The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Can we retrieve our moral values? > Comments

Can we retrieve our moral values? : Comments

By Duncan Graham, published 18/2/2016

The Pacific Solution will be ranked in the future alongside the Stolen Generation and trusting churches to care for kids as policies of shame.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. All
Calwest, you have obviously believed the stories told to you by 'whities' who feel guilty about our bad past as regards how foreigners dealt with Aboriginals back then.
How do you know they told the truth?
Maybe Rudd and his government apologized for nothing then?

Big Nana, I don't care how many Indigenous family members you have, but obviously that family were lucky back in the days of Government systematic removal of part-Aboriginals from often perfectly fine families.

Are you suggesting that everyone I spoke to, in the Pilbara, Kimberley and Metro Indigenous population, lied to me? For what purpose?
If indeed you are part of a large Aboriginal family you must surely know of the policy of taking 'half-caste' children from families just because they thought they should be raised in white families instead, or at least work for white families?
Posted by Suseonline, Friday, 19 February 2016 3:02:20 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Suseonline,

Your arguments are pathetic.

The people who fed you inaccurate or self-serving stories which you are only to ready to accept uncritically may well have believed what they told you. That doesn't make them accurate. Clearly, you made no attempt to verify what you had been told.

Indeed, despite the royal commission, no Aboriginal "stolen" child has ever been identified, so far as I'm aware.

My paternal grandmother was part of the so-called "Stolen Generation". She was raised by a white family who told her she was Mauri: apparently in those days there was some sort of hierarchy of discrimination and being a Mauri was to be in a better social position than being Aboriginal. She died an old woman believing she was Mauri. She was a wonderful grandmother and a wonderful woman and I still miss her. But the reality is, she wasn't "stolen".

My grandmother married a German who died in an internment camp during WW2, regarded as an enemy alien, while both his sons were in the Australian army.

Nevertheless, I don't doubt my grandmother's foster family were doing what they thought was best for her in their situation.

You are blind to the most obvious and simplest explanation: Aboriginal children were removed from their families because the families would not or could not raise them in satisfactory circumstances. The stories you peddle are completely unsubstantiated.

The foster families who raised Aboriginal children and gave them good, productive lives are those we should thank, not denigrate.
Posted by calwest, Friday, 19 February 2016 4:12:05 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Here are three aboriginal children who were not "stolen", Susieonline.

Deborah Melville.

Foster child Deborah died in the dirt in a suburban Darwin backyard, propped against a trailer. She was suffering from a leg infection which had spread into the bone, and was visited by FACS case workers the day before she died. A FACS worker assured the child, “I am not here to take you away.”

A manslaughter trial and coronial inquiry was told that Deborah probably died in excruciating pain, and that she had been unable to control her bowel and bladder in the days before her death. Because of this, her carers, Denise Reynolds and Tony Melville, put her outside to sit in the dirt. Though Deborah was living in filthy circumstances, FACS reported that she was “happy and healthy.”

Peter.

Seven week old Peter starved to death in the back of a hot car on the Stuart Highway in 2005. Peter was born to a drug using mother who’s six other children were known to FACS. In 2002, one of the children, a daughter, was taken (stolen?) and taken to Alice Springs Hospital at three months old, “haunted and looking like a bony skeleton.”

Peter at death weighed 1kg less than his birth weight, and during his brief life, FACS officers were repeatedly contacted with reports that the baby was extremely skinny. There were various attempts to remove Peter from his mother’s care, but she was unco-operative, and FACS did not ask the police to forcibly remove (steal) the child.

Joy.

Joy was assessed by health workers as being ‘at risk of severe harm”, and she was one of eight teenage girls in a remote mining town who were being sexually abused by a government official. The teenager, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, had a long history of neglect in her aboriginal family. As early as two, she was deposited at a local health clinic because nobody was looking after her. But repeated attempts by the police to get FACS to intervene to protect Joy came to nothing.
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 19 February 2016 5:10:13 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
LEGO, I know more than most about today's problems with Indigenous children, but I thought we were discussing the Stolen Generation here?

Calwest, you can't know for sure that everyone else except you is lying about this issue.
I have no reason to doubt the stories I was told, added to by extremely deep sadness in their eyes. But hey, you know best, even when you weren't there.

I can't argue with a totally closed mind like yours.
Don't call me a liar when you have no proof.
Posted by Suseonline, Friday, 19 February 2016 7:16:57 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I don't think you're a liar, Suse. I think you're a gullible fool, incapable of intellectual rigour. Nor did I say that all of the people who told you their stories with sad eyes were lying. Most likely, they're just misinformed or repeating "stories" handed down through the family or community.

That doesn't make them real or true.
Posted by calwest, Friday, 19 February 2016 8:01:03 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Protesting from you doesn't make what you say true either...without knowing everyone's story...which you don't.
Who is the fool now?
Posted by Suseonline, Friday, 19 February 2016 8:41:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy