 amendments gave it the power to remove any child at any time and for any reason.
The rationale for the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents was part of a broader policy framework known as assimilation.
Non-Indigenous Australians had convinced themselves that Aboriginal people were a ‘dying race’, and that those remaining, especially those of mixed parentage, would be better off assimilated into ‘white’ society.
Babies were sent to the United Aborigines Mission Home in Bomaderry; girls were sent to the Cootamundra Girls Home and boys to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home near Kempsey.
While the Board asserted that children received care and education at these institutions, oral histories from the children themselves show the homes to be harsh and desolate places, offering a limited future. The children were brought up to reject their Aboriginal heritage.
Many other children were sent to institutions, which received both ‘white’ and Aboriginal children. In such institutions, retention of Aboriginal identity was even more difficult and many children would have grown up unaware of their Aboriginal heritage.
Abuse of these children was widespread and commonplace.
Many children were fostered or adopted by white families, where most lost all connection to their Aboriginal identity and heritage and were even less likely to remain with their siblings.
Disastrous Impact
The Act had a disastrous impact on Aboriginal families and culture. The 1997 Bringing Them Home Report found that children removed from their families were disadvantaged in the following ways:
- They were more likely to come to the attention of the police as they grew into adolescence
- They were more likely to suffer low self-esteem, depression and other mental illnesses
- They were more vulnerable to physical, emotional and sexual abuse while in ‘care’
- They had been almost always taught to reject their Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture
- They were unable to retain links with their land
- They could not take a role in the cultural and spiritual life of their former communities
- They were unlikely to be able to establish their right to native title.
Because of poor record keeping, no one knows the precise number of children forcibly removed under the Act, or under other similar legislation deployed around the country. Estimates vary.
Peter Read, who has carried out extensive research on the removal of Indigenous children in Australia, has suggested a figure of up to 50,000 people ‘would not be unreasonable’.
The Bringing Them Home Report suggests a maximum figure of one in three Indigenous children were removed and a minimum of one in ten, and stated that no Indigenous family is untouched by forced separation.
The lack of accurate records (some of which were deliberately destroyed or not created in the first place) also prevents many family members wishing to be reunited from finding each other.
One of the main recommendations from the Bringing Them Home Report was for the government to make a national apology to the Stolen Generations. This finally took place on 13 February 2008 and is another defining moment.
The Aborigines Protection Act was finally repealed in 1969 but the legacy of the legislation and that of other states endures among the thousands of Stolen Generations in Australia. Many remain deeply traumatised by their experience as children. Because this trauma can be trans-generational, these policies continue to affect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community today.
Comment by Mary W Maxwell, series editor:
Excuse me, I did not quite say how it is justified to call this information “Proof of Judicial Kidnap” when there was no judiciary involved. Please wait and see my whole series of 5 articles. Together they are indeed proof of judicial kidnap — today’s kidnap by the Family Court.
The above story, having been written by a government employee for a government website (I assume the museum is government-owned), shows that it is now public knowledge that a family can be torn apart easily when there is “authority” behind it.
Isn’t it time we grew up and asked “authority” to show its genuine credentials? A government that breaks up a family — never mind tens of thousands of families today in 2019 — has no authority.
See? The authority of government is related to its legitimacy and it can’t possibly be legitimate if it tears a kid from its parent. It’s got to be some other organization operating in government clothing that does that.
Impostors.
Of course it works the other way too, bigtime. Parents (usually the dad) are dragged away from their offspring to spend years in prison for a victimless crime. You can’t tell me that isn’t planned, as a method of family break-up.
Leonard Peltier’s family would like to see him. He is 74. There is nothing to stop President Trump pardoning him.
(Well, nothing except Trump’s stupidity or bad will.)
http://users.skynet.be/kola/kola.html
A member of the Child Protection Alliance of Australia sent me a report (“Case 6”) of an Aboriginal dad who was greeted in his home by the DCP. He picked up both of his babies and held them to his chest against having them taken away. He was arrested and jailed for “resisting arrest.”
He can sue for the tort of “malicious prosecution,” IMHO.
I really do wish people would desist from making politicised interpretations of history without access to the evidential reality.
Like… 50,000 victims? Try 2000.
Aboriginal children? That is a description based on a politicised definition of Aboriginality which is very much part of historical revisionism (ie Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people and anyone who claims this status, regardless of empirical evidence).
Here is what really happened, a context which paints a very different story.
From 1886, word began to get about that the Arafura Pastoral Company and other British cattle interests, were eradicating all wildlife in desired locations of Northern Australia. To these psychopaths, wildlife included Aborigines, who were shot from horseback, assisted by part-Aboriginal mercenaries from Queensland This was a genocide which took place over some fifty years, wiping out entire language groups and which did not end until 1936.
As word finally reached southern urban centres, the news papers publicised the known massacres, the outraged Australian public demanded that Aborigines be protected, and thus the values and beliefs of those times launched Christian missionaries to centralise and protect Aboriginal populations. The policy was then applied across all states, hence the protector position in each state and territory.
Thankfully, by 1936, the cattlemen were either contained or forced off-shore. But the rescue process created its own problems.
With the post-1880 surveying and populating of north Australia, primarily by men, mixed race children began to appear, including Chinese and Afghan. According to the ethics and morality of the times, citizens began to demand that children who were half white and therefore half British, were owed protection and civilising influences. This was never a conspiracy, regardless of what pub-addled revisionists and avaricious compensation seekers might later claim.
I cannot comment on the other states, but the NT Welfare Ordinance made clear that there was no differentiation between any race of children on the issues of “neglect” or “failure of care and control”. Where the problems started was what happened to children who were declared “taken into care”, or later, declared wards of the state. It was the Christians, the worst being Anglican, then Catholic, then Methodist, then Luthoran, who established orphanages to replace the original compounds (ie Khalin Compound); and research by Margaret Humpheries (“Empty Cradles”) showed that 20% of all children placed into Christian “öut-of-home-care” (to adopt the modern terminology) were sexually abused.
The Christian lobby unashamedly promoted the removal of children to enhance the cost-effectiveness of their institutions, which included twisting the arms of welfare officers, police, housing officers, patrol officers, magistrates and other officials, to secure as many children as possible into their ‘souls-for-Jesus’ factories. Apart from the Lutherans, these Christians did not recognise the needs of children for love and affection, or even basic nutrition. Children in Anglican orphanages were cruelly punished for speaking their languages, and their Catholic church variants denied potential foster parents or adoption aspirants access to the children.
My point here is that very few politicians or public servants had any idea what was going on. This was remote areas Australia, and mainstream Australians continue to have no idea whatsoever, of what is going on. Nothing changes.
People of those times, including until quite recently, fervently believed that Christians would provide Christian love, affection and nurturing to children because… well… that whats Christians do. Right? Jesus is love. God is love. The fuck they did.
Rudd had no idea of the reality when he apologised. The people of Australia had no idea what was going on and never would have agreed to it had they been aware. The stealing of children (including tens of thousands from England, was exclusively by Christian churches. It is the Christian churches who are guilty and it is the Christian churches who should be punished and forced to compensate, not the long-suffering people of Australia (or of England for that matter).
Now to the revisionism known as the Stolen Generation.
This movement started when I called out a former Christian brother cum NTA welfare officer for pressuring an Aboriginal lady in Nhulunbuy to give her baby up for adoption. He was successfully stopped, but other welfare officers interpreted my action as criticism of former interventions. Not for the first time, I was the departmental pariah for several days. One of my Aboriginal colleagues, Barbara Cummings. said she supported me to the hilt and made who views loudly clear to one and all.
A few years later, she told me the saga inspired her to write a book titled ‘Take this Child’, based on her experience as a victim of the sterile and oppressive Christian Rita Dixon Homes, Her book was confiscated by the Commissioner of Human Rights and Equal Opportunity and reconstructed to the the now-familiar stolen generation, which claimed a government conspiracy to force-assimilate Aborigines.
In the NT, the truth is that claimants of being stolen lost their cases in court because the massively available evidence contradicted their claims. As the only person who read all Native Affairs, Welfare Branch, DAA, and NT Government welfare intervention files, I can state unequivocally that no NT removal occurred as later claimed. Generally, a three strikes policy prevailed and on the third case of neglect, children were declared wards of the state. In one case, a six month old baby and two other siblings were abandoned for three days in an Alice Springs Housing Commission house, without change of nappies, heating, fluid or food, while the mother binged on a drinking camp.
Why would the parents of children taken into care lie about it? Put yourself in their position. Would you admit to your later reconciled children you neglected then so badly they were taken by welfare?
As to a conspiracy…
Generally, neglect cases were reported by Health nurses, housing commission staff, police, or neighbours. All these personnel were required to have their observations recorded on the welfare file, which then became the court evidence for declaration as ward of the state. There was no room for conspiracy.
This accounts for around three quarters of NT interventions, almost none of which included full Aborigines; only mixed race. One quarter of Aboriginal mothers were forced to submit their children to welfare by angry promised husbands, whose ultimatum was hand them over or live in exile from the clan; a fate that no traditional tribal mother could survive unhinged. The reason why promised husbands were so rigid was that, in their view, half-white children had no totem, language, songline, or tribe; and were therefore not human.
As a footnote, claims that victims were denied access to the language and culture ring a little hollow when not one of the Top End stolen generation claimants has ever bothered to learn the language or culture of their relations once these were reconciled. Secondly, Aboriginal welfare officers were the most intransigent in attempting to make kids declared wards of the state. which is an irony. Was this a conspiracy too?
What are the true ramifications of the Stolen Generation saga? Probably around ten thousand Aboriginal children across Australia, both full and part Aboriginal, are now neglected or abused, but no social worker will intervene for fear of being accused of stealing a second generation.
These children are denied a rescue thanks to blatant politicisation of history and news. Worse, most Aboriginal children now receive very little parenting, which is reflected in aberrant behavior, lack of literacy and numeracy, criminality, and rising suicide. And their children are even more neglected.
Quite poetically, a few minutes ago, the original Aboriginal mother in Nhulunbuy Hospital, whose cry for help launched this entire episode of Australian history, told me by phone that she has launched a Land Rights Claim to help re-establish our Homelands in Arnhem to the true Songline custodians.
I guess, what goes around comes around.
Dear Tony, I would like to respond but a 3000 word essay is too much to fit into this column.
As for my article, its purpose is to say “Hey look how easy it is for a piece of legislation to green-light something.” I claim no knowledge of the history of Australia in the period 1880-1915, but I vigorously claim knowledge of what is going on in Family Court today.
Children are being stolen.
Tony, the beliefs or behavior of the nuns is a great mystery, have you solved it? Stories out of Ireland paint the nuns as wicked and while I am in no position to refute it, I just can’t see what the girl’s motive would have been to “join the convent.” Even if the girl was a psychopath she would not have been able to divine that this was the perfect career in which she would be able to whip a lot of kids (?)
Conversely, if she were not a psychopath but maybe a nice devoted Catholic, how then, once she was sent to the Mission, would she change her stripes?
Dunno Mary, me old mate, but here is an example of what they did to one of the kids in my wife’s class. The Sisters of Mercy, a convent order dedicated to sadism and humiliation… a girl’s dog followed her to school and sat in the playground waiting for classes to end.
One of the nuns took it a feed laced with poison and made the kids watch the dog contort and spasm itself to death.
How about the De la Salle Christian Brothers? One of the kids in my class was dying of renal failure and had missed most of his school years. On one of his brief soujourns at school, Brother Leo asked him to answer a maths question, which was, incidentally, two years ahead of age/curriculum. Little Sydney had no idea what any of it meant so Brother Leo pulled out The Blackjack, which was a 700 mm long stitched leather strap 30 mm wide and 20 mm thick, and floggerd him mercelessly on the body and bare legs. Frail little Sydney died three months later and the whole school attended his funeral.
So, if I come across as a trifle hard-edged, that is the reason. I survived school with passing marks only by swearing to myself that when I grew up I would kill Brother Leo.
The bastard died before I could get to him but I still harbour the ambition to destry the Vatican, which is a nest of paedophiles, assassins, saddists, and psychopaths and has been since the 7th century.
Well, I axed a question, I got an answer.
Dog poisoning is quite the CIA trick. Fiona Barnett says several of her pets have been killed.
Seriously, Tony, about that nun. How did she get to be a sadist? And Bro Leo?
Tony, apart from the Aboriginal residential schools (which has many parallels to Canada), kids from Malta were sent out to Australia supposedly “in the best interest of the child.” Yet on arrival they were not well cared for.
So who was behind the transfer? (I don’t mean you would have the answer — I am just wondering.) Had there been a good intention in sending them, surely there would have been someone on the receiving end who would feel kindly toward those boys
Sunday, April 27, 2014,
Abused Maltese child migrants to give evidence in Australia inquiry
Maltese child migrants who were raped, tortured and emotionally abused at four Christian Brother’s homes in Western Australia will be among those giving evidence in an inquiry staring tomorrow, the Herald Sun reported.
The newspaper said that many of those giving evidence were sent to Australia from the UK and Malta after the war for what was supposed to be a better life.
310 Maltese were sent to Australia as child migrants between 1950 and 1965 as part of a scheme promising parents a better future for their children.
It later emerged they were forced to work in institutions and many were not educated. A number of them suffered physical and sexual abuse.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse will be looking specifically into the experiences of former residents sent to Castledare, Clontarf, Bindoon and Tardun orphanages from the late 1940s up until the 1960s.
Margaret Humpheries would be a good person to go to, but I have met a few insiders who provided me with additional evidence from within the Catholic church. From the entire hierarchy of the UK Anglican and Catholic churches, the thefts of children was orchestrated. The Catholic rationale was that catholics were leaving the church at such a dramatic rate that these stolen kids could be brainwashed to replace the numbers. This is why the Catholic church refused to let any kids be adopted, even though there were many requests.
Margaret Humphries received death threats while in Australia. I can tell you a little about that too.
Catholic youth are encouraged to join the Holy Name Society and any who demonstrate the aptitude, can progress to joining Opus Dei, which is the Catholic enforcer body. Those members with outstanding talent (ie psychos) can go on to join a higher body which is much more hard core. I have never met anyone who even knew the name of this but it is rumoured that this cadre, conjoined by the CIA, assassinated 13 Liberation Theology Jesuits Priests in central and south America.
This is modeled on the centuries-old squad known as Assassini.
“Those members with outstanding talent (ie psychos) can go on to join a higher body which is much more hard core”.
I don’t doubt you, Tony, but what good did it too to the Big Boys to have that nun being so awful? Just general degradation of the population?
I went to a State Primary School, but near the school was a Catholic Primary School. When we all got to High School (State only) the kids from the Catholic School used to tell us of the cruelty and sometime brutality of the Nuns, some of who sounded a bit marginal in the judgement department. Sounded to me more like the Nuns were simply out of their depth in life and reality, looking back, but an Order-imposed isolation will take anyone down such a path. I suppose it was an environment in which cruelty and pain could be meted out at any time, thus it was a conditioning process, even if the Nuns were nuts (Nutty, easily triggered Nuns…bug or feature??).
There were still some old strappers in the High school too, but the threshold for getting belted was a bit higher than getting a times-table step wrong, or saying the forbidden part of the Lord’s Prayer out loud.