While I was
reading “Rabbit-proof fence”, I was intrigued about the topic of the book, the
stolen generation. Personally, it was something I’ve never heard before. But I
would like to share some things that you may don’t know.
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| This statistic shows the reasons of because Aboriginal girls were taken. |
First of
all, the stolen generation is a term used to describe the aboriginal people who
were removed from their families as children by past Australian government and
church missionaries, from the late 1800s to the 1970s. The reason for the
government to do that, it was because they believed that Aboriginal children
were in danger with their own communities, and if these children were in a
white family or in government institutions, they would have a better education
and a more loving family, so after of being removed of their aboriginal family,
the children removed were sent to institutions or adopted by non-Indigenous
families.
Many of
these children we’re not allowed to know their aboriginal family in favor of
western values and norms. According to the story of a woman who was removed in
the 1940s, “My mother and brother could speak our language and my father could
speak his. I can't speak my language. Aboriginal people weren't allowed to
speak their language while white people were around (…). I never had a chance
to learn about my traditional and customary way of life when I was on the
reserves.” Sadly, they were many cases in which the children once grow up,
suffered discrimination against by his family, “I led a very lost, confused,
sad, empty childhood, as my foster father molested me. I remember once having a
bath with my clothes on because I was too scared to take them off. I was scared
of the dark `cause my foster father would often come at night (…). So I thought
this was how `normal' non-Aboriginal families were. I was taken to various
doctors who diagnosed me as `uncontrollable' or `lacking in intelligence”.
One of the
more controversial thing about this, it was about the use of the term “stolen”,
because the government didn’t think it was the correct expression and they refused
to apologize about the children who were removed. The term was accepted when
the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, presented a formal apology on February 13, 2008.
One of the
saddest thing, it’s that more children are being taken today than during the
Stolen Generations period since the Department of Community Services (DoCS) has
the authority to remove children from their families if they were “at risk of
significant harm”.
It really
scared me these statistics, since many of us think that these kinds of things
don’t happen today, because we are supposed to live in a “modern world” where
we have to fight for our rights. The problem is that the situation is unknown,
so we need to praise the word to have a a solution as soon as possible.
Did you
know that there still cases in which children are being taken? How do we can
change that reality?
