Thanks. It doesn't take long with Windschuttle's work to find serious errors in his scholarship. Given his selective citations and disengenous arguments, one is forced to conclude that his mission to overturn the legacy of Henry Reynolds and other mainstream historians has been utterly hopeless.

Btw - what happened to part 2? He skipped from volume 1 to 3, perhaps think nobody would notice?

Windschuttle is an intellectual nobody who went from one retarded extreme (Marxism) to the other (neo-conservatism). He's like a home grown Christopher Hitchens without any of the colour, interest or erudition. Under his stewardship Quadrant has turned from an intellectually vibrant journal, which took contributions from both sides of politics, to gutter-dwelling reactionary echo chamber.

BBoy,

Perhaps you could cite one error in Windshuttle's 600-page work ? Just one.

As head of the SCC, James Gray reiterated his proposal at the Royal Commission in the Aborigines 1913-16, and what followed ? Legislation was never passed to agree to his request. Never. It was never legal in SA to take Aboriginal children from their parents without cause, the same sorts of causes as states require to take non-Aboriginal children into care, as part of their fiduciary obligation as 'parent of last resort'. The case of Bruce Trevorrow demonstrates this illegality - that when Marj Angus lied to his mother, that constituted grounds for action against the state and Mr Trevorrow was duly awarded damages. One case of an illegal act - then restitution.

Perhaps Dr Raynes could name one other case in Australia. Just one.

Well, Dr Raynes ?

Raynes :” … has a PhD on the moral subtext of Aboriginal oral history but prefers to make things up.”

He prefers to “make things up”. Not unusual among Leftist historians in Australia, and others who try to rubbish Keith Windschuttle.

I have read only the first volume of Windschuttle’s trilogy. It was heavy going, but the fact that he researched properly, unlike Henry Reynolds et al, and footnoted heavily to prove what he was writing, impressed me with his scholarship, unlike someone calling himself ‘BBoy’ who quickly establishes his attitude by parroting such silly expressions such as ‘neo-conservatism’ and other epithets to describe someone he doesn’t like.

As for Cameron Raynes, who likes to make things up, and who fell foul of the Left-wing SA Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, I’ve never heard of him. Anyone who can read has heard of Keith Windschuttle, and his books. How many have heard of ‘The Last Protector’?

There are any number of self- righteous trouble makers who claim that governments and officials acted illegally in their dealings with aboriginals. This is nonsense, as is the very warped idea that there ever was such a thing as a ‘stolen generation’. People who try too impose today’s attitudes and laws on the past are just plain ignorant.

I doubt that Windschuttle will ever know that he has been ‘responded to’ by Raynes.

I doubt that Raynes will have much response to this advertisement for what he calls “my work”.

What's your name, Loudmouth? You know mine. I like to know who I'm talking to. Then I'll answer your question. In the meantime, you should have a read of The Last Protector.

Raynes makes a fair point in his rejoinder. It is funny, sad, and irritating how the ad-hominem attacks almost always come from the people who conceal their real names.

The same goes for BBoy's spray. While I am singularly unimpressed by Windschuttle's capacity to interpret history – you just cannot do it unless you genuinely want to imagine yourself in the shoes of others – to blame 'his stewardship' for a slide in the standards of Quadrant is willfully overdoing it. The sacking of Robert Manne over a decade ago was the decisive moment when Quadrant became a partisan journal. (That was when its board installed Paddy Macguinness as editor.)

No problem, Dr Raynes: my name is Joe Lane, I live in Henley Beach. Do you want my email address as well ?

Just one :)

Tom Clark,

How do we know that Tom Clark is your real name, and why would we care what people call themselves? You talk about 'ad hominem' attacks. You posted only to have a go at BBoy yourself, so enough of the holier than thou stuff.

My real name is Leigh, but for all you know, it might be Tom, Dick or Harry. You have only my word for it, just I only have your word that you are Tom Clark. But, if your name is really Tom Clark, so what? How does that affect what you have to say. If your name is really Tom Clark, again, so what? Do you think that you are being brave and straight foward; that you are are somehow more honest than the rest of us? After all, how does "Tom Clark" make you any less anonymous than others who us screen names. I don't think anyone silly enough to want to do so could track you down and pull your nose or whatever they felt like doing to your oh-so-good self.

Get over yourself, Tom Clark or whatever your name is.

"The same goes for BBoy's spray. While I am singularly unimpressed by Windschuttle's capacity to interpret history – you just cannot do it unless you genuinely want to imagine yourself in the shoes of others"

What does that even mean? I argued that Windschuttle's project of dismantling the orthodox historical view had failed. In defence of that view I said he had made many errors and misused sources selectively. All of this is well documented to anybody who has followed the so-called history wars in periodically like The Monthly and other historical journals.

As for my alleged ad homininem spray? Please. I simply shared my low opinion of Windschuttle's scholarship and how I believe his journey from Marxism to conservatism is characteristic of his tendency to slip into sloppy, caricatured one-sided narrative thinking.

"to blame 'his stewardship' for a slide in the standards of Quadrant is willfully overdoing it. The sacking of Robert Manne over a decade ago was the decisive moment when Quadrant became a partisan journal. (That was when its board installed Paddy Macguinness as editor.)"

A minor point at best. You're entirely correct that McGuinness's reign ended the non-partisan era. But I nonetheless believe Quadrant has descended further into partisan rancour and intellectual irrelevance under Windschuttle, which is entirely compatible with that fact.

You spent 100s of hours and produced an 80 page "book", and you're calling out Keith Windshuttle on one item .. that's it?

I wonder who paid for this trolling of documents, how did you pay the rent during all that?

Was it taxpayer funded?

Keith may be unsubtle, but at least he's thorough, and does not demand his critics all identify themselves when they question his work, he just deals with the facts.

Why do you need Loudmouth to identify himself, was it a bluff?

You challenged Loudmouth, he instantly complied to your demand .. where's your response, "Then I'll answer your question."

Tom, I did not, and hopefully never will, make any ad hominem attacks on anyone, BUT I will have a go at their arguments. As Salman Rushdie wrote, free speech is nothing if it does not include the right to say things which someone might find offensive, which offends their preconceptions. Respect the person, but not necessarily his/her argument: it's the argument, the subject material, the 'thing', res, which should be judged, not the person responsible.

I've knocked around Indigenous affairs, by marriage, residence, friendships, career, voluntary work, for close on fifty years and I hope that I'll always stand up for justice for Indigenous people. But I'll never stick up for fabrication, lies, distortions, or anything but (I hope) the truth. I was born on the Left and I expect to die on the Left and I respect Dr Windshuttle for the thoroughness of his research, regardless of his politics: genuine research so often comes up with surprises, awkwardness, phenomena which confound our preconceptions, but which have to be, not buried, but confronted and 'explained' and that is what Dr Windshuttle has done convincingly.

Just one :)

Sure Joe. One case of illegal removal. Just one? The case of Terry Mason's daughters, held illegally by the Lutherans of Koonibba Mission. Page 66 of The Last Protector.

And just to pre-empt your response, isn't it curious how the question has gone from 'Just name one Aboriginal person who was taken from their parents illegally' to 'Just name one Aboriginal person who was taken from their parents illegally and then found restitution.' As if securing a legal remedy to an illegal act is the only way you can prove that an illegal act occurred.

Thanks, I'll check it out in your book, if I can find a copy. A & R, Dymocks, Borders ? Where can one find the full details, at the Lutheran archives in North Adelaide ?

It was common practice for parents to go out to work from missions and government settlements, and to leave their children in the dormitory while they were away, so that the kids could get some continuity of education (at Pt McLeay, Gerard, Pt Pearce, Koonibba), and so that the parents could get some sort of working income. The parents signed documents to that effect.

Are you saying that this process was not followed at Koonibba ?

Thanks for this article Cameron Raynes. The odious Windschuttle deserves to have his nitpicking 'scholarship' subjected to similar scrutiny to that which he applied to the footnotes of his academic betters. Unfortunately, your well-researched and argued article will undoubtedly attract similarly ignorant and negative comments to those that have been posted thus far.

I don't know why Joe Lane/Loudmouth is so critical of your work, given his claimed experience with Aboriginal issues. Back in the 1980s I had occasion to work at a Queensland State Government institution that had historically been involved in 'removals' from Palm Island and other missions in North Queensland, and had the opportunity to peruse records dating back to the late 19th century.

The number of Aboriginal children (with names like Thursday, Friday, Daylight etc) who had been removed from their parents and sent to work as unpaid servants and farmhands astounded me. I imagine that access to those records by researchers would also be very difficult to gain.

CJ just can't let go of slagging off at anyone who disagrees, "The odious Windschuttle deserves to have his nitpicking 'scholarship' subjected to similar scrutiny to that which he applied to the footnotes of his academic betters. Unfortunately, your well-researched and argued article will undoubtedly attract similarly ignorant and negative comments to those that have been posted thus far."

It's an opinion piece, and the author is aware that people may not agree, he's big enough I'm sure to deal with it - you sure can't.

Your comments may be similarly be seen as "ignorant and negative" of Windshuttle's work, and similarly of no substance other than insults.

It's a pleasure CJ Morgan.
Joe, I have to admit I don't know the answer to your question regarding the signing of waivers. It's an interesting point and worth checking out. I may have burnt my bridges at the Lutheran archives though. There's very little of that sort of information at State Records, though the UAM at one point tried, through the Aborigines Department, to get the Crown Solicitor to help them draft a document that, when signed by an Aboriginal person, would give them control of the children of that person.

Amicus - while my comment is certainly negative concerning Windschuttle's second-rate 'scholarship', it is anything but ignorant.

I have read widely about the Stolen Generations and taught a university course in Aboriginal Studies for years. Upon what research and experience do you base your comments on this topic?

Cameron, as I am confident you are aware, the views of Windschuttle appeal to the vested interest and colonially moronic bigotry of many Australians, as Australia becomes increasingly perceived internationally as a racist pariah.

Posters alike Leigh and Loudmouth congregate on OLO threads wherever issues of race or migrants arise, to spread their malevolent bigotry, as insidiously as those former practices you write of, demonstrate.

For as I am confident you are also aware, illegitimate pursuit is restricted in its capacity for initiative, which is why we observe varieties of the same colonial tactics of racism, recycled ad nauseam.

I am an original member of the recognised Maori activist group, Nga Tamatoa [The Young Warriors], however I will not reveal my identity further. For as the malevolence of racism is known, its promoters use covert tactics, such as implied intimidation, and covert and clandestine infiltration, to pursue its infection.

As is also known, the most efficient method of reforming attitudes of those so disposed, is their receiving a dose of their own malevolence. So I will remain disguised that I may ‘ninja’ them at the most appropriate opportunity.

Hi Joe!

Cameron and CJ may be able to clarify this for me.
Wikipedia states: " The Stolen Generations(also Stolen children) is a term used to describe those children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments"
So we are talking about removals under various Acts of Parliament.
Yet in your very interesting article Cameron you state "But, without the support of the Children’s Welfare Board, there was little the Aborigines Department could do. They embarked on a prolonged program of removing Aboriginal children by stealth, usually keeping them in children’s homes run by missions, against the wishes of their parents. This was illegal. Windschuttle and Bolt would have known all this if they’d read The Last Protector."
So when we are discussing Stolen Generations in South Australia, the children were stolen illegally, but for the rest of the country they were stolen legally?

Ngarmada wrote

"however I will not reveal my identity further."

and

"So I will remain disguised that I may ‘ninja’ them at the most appropriate opportunity."

Surely you must be Zoro or Captain Fantastic. Possibly even that guy on the Japanese Ninja TV show at 6am in the morning when I was a kid. Shintoro I think, he would jump down from a 100 ft tree and slice you with his sword, only to immediately jump back up the 100 ft tree. He was a master of disguise. In 2 sec flat he could transform himself from a Ninja to an old woman. Please don't keep me in suspense any longer Ngarmada, reveal your identity.

Here they are Cameron, two more of the racist parasites who have infiltrated OLO and show up on these threads like clockwork. ozzie has been identified also by myself and other posters as a stalker, driving a female poster ostensibly off the site of OLO with his relentless pursuit.

They will never reveal themselves, but we know Cameron, one day they will make a mistake, and justice will prevail.

When someone can make a living by having a chip on their shoulder than integrity is not part of the equation. The formula is devoid of fact & truth is bent like a boomerang, remember we're talking huge money. White academic so-called historians have been exploiting the indignation feigned by many whilst those who were actually getting the short end of the stick were simply ignored. People rave on about Keith Windshuttle, well, right or not, at least he's had the decency to write as he perceives it & not to please corrupt half-baked loudmouths dictating to ignorant academics with their hand reaching for the cheque.

Is there such a thing as objective history?
There are many who would argue that there
isn't. The historian can establish that
an act took place on a certain day, but this
by historical standards constitutes only
chronology (factology).

The moment the historian begins
to look critically at motivation, circumstances,
context, or any other such considerations, the
product often becomes unacceptable for one or
another camp of readers. Many people are reluctant
to modify their views and the result is usually
a complete breakdown in communication.

To me personally, there is enough material out there
and it is now possible to explore our past from
more than just one source. And, people actually
should look at more than just one source. There are
a large number of books, articles, films, novels, et
cetera... We can learn a great deal about the history
of indigenous-settler relations.

However, with knowledge the question becomes no longer
what we know, but what we are now to do, and that is a
much harder matter to deal with.

It will continue to perplex this country of ours for many
years to come.

Leigh, it's good to learn that you really are a Leigh. People being honest about who they are makes a difference to the integrity of debate. (If you are suspicious about false posturing at this end, you can look me up through OLO easily enough.)

Loudmouth and BBoy have both responded to my posting. In both cases, their follow-up arguments are more reasonable than the initial points, which were attacking the person rather than criticising the argument. Or so I thought: they both clearly disagree.

My main point was to support Raynes' earlier complaint that the personal attacks online tend to come from people who don't reveal their own names. (As you seem keen to demonstrate, it is not behaviour limited to the pseudonymous.) But that cute irony aside, the ad hominem style is not a very good advertisement for online debate — unless the real point of logging in is the Friday fight club. A lot of people will be happy to vacate the field if that's the case.

Cameron

You just cannot quote the Bringing Them Home report as a credible source of Australian history and hope to be taken seriously.

Ngarmada,

You clearly do not believe in freedom of speech, and you are clearly a ratbag who calls anyone you disagree with a racist.

You should move to China and help them suppress freedom of speech. A black racist among yellow racists would be interesting

It's only very occasionally that someone writes as to why the then Authorities actually came up with the idea of removing mainly indigenous children from their families. Many parents could or did not care for their children in a way that would help them become competitive/assimilate with the new society. These reasons stemmed from health to social. Even the Authorities who instigated these schemes did not think it a perfect solution but it was a start to help indigenous children. The term persecution did not come into being until many years later when it became obvious that money could be extracted from Governments by claiming discrimination. Right or wrong in our eyes of today, this is what was thought would be the right thing then. Unfortunately, many today think or rather claim it wasn't. Only this week I was in a community where grog was flown in & literally a third of the people were drunk for three days. There was head banging music blaring day & night with little babies trying to sleep. Witnessing that abuse I felt like talking those poor little babies away from those parents for the babies benefit & not for mine. I guess I would have been accused by insensitive people for kidnapping & stealing etc if I did. So, sadly for those little babies I did nothing to protect them from their stupid & incompetent families.

blairbar: << So when we are discussing Stolen Generations in South Australia, the children were stolen illegally, but for the rest of the country they were stolen legally? >>

Cameron can probably answer your question better than I can, but as far as I recall from the literature, the removal of Indigenous children who became the Stolen Generations was usually done 'legally' in every State, but not always.

benk: << You just cannot quote the Bringing Them Home report as a credible source of Australian history and hope to be taken seriously. >>

Says who? Windschuttle, Bolt, Akerman et al? Who takes them seriously?

While the 'Bringing Them Home' report contains some minor errors (as does any substantial summary) it is overwhelmingly supported by the available evidence. I've read it - have you?

individual - you apparently know next to nothing about Australian history. I think you're the last kind of person who should be working in an Indigenous community.

So CJ the "Bringing them Home Report" contains only some minor errors.
Well the Report states (Dedication) “This report is a tribute to the strength and struggles of many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people affected by forcible removal.. We dedicate this report.. to the generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people separated from their families and communities."
Yet nowhere in the report will you find one story or case study about Torres Strait Islander children stolen from their families. The only reference one finds states: "Until the 1970s church representatives in the Torres Strait Islands would notify the Department of Native Affairs of pregnancies and parentage and the Department would then arrange for girls to be placed in the Catholic Convent dormitory on Thursday Island while boys were often adopted out to Islander families.” Torres Strait Islanders have never had any issue with ”mixed race” children, hence adoption to an Islander family!
And what does one make of this? “However, the Islanders were not pushed off their islands or their children taken from them. Inmateship for them was a form of soft violence. Killing them softly as a 'chosen people' meant a loss of confidence in themselves. In Islanders' language it meant being made into 'monkey-men', like puppets on strings performing for others, especially for the father-figure Protector.” Murray Island School. http://www.mabonativetitle.com/info/protection.htm

Leigh, explain to me why yourself, ozzie, blairbar, Loudmouth [aka Joe], and others turn up to these threads alike parasitic maggots drawn to a corpse, always denigrating the article and the author? Never any constructive comment, or ideas to contribute to the debate, and always highly spuriously selective and dubious, or totally misleading or fabricated, quotes, evidence, and racist notions.

Is it in fact because you are racists, who believe Australia should maintain its monocultural white colonial dominance? Of course it is. And you prattle on about the merits of your dysfunctional arguments, attempting to appeal to the
most banal of intellects, that you are deviously aware may be susceptible to your toxic and venal malice.

OLO is an academic site, you fool noone. Those your malevolence appeals to, are only those already converted to such disturbed attitudes, inculcated to the same regime of manipulation, and therefore hardly any who will believe it either.

You are by definition an intellectual cripple, and disturbed personality. Get some therapy. Unlike myself, most reasonable people will remain stoically silent in the face of your belligerence. However when required, as they have demonstrated throughout history, when your malevolence becomes unavoidable, they will act. That I am highly capable, I will act sooner.

CJ Morgan,
Just because truth becomes inconvenient for you I should not state my experiences ? Come on, this 2010 not 1972 Whitlam era. More & more people are waking up to the likes of you. You better think of something new to bleat about.

Ok CJ Morgan,
Sarcasm aside, tell us what you would suggest in a situation where babies are exposed to 30 hours plus of head thumping music & screaming & yelling. Tell us here on OLO so we all know how to react next week under such circumstances.

Oh ‘individual,’ you are such a caring racist bigot, I am in awe of its profundity. Although I do concur with CJ on this one, for unless you are extremely devious and duplicitous of your paternalism, I cannot fathom how, with your implied extent of malevolence to those you claim you are assisting, you would escape an outback community alive.

CJ, your paternalistic arrogance appears to have no bounds, for I am entitled, as proscribed by Australian law, according to the principles of Westminster justice, to defend myself from the malevolence of racists, with EQUAL force if required. Yes OLO is open to the views of everyone, even the most psychotically deranged and disturbed, but it is neither required, nor constructive, to tolerate such dysfunctional attitudes.

"CJ, your paternalistic arrogance appears to have no bounds, for I am entitled, as proscribed by Australian law, according to the principles of Westminster justice, to defend myself from the malevolence of racists, with EQUAL force if required."
Don't say I didn't warn you CJ and with Ngmarda being a founding member of the "Mongrel Mob" I would be trembling in my boots.

Ngarmada said

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Hi Blairbar,
'So when we are discussing Stolen Generations in South Australia, the children were stolen illegally, but for the rest of the country they were stolen legally?'
Interesting point. What I can say is that the Supreme Court in South Australia found that the Aborigines Protection Board in SA had no authority to remove a child from their parents other than by using s.38 of the Act. And almost none of the removals and withholdings that did occur were done under this part of the Act.
I'm just presenting the facts as I find them. My work is extensively referenced; The Last Protector contains over 400 footnotes. Windschuttle's gotta have something to do in his retirement.
As to whether he reads my work or not, I'm sure he is studiously ignoring it. In fact, some reports suggest that he's studiously ignoring my work for up to one hour per day.
Cheers,
Cameron

Dr Raynes,

No, I haven't changed my criteria to include restitution - in view of the fact that it was illegal in every state and territory to take children from their parents against their will without cause, i.e. illegally, all I am asking you to do, please, is name one Aboriginal person who was taken from their parents illegally. No more, no less.

Still waiting. Just one :)

CJ, I'm certainly not suggesting that no Aboriginal children were ever taken into care, but that - just as for non-Indigenous children in dire circumstances, the state had an obligation to do so. The glaring issue to me is how could conditions get so bad - in both cases - that such custody was necessary ? Why were people allowed to sink into destitution ? Why were health conditions so bad that so many mothers died in childbirth or of preventable diseases and exhaustion ? Why were children put in the position of near-death by starvation and malnutrition ? Why were Aboriginal men condemned to go hither and yon, seeking work in deplorable conditions ? Why isn't anybody condemning the conditions of life which Aboriginal people - and many non-Aboriginal people - were forced to endure ? Why aren't their complaints about the dumbed-down education systems of the early twentieth century which prevented Aboriginal people from gaining higher-level skills, and thsu condemned them either to unemployment or to employment at the lowest and most dangerous levels ?

We also forget that single mothers generally could not get any financial support from the state until 1971 or so, and that Aboriginal people could not get unemployment benefits on missions and settlements until about 1969. As well, in our current relatively affluent and stable life-conditions, we now find it hard to even conceive of a population of 'orphans', abandoned and neglected children, non-Aboriginal as well as Aboriginal.

[continued] .....

[continued] .....

And if the aim of some nefarious policy was to turn Aboriginal kids into white kids, why were so many of the homes well away from towns and cities - Oodnadatta, for example ? Why were so few kids ever fostered or adopted if this was the policy ? Why were they cooped up together if the aim was to scatter them and obliterate their culture ?

Ngarmada, person of mystery: I forgive you for your ad hominems, you probably don't have better arguments. Nga Tamatoa ? Remember the 123 Bookshop in Ponsonby Road which my brother and I set up in 1970, where we showed films for the local kids ? Small world :)

Individual: I might be half-baked but I deny that I am corrupt >:( Apart from that, I fully support your comments about 'life' on a remote community: it raises the issue of whether or not children are the property of parents to do as they wish with, or are they equal human beings from birth towards whom the state has a fiduciary 'duty of care of last resort', that those kids have as much right to be cared for as non-Aboriginal kids and thus the state has similar obligations. I think there should be far more people working in Aboriginal communities like you, who are courageous enough to criticise the crap that is going on, and to ask: should children anywhere have to live like this ? The truth shall set you free, CJ.

Foxy, you're on the wrong thread: try the one two down.

Ngarmada again: your projection onto others of your threats of violence as THEIR threats against YOU is amusing: what can you do to them, reach through the aether and rip their heads off ? I guess there are many levels of ad hominem arguments, after all, from the merely abusive to the clearly psychotic.

[continued] .....

[continued] .....

So, Dr Raynes, Please name just one: this is a much more modest request than Andrew Bolt's, and surely more easy to fulfil.

Incidentally, in many of those working parent/boarded children situations, the role of the mission and dormitory would have often been taken so much for granted by the Aboriginal people that parents would have dropped off their kids every week before they went out to work, so there may not even be any documentation. I think that would have happened at Gerard in the fifties, when parents went out on the fruit-picking during the week and picked up their kids on the weekends: a win-win situation, in that the kids were altogether, in regular touch with their parents, living in a community of Aboriginal people, with little danger of becoming little white kids. It certainly happened like that at Point McLeay from 1860 to around 1917. So it was very likely at Koonibba right from 1904.

Joe Lane,
Henley Beach
rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Why are you suggesting another thread to me?

Was it something I wrote - that you found
offensive?

I'd like to know the reason for your
remark.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

My apologies.

I went and read that particular thread
and now I get it!

Just ignore my previous post.

And by the way - Thanks!

No blairbar, again you misrepresent the facts, probably as fictitiously as your claims of recognition of your balanced perspective by Indigenous Nth Qldrs. However, I am impressed how consistently pathetic your attempts to identify posters remains. In what part of the Australian military did you serve, inturligents? Don’t go near the ANZACS, they may despise you.

I am not a founding member of the Mongrel Mob, the ‘roopu’ I belong to is much more sophisticated and fearsome than that. I am aware however, the extent of bigotry you demonstrate, realises your fear factor at full capacity.

In fact the Mongrel Mob, alike Black Power, were initiated from disaffection of the continued perpetration of colonial oppression, as clearly and factually identified as the evidence Cameron R. is able to demonstrate in refuting your mindless and moronic claims. It is no coincidence your contributions to OLO are observed and identified as meaningless as those of your associate racists on the site, including the evident and resident stalker, ozzie.

Forgive me, Foxy, I read your first sentence and assumed you were going off into a postmodernist waffle about many realities and the unknowability of truth and tropes and topos and so on, that I didn't read any further. Now that I have, you have not only my attention but my agreement. I urge all OLO readers to give serious thought to what you write.

Of course, the interpretation of history is subject to both stance and methodology, and perhaps is never 'complete', and historians are often so many blind men with a herd of elephants, and dependent on biased accounts and fragmentary written records. But when it comes down to it, if Phenomenon A occurred, we may learn of its details fairly comprehensively, so then the question becomes what is its context, its hows and whys and wherefores, the social forces or policies that facilitated it. Ideally, this requires the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but in practice, most of us are pretty selective in what we count as truth, and that is where ideology and stance come in.

A proper scientific approach, such as I believe Dr Windshuttle applies in this case, would exhaust all sources and deal with whatever turns up, regardless of preconceptions. Genuine research tends to uncover surprises that have to be explained. Phony research comes up with no surprises, but starts with a 'truth' and looks only for whatever bolsters that 'truth' - like in the Medieval church, and a bit like what passes these days for 'Indigenous research', but that's another story.

Hey Joe! Like the song says; “where ya gonna run to…”
But no dice, I don’t buy it. Although it is gratifying to observe your transformation to conciliatory attitude in your comments. As I have observed earlier, it is awe inspiring to observe how racists rapidly reform their intimidatory behaviour when they perceive threat, real or imagined, aimed back at them.

This is known as a clear symptom of the disturbance of racist bigotry, and its basis of fear. e.g. it lashes out until it inevitably produces retaliation, and builds more fear, becoming a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself. Go and take a cold shower Joe, you may feel better.

Chronic myopia is another clear symptom of the illness, for the article of Cameron R., and other widely distributed evidence, clearly demonstrates the reason many incidences of such barbaric practice was constrained to remote areas, was because the remoteness of that period realised there was less likelihood it would be observed. It is consistent with insidious colonial practice patently observed as commonly known of such practice, as it is outside the law, to an extent it could never be justified [and is why such laws were never introduced].

That racism is an illegitimate construct, its tactics are observed identical of their banality and distubance, as we observe with the recent stalking of a female poster on OLO by ozzie, and the open and blatant collusion within debate for example, demonstrated in the above posts from Foxy to yourself Joe [aka Loudmouth].

Hey Joe, I already gave you that name. One name. Terry Mason and his daughters. Page 66 of The Last Protector.

So, you can choose to educate yourself by reading my book, or you can choose not to. It's entirely up to you.

And if you choose to educate yourself, may I suggest that after you've read about Terry Mason's daughters you then have a look at the cases of Thelma Reid (The Last Protector, p. 40 and onwards), of Mrs Anderson's daughters (p. 45 onwards), of Susan Grant (p. 47 onwards), of Paul Hurst (p. 52 onwards), of Justine Reynolds (p. 59 onwards) and so on ...

"A proper scientific approach, such as I believe Dr Windshuttle applies in this case, would exhaust all sources and deal with whatever turns up, regardless of preconceptions."

First up, Keith Windschuttle is not a "Dr": his highest qualification is an MA (see http://www.sydneyline.com/Author.htm). Nothing inherently wrong with that - I've met plenty of MAs who were more knowledgeable than than their PhD "intellectual superiors". Windschuttle, alas, isn't one of them.

If you believe that Windschuttle applies "a proper scientific approach" to history, you are sadly mistaken (the idea that history should be properly scientific is questionable, but I'll ignore that for now). In a discussion with a panel including historian Peter Read on Radio National's Awaye program, Windschuttle's repeated response when Read cited of documents that Windschuttle hadn't read was to deny that the documents existed. You can check out the audio at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/awaye/stories/2010/2814638.htm.

CJ Morgan,
I invited you to tell us how to react properly to the abuse of indigenous children but as per usual you're %100 accusation & nil solution. You're one of the most consistant accusers of us having done/doing wrong but when you're offered an opportunity to explain how we could do it right you go off course like a loose wagon wheel. It is one of the traits of a hypocrite do accuse others of doing wrong but being incapable of even one reply offering a solution. I think if there are any racists & hypocrites on OLO then you're well qualified. I am pulling my weight in communities, do you ? Before you accuse people much better than yourself of paternalism I'd suggest you look up the meaning of the word. Also look up blind hatred & ineptitude.

Hi blairbar - I seem to recall that we've been here before, haven't we? While I acknowledge that the removal of Indigenous children from Torres Strait Islander mothers was probably less widespread than on the mainland, there is no question that it occurred. Also, you ought to be a bit more honest in your quotation from the "Bringing Them Home" report, which states that

<< The Inquiry was told of the practice in the Torres Strait Islands of sending children born to Islander mothers and non-Islanders to mission dormitories on the Islands (such as at Thursday Island) or to mainland institutions up until the late 1970s. >>

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/report/ch5.html

Loudmouth/Joe Lane - the criteria for inclusion in the Stolen Generations is not that the removal was performed "illegally". Further, Cameron Raynes has answered your demand to provide specific cases of Indigenous people who were removed from their mothers.

I note that you peddle the Windschuttle line that Indigenous children were removed from their people in the same way that neglected non-Indigenous children were. I recommend that you and the other deniers listen to tha 'Awaye' program to which Paul Bamford kindly provides a link. On it, you can hear Aboriginal members of the Stolen Generations recounting their own experiences that negate your claim, not to mention the odious Windschuttle squirming and dissembling when confronted by one of his disciplinary betters.

individual - I gather you are some kind of tradesman who sucks off the the teat of the public purse, while slagging off at the Indigenous people whose communities you fly in and out of. I agree that conditions in many communities are appalling, but they are the direct result of the various racist and misguided policies and practices of State governments and churches - including those that produced the 'Stolen Generations'.

You berate me for not having solutions, but what are yours? How many Aboriginal apprentices have you trained, for example?

Dear Joe,

I feel a bit strange referring to you as
"Loudmouth," because to me that term has
derogatory connotations. Anyway, I appreciate
your response.

What I find somewhat disturbing on this thread
is that the discussion stoops down to verbal
abuse. This to me indicates intellectual bankruptcy,
and there's no excuse for it. Attack the argument,
not the arguer. And as I wrote in a previous post -
it is now possible to explore the past by means of a large
number of sources - be they books, articles, films, novels,
and so on. We can now know a great deal about the history
of indigenous - settler relations. All that's required is
for interested people to do their own research on the
topic.

One would hope that in this day and age tolerance and
understanding have broadened out and that bigotry is in
retreat. Threads like this one are so very important -
but only if there isn't a breakdown in communication.

Ngarmada,

You ask me to explain myself, but you couldn't wait, could you, you poor, deluded fool. You had to give your own ridiculous 'explantion' -one that fits in with your own warped and pathetic way of protecting your delusions about yourself. You are not even original: all the ignoramuses call people they don't agree with racists.

To be called 'racist' by you is a compliment. You are a bully and a yobbo who needs a gang to hide behind.

Keep on raving. The rest of us have spent more than enough time on your madness. You are too pathetic to waste further time on.

""Also, you ought to be a bit more honest in your quotation from the "Bringing Them Home" report, which states that:
1."The Inquiry was told of the practice in the Torres Strait Islands of sending children born to Islander mothers and non-Islanders to mission dormitories on the Islands (such as at Thursday Island) or to mainland institutions up until the late 1970s.""
I missed that statement CJ. There are now two references about the removal of Torres Strait children in the report. But that's it: no stories, no case studies. And the two statements are not even consistent.
2."Until the 1970s church representatives in the Torres Strait Islands would notify the Department of Native Affairs of pregnancies and parentage and the Department would then arrange for girls to be placed in the Catholic Convent dormitory on Thursday Island while boys were often adopted out to Islander families." No mention of mainland institutions here and in Statement 1 no mention of adopting boys out to Islander families.
Your statement that Torres Strait Islander children were removed
is a statement of belief. You can offer no evidence other than two unsupported, unreferenced submissions to the Inquiry.
Perhaps a member of the Torres Strait Islander stolen generation may soon emerge but if no scholarship is awarded to a Torres Strait Islander I guess that doesn't prove anything either!
"To support these leaders I can announce today that the Australian Government is investing $585,000 in the leadership skills of the Stolen Generations to support them as positive role models in the community.
As part of this package the Government will deliver 10 scholarships totalling $81,000, for members of the Stolen Generations to undertake a Certificate II in Indigenous Leadership at the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre."
http://www.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content/apology_12feb2010.htm

CJ Morgan,
I have trained three tradesmen & many are gaining practical skills by working with me. As for sucking off the public purse I ask you to please explain how being on a standard wage is sucking off the public purse. It certainly sounds more like you're one of those doing it. And, where's your recommendation for doing the right thing when indigenous children are abused ? We're all waiting for your guidance. Sorry about putting two questions to you at once when you clearly find it very difficult to answer one.

Foxy on; ‘Threatened by gays;’

If our intentions aren't just to win the game, then
we can feel good that we've spoken our mind
without malice or anger but just from the
depths of our truth.

…but we shouldn't forget our own wisdom because of the
fear that we'll lose something. What's more important?
Losing our face , or losing our integrity?

Posted by Foxy, Saturday, 20 March 2010 9:59:59 AM

…and on this thread;

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Why are you suggesting another thread to me?

Was it something I wrote - that you found
offensive?

I'd like to know the reason for your
remark.

Posted by Foxy, Saturday, 20 March 2010 5:12:50 PM
&#65532;&#65532;&#65532;&#65532;&#65532;

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

My apologies.

I went and read that particular thread
and now I get it!

Just ignore my previous post.

And by the way - Thanks!

Posted by Foxy, Saturday, 20 March 2010 5:39:25 PM

Leigh, your comment is well contrasted by the post immediately above it.

To continue counter of the bigoted allegations of you and your cohorts, anyone observing your posts over time, cannot fail to observe definition of your contributions as those of a disturbed, malevolent, racistly bigoted, airhead.

Your dysfunctionally myopic, sycophantic, attitudes are observed those identified with the imbalanced irrelevance of the extreme right murdochrity in this country. Noone reasonable is interested in the size of your redneck boyfriends’ kahunas. It is a colonially bigoted sexist attitude and construct.

In fact, so extreme is such function observed, it could be reasonably suggested that if you possessed a companion brain it would be very lonely. It is obviously why you are unable to respond to reasonable questions I put to you, synonomous of the known bullying tactic of racist bigots, ‘if you can’t beat em,’ bash em.’

Contrary to your racist dogma, you do not own Australia, you retain no right to that parasitic claim, as you have no right to colonial ownership of our planet. In fact you are readily observed with difficulty securing ownership of an intellect. ‘Your country, your rules?’ BS, piss off you venal moron!

I guess that sets a new level in animosity on OLO and there I was thinking all the passion was in AGW dueling.

I stand corrected, again.

Dear Ngarmada,
When you rode with the Mongrel Mob did you fall off your tricycle without wearing your helmet and suffer permanent brain damage?
Otherwise how does one explain your creative writing eg "disturbed, malevolent, racistly bigoted, airhead", "Noone reasonable is interested in the size of your redneck boyfriends’ kahunas “ and “BS, piss off you venal moron!” You’ll win that Nobel Prize for literature for sure.

Perhaps blairbar, and thanks for the compliment. However, it is assured, that with observation of the mechanical rotation of cooperative defence, racist bigots on this site demonstrate ad nauseum, and the moronic intellect consistent of such mindset, for such awards of excellence, you may only ever be an observer.

There is really no reason to be arguing about this subject.

The fact that not one court of law - except in South Australia in the case of Trevorrow - has ever found FOR people claiming to be stolen. Even in the case of Trevorrow, the Crown Solicitor advised the Government that they had a good case to appeal; unfortunately the poor fellow died before the appeal got to court, and the government decided against reclaiming the awarded money from his relatives; perhaps because Mr.Trevorrow wasn't able to make contact with his family until he was well into middle-age. He thought that they were all dead.

Mr. Trevorrow deserved sympathy after his so-called forced removal from his family because it seems that he was mislead by unknown persons into thinking that his family was dead after he reached the age of personal responsibility.

However, the “stolen generation” remains a myth. Except for the one instance in SA, and learned legal opinion advised that there were grounds for appealing that.

Another well known, and previously respected, South Australian also claimed to be ‘stolen’; that claim has been proved wrong: her uncle handed her over to authorities because he could not care for her for various reasons.

The last case to be thrown out was the one forced on the courts by the Cubillos in the Northern Territory. It’s doubtful that there well be any more legal claims in the name of the totally discredited ‘stolen generation’.

This is NOT address to you, Ngarmada, because you don’t want to listen to a ‘racist’. I would just like to thank you for proving that your are everything I said you were, and more. You are a nasty piece of work.

I will not be pissing off.

How many people does it take for a generation to be "stolen" ..?

I'm not trying to be cute, just trying to understand the metrics.

I would suspect an objective observer would guess at thousands, if not tens of thousands, after all the phrase a "generation" is not really a throw away line .. is it?

The implication is that it is a huge number, and yet all we seem to have uncovered so far in this line of comments is less than one handful .. even if we are generous for the purpose of debate and grant the author all he can so far muster (untested mind you, no one seems to have read or heard of his book)

When we talk about a generation of youths killed in the Punjub during the troubles decades ago .. it was tens of thousands. Does this "generation we allude to just comprise of several.

Is the author trying to discredit Windshuttle's writings that throw doubt on a "stolen generation" on a mere handful, then if that's the case, it still does not bring Windshuttle's writing undone.

In AGW, for instance, a "few mistakes by the IPCC" evidently does not bring undone their report or the message. It would be hypocritical to say this does what other examples, the same people, defend, surely.

Neither does this author make the case against Windshuttle, who may indeed have missed a few here and there, but so what, his point is that it was not a "generation" that was "stolen".

There was no organized government policy to do so, if a few individuals did it, then they are criminals, fair and square, but you can't label all current Australian's with a racist label based on a few bad eggs, can you?

I'm not for or against Windshuttle or the author, but I do think you would need many more than a few cases to discredit Windshuttle. It's tragic for the author who has spent many hundreds of hours and seemingly upset the government on the way, that all he can muster is but a few.

Hi rpg,

It's true that there weren't thousands and thousands of forced removals of Aboriginal children in South Australia. In fact, that was part of my article. It went:

"In any case, the program of child removal in South Australia was always of a stop-start, opportunistic nature. The Aborigines Department was always constrained by the ability of the missions to accommodate children and by the fact that it was engaged in a covert operation. As such, it removed Aboriginal children surreptitiously and in small numbers, and preferred to target parents who lived in remote locations, away from the public gaze."

I can't speak for what happened elsewhere in Australia.

What I did in the article was show that Windschuttle's chapter on South Australia in his new book was riddled with errors and misconceptions. In particular, I showed that:
1. His contention that the laws passed by the South Australian government in the 20th century make it “very difficult for anyone [now] to argue that the government had any intention of stealing Aboriginal children” is WRONG.
2. His contention that the practice of Aboriginal child removal in South Australia “did not involve any attempt to bring up children to make them believe they were white” is WRONG.
3. That his question as to why, if there really was “a project to end the Aboriginality of those like him”, Bruce Trevorrow's older siblings weren't removed as well? shows a COMPLETE IGNORANCE of the history of the Aborigines Department in South Australia.

800 copies of The Last Protector have now been sold and are circulating. It's a start. Wakefield Press are very happy with that and are planning to publish volume 2 next year.

I believe Windschuttle is not a historian, but a rabid right wing political spin-artist.

From the people I know, the reports and books I have read; the accounts of the science of the time that was used to justify policies of breeding out the colour, I believe that there were mutilple stolen generations that occurred in many ways. I believe that it is still hapening today as any non-Indigenous Australian seems to think they have the right to dictate who is or isn't Indigenous.

As for the history wars of stealing children, try reading this book:

Robinson, S. (2008). Something like Slavery?: Queensland's Aboriginal Child Workers, 1842-1945. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd.
and
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's taskforce on violence Report (Qld, 2000) should be available online. From page 75-77 is a graphic account of the stolen generations occurring in the mid 1960-70's.

The attempt to belittle or deny the dreadful experiences of the children taken under different policies and laws, is nothing short of shameful and callous.

It is about time these pathetic cretins who want to deny the violence, and attempts to breed out the black of Australia's original peoples, took the proverbial teaspoon of cement and hardened the hell up.

It is pathetic to want to rewrite events to make out that colonisation was a kind hearted gesture on behalf of the British.

Harden up and stop the fairy tales.

Thank you, Dr Raynes, if it's okay with the people you mentioned, I guess we can start - as long as they are aware that confidentiality will be hard to maintain. It's a pity I was stupid enough to ask you to 'name' people, when citing their cases (as Person A, or Family D) would have been more sensible and allowed more confidentiality, but that particular cat is out of the bag now. By the way, to respond to CJ's criterion, were those children removed forcibly from their mothers ?

So where do we go from here ? Are their full records available in State Records ? Or do some of these cases come within the restricted time period ? My email address is: rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

And, of course, if the evidence is there, one has to ask why the people affected have not brought a case against the relevant authorities ? I would understand if they didn't want to go down that path, but by the same criteria, 'proving' one way or the other is difficult without presenting all the data. But I'll give it a go :)

Paul, Okay - Mr Windshuttle it is. No, I'm not saying that history is a science, simply that in trying to understand 'what happened', the use of scientific techniques, of finding and understanding what might pass as evidence or data, of not relying on hearsay or magic or obviously biased accounts but more on written records preferably from more than one source, is a superior approach to relying on memory or second-hand or biased interpretations. No, history is not a science, there are no laws of history (cf. Popper) but the investigative methods developed in the sciences can sometimes be useful to get a fuller historical picture and an understanding of the what, how and why of historical events and contexts.

[continued]

[continued]

Thanks also, Paul, for the radio link - I urge all readers to listen to it, because I thought that Mr Windshuttle equipped himself well, stuck to the topic, didn't try to slide onto something else, use emotive terms or dodge the issues. Mr Briscoe could have pointed out that he was brought down south from Darwin as a small child, not for no reason at all, but because of the belief in imminent Japanese attack in early 1942, along with so many other children, including all non-Indigenous children in the NT at the time. Almost all such children had been brought back to the NT by 1949, many after having had the first years of education of their lives as they had every right to expect. But I forget, education and equal rights mean assimilation, and assimilation means people forgetting their Aboriginality - which strangely, has never happened to anybody of my acquaintance, but there you go.

Cath, yes, surely 'Stolen' means 'taken illegally', and Windshuttle's point is that it was never legal, anywhere in Australia, to take children forcibly from their mothers without any cause which could stand up in court. Otherwise, taking children into care under any pretext and would have been illegal. Have there been any cases in Australia, apart from Bruce Trevorrow's, where this has been shown to have occurred ? No ? Yes ?

Ngarmada, I won't respond to your ad hominems in future. Life's too short.

[continued]

[continued]

As for the removal of non-Indigenous children, yes, it certainly occurred, perhaps for 3-4 % of all non-Indigenous children up to 1971 when single mothers' benefits came in. My father was in the care of the Salvos from a very young age, and in Britain, my mother's mother was taken from the Hull Workhouse as a baby by Barnardo's Homes, and I am very grateful to both of these institutions. What were the factors leading to such 'removals' ? Destitution, illegitimacy, neglect, abuse - lo and behold, the same factors as were affecting Aboriginal people on an even greater scale (after all, didn't colonisation have any economic effects at all ?) and seem to be affecting children in many Aboriginal communities right now. After all - and I know I'll cop a lot of flak for this - both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are people, human beings, people who suffer from much the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sorry, but I do believe people are equal, and should have completely equal rights : so shoot the messenger.

Cath, I think that Individual asks very fair questions: what would you propose ? How would you propose to protect Aboriginal children from destitution, neglect and abuse, wherever and whenever it occurs ? Don't they have such rights ? Ultimately, isn't it an obligation of governments to protect all children ? Or should only the rights of non-Indigenous children be observed ? Is this what 'self-determination' means these days ?

Dr Raynes, on your last post: James Gray and the State Children's Council were not the government - what his/their intentions may have been is not identical to government's intentions.

[continued]

[continued]

Dr Raynes, on that last point: the SCC was merged in with the Public Relief Board (I think in the late 1920s ?) and the Children's welfare and Public Relief Board (CWPRB) developed a practice of paying single mothers to look after their children - am I correct ? Have you seen the list of Aboriginal kids who were supported in this way, Dr Raynes ? It was in the State Records ten years ago, so it should still be there. My wife Maria was on it, so I guess she would have been counted as a ward of the state, one of Peter Read's 'Stolen Generation', much to her surprise, since she was never taken from her mother, not for a single day. In fact, when she went out to work as a domestic servant, he would have counted her twice. Two lots of compensation ? Thank you !

Cameron, your second point: if the intention was to bring up kids as white, why on Earth stick them at Oodnadatta ? Or Cootamundra, or Kinchela, for that matter ? Or Palm Island, or Yarrabah, or Woorabindah, or Moore River - all places well away from cities in those days. In fact, if this was the motive, why weren't the kids put in homes in, say, Goodwood, Marrickville, Chermside, Collingwood ? Why out in the sticks ? You can't get much further away from Adelaide than Oodnadatta, can you, really ?

Aka, nobody is denying that it is a terrible thing for any child to be taken into care - that was one of my points yesterday, to the effect that why isn't anybody examining and complaining about the underlying conditions of life that Indigenous people had to endure, conditions which would put the stability and viability of any family under stress ? After all, were Aboriginal people in a much worse economic position that non-Aboriginal people in the twentieth century, or not ? Wouldn't you expect that they would respond in similar ways ? Discrimination and segregation and degradation are ot just empty words.

I agree Grandma, let's all "Harden up and stop the fairy tales", starting with "stolen generations" from the Torres Strait.
Thank you for The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's taskforce on violence Report (Qld, 2000). I searched in vain for any stories about "stolen generations" from the Torres Strait and their incarceration and treatment but alas there were none. But I did find this:
"While colonisation affected both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to varying degrees, the impact has been borne more severely by Aboriginal people. Due to the geographical location of the Torres Strait, colonisation did not interfere with the traditional songs, dances, languages and cultures of the Torres Strait Islander people to the same extent as it did for Aboriginal people. For Aboriginal people, the consequences of colonisation have been severe."
If you come across any reports, articles, books dealing with the "stolen generation(s)" of Torres Strait Islanders I would appreciate such information....but I won't be holding my breath waiting.

Now c’mon Leigh, we may observe your intellectual capacity for following diverse dialogue is challenging for you, however the difficulty for complainants of such claims, securing legal redress, is compounded by factors not only of;

[1] the passing of time, but also,

[2] the fact such intent and practice is patently identified by the record, as intrinsically and insidiously, intensively corrupt to the highest levels of authority, and,

[3] that acceptance for tolerance of the record of this barbarity still, and lack of will to acknowledge it, that,

[4] is clearly demonstrated by the representation of the prolific number of racists alike you, whom relentlessly attempt to defend the indefensible on OLO, readily observed further,

[5] with total ignorance of the qualified referrals Cameron R. continues to demonstrate in his comments on this thread.

Windschuttle by any credible, and all current intellectual benchmarks, is accurately identified a pseudo intellectual vandal.

Oh…and, people in glass houses… Try to keep up Leigh.

Of course I agree with Aka, what does rpg stand for, rocket propelled grenade or racist propagandist? Lets see, SA, WA, Qld, Tas, and the Federal Govt white Australia policy. Ah yes, ‘an unfortunate confluence of events?’ Not likely.

It is interesting as constant, that repeatedly, academic and intellectual authority appears in support of the side of the debate against racist bigotry. It is observed consistent for there is no such mindset that may be observed existent on such latter divide, for it is the antithesis of the definition of those authoritative terms. I know that will hurt your heads blairbar and Leigh.

I can't sign off tonight without saying how touching it is to see so many people on this forum concerned about the popularity (or apparent lack of it) of my published work. I can let you know that Wakefield Press have agreed to publish my collection of short stories, 'The Dress and other stories', later this year. They have also agreed to publish my history of the ALRM next year, followed by part 2 of The Last Protector. That will be four books in three years. So, please, please, please, redirect your sympathies and good thoughts to some other struggling writer; someone who will appreciate it. Bless you all.
Cameron Raynes

Consistent of the perverse racist deceit obvious in these posts, is the continued attempts to relentlessly probe the substantially solid evidence demonstrated in articles such as this on OLO, when the finding of the debate is observed comprehensively resolved. It demonstrates the irrational and insidious attitude of those bigots attempting to purport such nonsense, including Loudmouth [aka Joe], Leigh, blairbar, Jon J, the identified female stalker ozzie, that by subtly distorting the comments and information in posts, they will prevail in such deceit and duplicity.

Fat chance, reasonable and fair minded people, and accredited academics, will not be duped by this moronic spin, and in fact, the responses I am aware of from a number of international observers to this thread currently, are horrified with the odious gall demonstrated by such attempts by these posters.

And the observers I refer to are not those these bigots would describe as ‘tree hugging, black armband, lefties.’ So thank you disturbed people, for reconfirming that observation in this country, that has been internationally suspected for many years now. My only consolation is that perverse would be smart arses alike you inevitably receive their comeuppannce.

"No, I'm not saying that history is a science, simply that in trying to understand 'what happened', the use of scientific techniques, of finding and understanding what might pass as evidence or data, of not relying on hearsay or magic or obviously biased accounts but more on written records preferably from more than one source, is a superior approach to relying on memory or second-hand or biased interpretations."

OK Loudmouth, so now we know that you understand neither history nor science - like Windschuttle who, in his book "the killing of history" couldn't even get the chronology of the heliocentric theory of the solar system right. When it comes to history, here's what you get wrong:

(1) You assume that oral history [history that ain't written down, but passed on by word of mouth) is inherently unreliable;

(2) That written records are always trustworthy (that would make Froissart's "Chronicles" a reliable record of the Hundred Years War, which they definitely ain't).

The argument Windschuttle made on the Awaye program was that on the basis of the records he had examined, there were no stolen children in NSW. His response when Peter Read pointed out that he had examined only 800 or so records that were publicly available - not the 20,000 odd that Read had consulted which have since been withdrawn from public access due to pruivacy issues - was to deny that those records exist. Not, you should note, to make the gracious concession that maybe he hadn't seen <em>all</em> the evidence. Equipped (or did you mean acquitted?) himself well my arse.

I always felt that Windschuttle had a slight whiff of David Irving about him and is more interested in reinterpreting history than reporting it.

Like most conservatives he is reluctant to admit that any system we have created is capable of imperfection.

I suppose every one of those English immigrant children who were apologised to recently also had no case to argue and were in fact liberated from their plight.

blairbar,
in the 1970s there was a couple of cases that were the topic of conversation in the Torres Straits. I will not mention names of course.

This local gossip was the first I heard of the practice on the mainland of taking children. The two cased I remember were not quite the same as on the mainland as there was strong community input into how the children were to be cared for. The grannies still weild power. In one case the non-Indigenous family remained on TI to ensure family contact. The other case was a similar type of open adoption.

You are right that in the Torres Strait the adoption system worked well and that children were cared for by extended family - But the Torres Strait Islanders did not suffer the same removal/dispersal that Aboriginal people did. The family structures remained relatively intact through colonisation. It did not stop people worrying, even though we always knew when govt workers were coming up. Sometimes up to a week in advance. They could not simply rock up and surprise anyone.

To argue about the legality of child removal and intentional breeding out colour is mad. The colonisers simply made it legal. This is the problem of proving it in a court of law - it has to be proven that the law even if racist, was broken.

Thank you Grandma for your considered reply to my comments. My interest in the "stolen generations" from Torres Strait stems from two factors; my wife is a Torres Strait Islander and I have always been interested in history.
You state "You are right that in the Torres Strait the adoption system worked well and that children were cared for by extended family - But the Torres Strait Islanders did not suffer the same removal/dispersal that Aboriginal people did. The family structures remained relatively intact through colonisation"
That is my point. Just because Torres Strait Islanders are part of Australia's indigenous population, why does it mean that generations of their children were forcibly removed? The examples you give hardly constitute genocide, as claimed in The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's taskforce on violence Report, and breeding out of colour.
The Prime Minister in his "Sorry" speech stated: "We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country."
Yet I just can't find any examples of the removal of Islander children from their families similar to the removal of Aboriginal children from their families and none of my wife's relatives and friends from Torres Strait are aware of any removals either.
I am mindful of Sir Walter Scott's lines of verse; "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!"
Why say sorry for something that did not happen?

On another point: Windschuttle's scholarship. Despite Windschuttle claiming that his research involved an ‘examination of the primary source evidence’, he completely ignores the rich set of primary records held by State Records of South Australia. There's 24 or so shelf metres of records of the Aborigines Department held by State Records. These records, known as GRG 52/1, cover the period 1868 to 1966. They contain the most fascinating raw historical material -- letters from Aboriginal people, policemen, missionaries, doctors, and so on, and the replies they received from the Aborigines Department. It is THE single standout source of records to be used by any historian attempting a history of interaction between Aboriginal people and the South Australian government. Windschuttle knows this.
And yet, there's not a single mention of GRG 52/1 in Windschuttle's work. Odd.
Instead, he relies almost exclusively on the judgement of Justice Gray (Trevorrow v. State of South Australia (2007). Though it's an important document, it is not 'primary source evidence'.
Hi Keith!

Well said Cameron. I take heart in knowing that there are those who still pursue the truth of our history. There is so much evidence to support the fact that there was and always has been a Stolen Generation. I cannot understand the mindless need to disprove this. The Prime Minister has apologised for such actions by successive governments, and that I consider was the appropriate thing to do. Perhaps it is best to ask Stolen Generations survivors their account of what happened!

Hocksta

<<< Perhaps it is best to ask Stolen Generations survivors their account of what happened! >>>

Exactly!

Still mourning the loss of Ruby Hunter.

And Wobbles, well said.

Cameron

Thank you for entering into the debate - takes courage and the personal touch of your voice on these pages brings your words closer to us.

individual: << I have trained three tradesmen & many are gaining practical skills by working with me. >>

Good for you. Do you slag them off to their faces or only behind their backs?

<< where's your recommendation for doing the right thing when indigenous children are abused ? >>

Of course there should be intervention when any child is abused, Indigenous or otherwise. However, that typically wasn't the case with the Stolen Generations removals, despite the disingenuous bleating of Windschuttle and the denialists who are only too ready to accept his whitewashing of history.

The dysfunctional communities that you see today are a direct result of the hamfisted and blatantly racist policies and practices of successive State governments and churches. If you want to understand the communities from which you benefit, you might like to ask some of the older Indigenous people you encounter about the dormitory system, or the punishments they received as children for such infractions as speaking their own language, or the phenomenon of 'wrong marriages'.

On the other hand, I suspect you don't really want to understand.

Joe Lane/Loudmouth - given your involvement in Indigenous education, why are you spruiking the inadequate and disingenuous analysis of a tendentious and incompetent excuse for an historian like Windschuttle? You're not associated with some mission group or another, are you?

blairbar - clearly there were members of the Stolen Generations who are of TSI descent, no matter how that annoys you for some reason. If the PM's Apology had omitted them, don't you think that they would have cause for complaint?

I really don't know why some people insist on picking over the scabs of old wounds. PM Rudd has paved the way for reconciliation with his belated Apology on behalf of the nation. Why do a minority of non-Indigenous Australians want to deny the historical injustice meted out to the First Australians?

In response to your concluding question CJ, its patently obvious such elements retain a covert agenda.

For exemplifying the classic colonial racist bigot, as classic as the arrogance of Windschuttle, we find blairbar speaking not only on behalf of the people his wife belongs to, implying he speaks with some authority from within those people, but further, in reference to a report on sensitive issues of violence against women.

I hope your wife is finding great consolation in spending your money blairbar, you obviously could not cut it among the Maori in NZ, and I doubt the people of the Torres Strait Islands would appreciate your misrepresentation of them. I will ensure your deceit is not overlooked.

For I wonder whose viewpoint those people of the Torres Strait Islands would agree with blairbar, yours, or the findings of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Taskforce on Violence? Although I concede you would be a disgrace to any people you attempted to misrepresent.

This patently observed duplicity by such racists as blairbar and his ilk on OLO, is confluent with that which led to the infiltration of the Quadrant by parasites alike Windschuttle. For if such attitudes and mindset had not been culturally evident, and inevitably organised, that incursion would not have prevailed.

You need to try and find some integrity of character blairbar, and although I realise your inherent disadvantage, if the family background you advise is reliable, you will not find that virtue in your wilfulness to spout whatever malice comes off the top of your obviously disturbed head, in support of your obvious delusion of resurrection of the ‘empire.’

blairbar,
I did not state that there were no cases. I personally know of cases, where children were given into the care of non-Indigenous people on the islands, in one case as a way of sharing as they had no children of their own. There was never an intention of allowing the children to be removed from the community and be bought up white. Perhaps if I were being very kindly I might suggest that it was a clash of cultural parenting expectations - non-indigenous ownership of children as opposed to the community parenting that is evident in both Aboriginal and Torres Strait communities.

If you would like to know more, you will be up for a lot of reading. Try starting with Warwick Anderson's "The cultivation of Whiteness", and then perhaps Anna Haebich's "Broken Circles".

If your wife's family and community are prepared to talk with you, they will be able to tell you stories that will undermine your stand.

There is a reason that people were frightened of welfare agents in the Torres Strait, and don't forget the role that the pacific Island missionaries had in pacifying and colonising the Torres Strait.
our NZ colleague is right when stating that you do not have the right to speak for your wife's people. I hope you are not assuming a role that many non-indigenous men take when marrying Indigenous women - that of the saviour, doing them a favour in aligning your superiour self with the poor woman.

My name is Aka, Kebi boy.

fascinating - aka is "kebi boy" and insult?

ngarmado - what that's covert agenda do you reckon? "In response to your concluding question CJ, its patently obvious such elements retain a covert agenda"

Good for you. Do you slag them off to their faces or only behind their backs?
CJ Morgan,
Do I understand you correctly ? It's ok to go along when praise or sympathy are due but if unpleasant facts are stated then it's racism ? I think you're utterly at a loss when it comes to sober observation. When did you ever see me slagging off the indigenous when it's not justified ? I don't ! When I witness wrong doing then I state the facts, not slag off. If you can't differentiate then should should keep your hands off the keyboard. I believe I can see the difference between right & wrong. In conversatons with elders (many of whom are younger than I) it is confirmed to me that there are many out there who are very quick at playing victim but unavailable for responsibility.

Amicus,
Kebi is an adjective that is not a swear word.
It is meant to relate to the level of blairbar's knowledge.
It is up to him whether he finds it insulting or informative.

I hope you also read some of the items I have recomended. They are facinating reading and might inform your future thinking if you are prepared to read with an open mind and open heart.

Amicus
Kebi is Eastern Island language for small. To call a grown man a small boy is indeed insulting but then personal abuse is always indicative of a lack of argument.
Aka is Western Island language for Grandma.
Aka
"our NZ colleague is right when stating that you do not have the right to speak for your wife's people."
You are taking notice of Ngarmada's ravings? I thought you were a little more aware. Show me one example of my "speaking for my wife's people".
"I hope you are not assuming a role that many non-indigenous men take when marrying Indigenous women - that of the saviour, doing them a favour in aligning your superiour self with the poor woman."
How impertinent and spiteful. You have almost descended to the base level of your NZ colleague.
All I want is some evidence of government authorized removals of generations of Torres Strait Islander children.
"they will be able to tell you stories that will undermine your stand."
That is the problem: they have no knowledge about the removal of Torres Islander children and neither does The Murray Island school.
"However, the Islanders were not pushed off their islands or their children taken from them. Inmateship for them was a form of soft violence. Killing them softly as a 'chosen people' meant a loss of confidence in themselves. In Islanders' language it meant being made into 'monkey-men', like puppets on strings performing for others, especially for the father-figure Protector."
http://www.mabonativetitle.com/mer_27.shtml
The Cultivation of Whiteness" and "Broken Circles". look like interesting reads but neither has anything to do with "Stolen Generations" from Torres Strait.

Well Amicus, its like if you keep adding the same number to itself and continually realising a clearly aberrant result, you know there is a problem.

And if the maths don’t add up, the answer probably wont be the cliched explanations trotted out, e.g. ‘the dog died, the curtains are on fire, it’s the cats birthday,’ if you get my drift, there could be something else going on. e.g. if 40% of all traffic accidents are caused by drunk drivers, it does not automatically mean 60% of all accidents are caused because people aren’t getting pissed.

CJ, you’ve got it from the horses mouth, individual only slags off the Indigenous when its justified. [I think that’s the applicable end of the horse]

Relevant to the claims of ‘individual,’ and ‘blairbar,’ of advice they have received from Indigenous people, the immediate question that springs to mind, is why would they confide anything to these whackos?

I cant think of a more apt name for blairbar than Kebi boy, if that definition blairbar states is accurate. Well done Aka.

Of course, blairbar demonstrates the extent of his respect and patronising of Indigenous people, when he responds in conclusion to Aka; “The Cultivation of Whiteness" and "Broken Circles". look like interesting reads but neither has anything to do with "Stolen Generations" from Torres Strait.”

For he knows that when discussing issues referenced to another culture, its important to assure them that whatever reference they may recommend is obviously misleading to the issue. For he only has their best interests at heart, as opposed to his own distorted view. If I had been able to study under such an intellect, I would have had a PhD in no time. Rats!

Dear blairbar,

May I humbly suggest that if you're genuine
in your search for the truth as you say
you are and you don't just have a "mental
block" which prevents some Australians from
coming to terms with the past - then why
don't you go into any regional or national
library and get the reference librarians to
help you find the answers you seek?
In other words - do some research. Believe me
it is there to be had.

For example if you google -
" Stolen generations torres strait ..."
heaps of websites come up that will
refer you to other sources.

One of which is the following:

http://reconciliaction.org.au/nsw/education-kit/stolen-generations/#forced

I hope this helps.

I must admit that I embarrassed myself a little bit, as I was implying that blairbar's knowledge was small. I have no idea, nor do I wish to imagine, whether blairbar is a small person.

I do find it very curious though, as to why it is such a hobby horse of blairbar's to know of specific instances of forced child removal in the Torres Strait. I could name names but that would be so wrong so you will have to keep looking yourself. Often children were taken by trickery. Under the Joh era there was forced evictions from the islands of people who spoke out. If these people were forced onto the mainland of course they came under the act. Do you really expect the government of the time to keep papers specificaly for you. In 1980 the force of the government was still all powerful up there.

As an Indigenous woman, I have certainly met many men who have married Indigenous women, only to treat them as I stated earlier. That is a simple fact.

If your interest lies in the history of the Torres Strait, there are one or two books written that contain some facts and some misinterpretation. The two that spring to mind were written by school teachers that I knew. Unfortunately when they deviated from fact there was a lot of non-indigenous interpretation. See Martin Nakata's book, Disciplining the Savages, as he gives an effective critique of non-indigenous research in the Torres Strait. Unfortunately, our stories are predominantly written by non-indigenous folk, and written from their perspectives, biases, and understanding of the world.

If you still persist in finding evidence of stolen generation people from the Torres Strait perhaps you should contact Link up and put your premise to them. They are wonderful helpful people.

The difficulty Foxy from Googling "Stolen Generations Torres Strait"
is that you come up with thousands of hits containing "Stolen Generations Aborigines and Torres Strait" and 99.9% deal with the removal of Aboriginal children.
"blairbar - clearly there were members of the Stolen Generations who are of TSI descent, no matter how that annoys you for some reason. If the PM's Apology had omitted them, don't you think that they would have cause for complaint?"
The reason it is annoying CJ is that I was brought up to look for evidence when somebody makes a statement which is at odds with my observation. Simple as that.
If the evidence is compelling, so be it. But so far I can’t find any defensible evidence to support the claim that Torres Strait Islander children were part of the Stolen Generation..
You have no evidence CJ, otherwise you would have had great delight in revealing it to me. How can anybody complain about sometting bad that didn’t happen to them?

Cameron,

I enjoyed reading your article and I agree with many of the points that you raised. Robert Manne has written a pretty good piece in The monthly which picks apart Windschuttle's self-published opus. http://www.themonthly.com.au/nation-reviewed-robert-manne-comment-keith-windschuttle-2256

I get the feeling that Windschuttle never made the grade as a historian or as an academic. Thats why much of his writings are so aggressively critical of other academics. His tenure at the Qadrant Magazine has been similarly disappointing. With the exception of Bolt, most of the neo-cons haven't had much to do with him in recent times. So I get the feeling that his 15 minutes of fame are up.

But anyway, great article. The tragedy of what happened to the Stolen Generations should not be forgotten. We all owe Australia's Aborigines a giant moral debt for their dispossession and subsequent suffering. Hopefully, we can find a way to alleviate their exclusion and suffering where it still exists. I look forward to reading your book.

“I must admit that I embarrassed myself a little bit, as I was implying that blairbar's knowledge was small. I have no idea, nor do I wish to imagine, whether blairbar is a small person”. Nice try Aka but it hardly excuses your rudeness.
“I could name names but that would be so wrong so you will have to keep looking yourself. Often children were taken by trickery”. I don’t want any names Aka just the evidence of forcible removal of Islander children as part of the “Stolen Generation. But Aka be honest you have no such evidence otherwise you would have shown it already here and/or presented it to any of the many Indigenous research bodies.
“As an Indigenous woman, I have certainly met many men who have married Indigenous women, only to treat them as I stated earlier. That is a simple fact”. I have met Torres Strait Islanders men who treated their Islander partners horribly. That is a simple fact. But so what?
“Unfortunately, our stories are predominantly written by non-indigenous folk, and written from their perspectives, biases, and understanding of the world. “ Do you include Mer State School in your criticism?
“perhaps you should contact Link up and put your premise to them. They are wonderful helpful people.”
Good idea. Looks promising. http://www.link-upqld.org.au/

Dear blairbar,

I came across the following:

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/244891

It's from the catalogue of the National Library
of Australia in Canberra. It's a paperback copy
of a book called -

"The Stolen Children: their stories: including
extracts from the Report of the National Inquiry
into the separation of Aboriginal AND Torres
Strait Islander children from their families."
Edited by Carmel Bird.
Published by Random House, Milsons Point, NSW, 1998.
ISBN - 0091836891 (pbk).

It gives actual accounts - and you should be able to
get hold of it from a local library - or purchase it
from - Amazon.com

Also, there's a section on the National Library website
that I gave you where you can click onto "Ask a Librarian,"
and you can ask them for more sources or references that they
can recommend to you regarding the separation of Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

I must pay tribute to the late Chicka Dixon, a genuine worker and fighter for sixty years. I first met him at the Koori Klub in Fitzroy in about 1968 (my memory is a bit hazy) and found he was always a good and astute contributor, a real battler.

Paul,

(1) Do I think that oral history is 'inherently unreliable' ? Yes, pretty much, unless it can be backed up by other sources of information.
(2) Do I think that written sources are always trustworthy ? Of course not, certainly not just one source: in addition to Froissart's account in the example you give, I would check out a number of other sources, perhaps Pirenne, Bloch and other Annalistes, Power, Perry Anderson, and whoever is counted as being authoritiative on this subject which I know little of. Even then, I would take it all with a grain of salt. Froissart's account alone is probably little better than a mishmash of oral accounts, I'm sure even he would agree.
(3) I don't wish to comment on your arse.

Cameron,

Windshuttle does cover the legislation, to demonstrate that it has never been legal to remove Aboriginal children without their parents' consent. What else should he have commented on from GRG 52/1 ? Incidentally, worse proposals were put forward than Gray's - the Protector South (or maybe it was Garnett ?) suggested that a school/dormitory should be set up at both Point McLeay and Point Pearce, with the adolescent girls to go to one, the boys to another, to be trained in rural occupations and sent out to different farms and stations, and with half a day off each week, therefore never to meet, the boys to be given a half-acre of so, some chooks and a cow - and in this way, the 'half-caste problem' would be solved. I don't think the government of the day even responded.
Still waiting for the 'charges to be laid' :)

Hocksta,
Go on then, as the guys used to say up on the mission: find them.

{continued]

Joe

CJ,
No, I've been an atheist since about 1950 or 1951, since I asked my mum. I was born on the Left and I'll die on the Left: my parents were Communists and my grandfather was a Wobbly. So no, no mission associations, although I have developed much greater respect for missionaries since I started reading up on their activities thirty-odd years ago, and got to know a couple, really wonderful, dedicated people with a passion for the lives and languages of the people they worked with.

So why am I so sceptical about a stolen generation ? Maria and I studied the school records (and birth, death and marriage records) at Raukkan over the past thirty years. Of the 800 kids who went through the school from 1880 to 1960, 45 were put into care, usually for six months or so, and all but one came back to Raukkan. So about 5 %. Forty mothers died in that time leaving 120 school-age children. Some fathers died. Poverty and destitution prevailed. So why so few kids put into care ? Incidentally, anecdotally, those kids were far less likely as adults to inter-marry, so any program to turn them into white kids sort of back-fired.

Watching people try a few scams, for a start: the Hindmarsh Island one for example, which anybody who knew much of the genealogies of the people at Raukkan would know straight-off was fishy. And the Deaths in Custody royal commission, which found that the proportion of Indigenous deaths in custody was about the same as the proportion of Indigenous prisoners in custody, no more and no less (on the last pages of its Report). But what did it for me was the despicable way in which some Aboriginal hot-shots (I think you know who) destroyed my wife's career. I'll still try to struggle for justice for Aboriginal people, hopefully till I peg out, but no more than that: no lies, no bullsh!t, no scams. Pass it on.

Loudmouth, you finally honour truth and reveal the vested interest you retain of that unfairness you allege occurred to your wife. However, your comments may not be observed without bias toward Indigenous claims, events, people, and regimes, you believe are responsible for that disadvantage your wife has incurred. So your bias is clearly observed political, and until now, undeclared.

Its interesting that today the South Australian Court threw out an appeal by the SA Govt against the compensation awarded to Mr Trevorrow for his claim related to being one of the Stolen Generation.

Take it easy everybody, you need to understand blairbar as I do, for he speaks solely in regard to the first person, himself.
As he qualifies, when somebody makes a statement at odds with his observation, its as simple as that.

These racists couldn’t lie straight in bed.

Aka, excuse me Auntie, this fella blairbar, and other racists, ridiculed me and Stephen Hagan, with Stephen’s article on the important issue of the Ethics Council, referenced to national representation of the Indigenous people of this country. Their contempt was clear, with no reference to the issue of the article, or its issue we spoke to. I believe he demonstrates himself continually to be a racist, with no respect for the truth, or anything except himself and his disturbed thinking.
[The Ethics Council: some inconvenient truths]

Don't worry, Blairbar, this fool hasn't got a clue - I wouldn't be surprised if he's never been to Australia. Come to think of it, if he had ever really been a foundation member of Nga Tamatoa in Auckland, he would have met my wife, she was great mates with the Jacksons. But it seems he does even not know that. Okay, so he's a phony in New Zealand as well, utterly delusional.

It just goes to show what can happen when somebody doesn't take his/her pills.

Joe Lane

On the other hand, I suspect you don't really want to understand.
CJ Morgan,
I do understand, I understand it all very well & it's that what gripes the likes of you. It must be just so utterly frustrating for you to live with the fact that some people can see through you & are not deceived by your opportunistic ambush. You have no concern about the indigenous, you're just making hypocritical mileage out of it. I & many others do care when injustice is applied & we say so & object. It's you who perpetuates discontent by constant accusation but no input to a solution. I put it to you that you have no concept of caring. If my comments from experience are inconvenient for your agenda than simply provide proof that I'm wrong. I will continue to strive for a better society black, brindle or white & will continue to state facts pleasant or unpleasant. Fact is fact ! I can't speak for the time before me but I will speak for what I experience. As for Ngarmada's remark of being a Whacko I suggest to look out the window instead of into a mirror. C'mon people, we've had saturation telling us what's wrong, how about putting forward some suggestions for solutions ?

Ah, Loudmouth, still trolling with the pathetic attempts of the racists on this site, to identify anyone capable of dissembling your disturbed propaganda. I wonder if ‘Kebi’ also means puny? I know you are deluded to believe the force of your malevolence realises you invincible, however, I may assure you that if you do confront me, you will realise that determination a nightmare.

Exemplifying that delusion of the sun revolving around them, these bigots attempt to demonstrate that if an indigenous person actually deigns to converse with them, that automatically realises these bigots as accepted authorities.

Not really, its simply the duplicity they would have you believe.

You and your bookshop were known to us in Auckland Joe. Did you not have some problems relevant to your involvement with paedophile literature and activity? And was the reason nothing came of those enquiries, because you were a NZ Police informant?

Alike the indigenous people in every country, we monitor any potential threats to the people on our watch, it is our responsibility as custodians of the land. It may be ostensibly the only reason the Jacksons spoke with your wife, and that she is an indigenous person from a neighbouring country. Perhaps a highly irresponsible indigenous person if she tolerates your deviant malevolence.

Therefore we may observe such malevolence a common thread of the disturbingly malevolent nature and dysfunction, common to the racist bigotry of those posting on OLO, as with similar illnesses, e.g. ozzie the female stalker on OLO [whom it appears has driven a young female lawyer from OLO with his obsessively malevolent behaviour], and the observed deviant, Loudmouth aka Joe.

Continued

Ngarmada,

I think I remember you now - you were the weird guy who wanted us to buy in paedophile stuff, you used to drive slowly around the streets of Ponsonby looking for kids to photograph, and that's right, you were working part-time for ASIS, we saw you talking to an undercover cop at a demo and taking pictures of PYM members. Do you still have your camera ? It all comes back now. How long have you been out ?

"Aka, excuse me Auntie, this fella blairbar, and other racists, ridiculed me and Stephen Hagan, with Stephen’s article on the important issue of the Ethics Council,"
The only comment I made on the topic “The Ethics Council: some inconvenient truths” was this: “Ngarmada You may be bicultural, bilingual, bipolar or bisexual for all I care, but your postings are complete gibberish. “http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9964

Joe, you wrote: Windshuttle does cover the legislation, to demonstrate that it has never been legal to remove Aboriginal children without their parents' consent. What else should he have commented on from GRG 52/1?

I think you're a little confused now. The legislation is not contained in GRG 52/1. As I said, GRG 52/1 contains the correspondence of the Aborigines Department. It contains the most amazing raw material -- letters from Aboriginal people, police, doctors, missionaries, etc.

It is the ONLY comprehensive source of information on the relationship between Aboriginal people and the South Australian government. Every historian, including Windschuttle, knows that if you don't engage with this set of records, you have failed at your task of being a historian.

So, in relation to his chapter on South Australia, it appears he has not looked at ANY of the primary historical records. Maybe, like me, he was effectively banned from them. But he doesn't say that.

His scholarship on the topic of the stolen generations in SA is not even second-rate. If he was one of my second-year history students I'd give him, perhaps, a conceded pass. Nothing more.

Hi Keith!

Thanks David Jennings. I hope you find The Last Protector as engrossing to read as I found the writing and research of it.
Cheers,
Cameron Raynes

ngarmado - what that's covert agenda do you reckon? "In response to your concluding question CJ, its patently obvious such elements retain a covert agenda"

response "Well Amicus, its like if you keep adding the same number to itself and continually realising a clearly aberrant result, you know there is a problem.

And if the maths don’t add up, the answer probably wont be the cliched explanations trotted out, e.g. ‘the dog died, the curtains are on fire, it’s the cats birthday,’ if you get my drift, there could be something else going on. yada yada yada".

What in the world?

no I don't get your "drift", this is just gobbledegook.

So is there a covert agenda or not?

What is the covert agenda?

If you were just bullshytting, just say so, don't crap on with a load of rubbish though.

I can see you challenged by trying to be clever, but keep reverting to hatred, so don't bother responding if its going to be yet more flaming, life's too short to deal with fools who resort to cries of racism whenever things get too difficult.

Challenging and trying to understand the "stolen generations" in Australia is difficult, there is a lot of emotion involved, rightly or wrongly.

Perhaps we will only be able to analyze it fully once everyone involved had died and we can distance ourselves from the personal side. Then just analyze the raw facts without the personal noise.

It seems anyone who tries to approach it objectively is immediately seen by believers in the SG to be a non believer and must be treated as an adversary and be hysterically attacked.

This does not wash out in the community and people then keep their views to themselves as they are reluctant to be castigated loudly in public be those who wish to shout down any questioning.

That's why you have a problem selling the whole Stolen Generations story, regardless of PM Rudd's apology, the majority of the community just turn off when the SG is mentioned because we expect and get responses like ngarmatas and Agas.

blairbar: << You have no evidence CJ, otherwise you would have had great delight in revealing it to me >>

I'm in a similar position as Aka, though for different reasons. Through my professional position at the time, I came to know several TSI people in NQ in the 1980s who had been removed from their communities and relocated to Aboriginal missions on the mainland and Palm Island. Obviously, I can't name them - however, that's why I'm so certain that such cases exist.

You ignore my point that the PM's Apology had to include TSI victims of the Stolen Generations, even if they are relatively fewer in number than Aboriginal people. Of course, in the first half of the 20th century when the LMS was busily indoctrinating Islanders, the Queensland government made no distinction between Aborigines and Islanders.

I don't think Aka's responses to your denialism are "impertinent" or "spiteful". Rather, I think your comments to her are very paternalistic. Do you talk to your wife the same way?

Joe Lane/Loudmouth - thanks for explaining your position and motivation. However, even if your claims about Raukkan are true, that doesn't negate the experience of Aboriginal victims of the Stolen Generations from hundreds of other missions and communities. Yes, there have been several instances of exaggeration and embellishment by Indigenous advocates, but they don't negate the veracity of the majority of claims.

individual: << I do understand, I understand it all very well >>

No, you think you understand, apparently with next to no knowledge of the circumstances under which the benighted communities from which you earn your living came to be. I've met many racists like you in NQ, who claim to be experts in Indigenous matters because they visit Aboriginal communities regularly, but when you scratch the surface all they have done is to find confirmation of their own prejudices.

For example, what do you understand by the term 'wrong marriage' and how it pertains to families in Aboriginal communities?

Also, what remedies have you proposed? I can't recall any.

Further, all this denialism by non-Indingenous people of the Stolen Generations reminds me that I've always thought that, while the PM's Apology is a positive step towards reconciliation, it didn't go far enough.

The Apology should have been for the wholesale expropriation of Indigenous lands and the destruction of their way of life. Every non-Indigenous Australian has unquestionably benefited from the invasion of what is now Australia, while the vast majority of Indigenous Australians have been relegated to the status of an underclass by the dominant culture.

To have limited the Apology to the Stolen Generations opened the door for the kinds of mean-spirited revisionist denialism that is exemplified in Windschuttle's disingenuous 'analysis'.

Well there does seem to be some confusion regarding the Apology by the PM in 2008. Firstly let me inform you I was sitting in parliament when the Apology was announced and it was a truly uplifting experience particularly as being one of the Stolen Generations. The Apology was not only for Stolen Generations for all Indigenous people. In the apology it stated that "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians". So this includes the assimilation policy and other such policies.
Debra Hocking

Thanks Debra and CJ (and those others who have approached this topic with an open mind -- I can count them on the fingers of one hand.)

It looks like we've got the denialists on the run. No-one here has any counter to my charge that Windschuttle's scholarship is less than second-rate. But, they're a stubborn lot, aren't they?

Cheers,
Cameron Raynes

Cameron - not everyone who agrees with you is intelligent, nor is everyone who disagrees with you an idiot

That's the fabric of our society, some believe some do not and some are undecided - you seem to want to label the undecided with the "do not believers" as being stubborn or whatever.

Good luck selling your message to the ones who already believe as insulting the non believers and undecided is surely not going to help your case.

Windshuttle can defend himself, have you tried writing to him personally?

He may not want to do battle with you on your terms or grounds

Hey Amicus,
Windschuttle knows of me and my work. He cites from The Last Protector in his latest book.
He doesn't want to engage with me because he knows he can't win against me. I've done the historical work and he hasn't. It's as simple as that.

blairbar,

thank you for adressing me properly.

I did feel compelled to growl at you as I do not like to have my words twisted to support your argurement that I know is wrong.

Like CJ states, a quick check of the names from Palm Island will give you an idea that all was not well in the Torres Strait. If you read some of the literature I suggested you will find that the 'law' at the time made all Indigenous children 'wards of the state' and under the control of the varying Aboriginal Depts. With such racist laws, defining what was a breach of those laws is difficult as the govt could do anything they wanted to Indigenous children.

To reword my earlier words, your knowledge base is still very young and small - not yourself, just the knowledge base from which you are drawing on in this conversation.

I honestly hope that you are prepared to continue to find out more in your chosen field of interest, so I will suggest that the church and its followers will not provide you with as much information as those that have a more critical view on life. Unfortunately, some of those people who shared thier knowledge with me are no longer with us, and Murray Island has bred some free thinkers, people who may be church goers but still retain the capacity to think critically.

Hocksta, it is great to see how many of us are offering a counter view on the denialists of the Stolen Generations

Continuation of last post

For symptomatic of their defining malaise, is these racists imperious belief, that as colonial inheritors of the people, the land, and the law, they are above the law, because they own the law, as implemented by their colonial forefathers, that allows their misappropriation in continuity, of their forefathers illegitimate rights.

For example, in Melbourne, as a person recognised by the Maori of NZ, as a member of Nga Tamatoa, I had the privilege of liaising with the leaders of the Indigenous people of the Melbourne area, the Wurundjeri, on issues that I was required to become involved in e.g. cultural protocols, etc. Yet this impostor Loudmouth, quotes his conversation with one Indigenous man in Fitzroy, as authority to substantiate a highly significant assertion denigrating Indigenous people of this country.

It may be observed further then, of the dysfunctional nature of the malaise of racism, is realised its capacity only to vary its tactics by corresponding varying degree, that it is inherently restricted by its defining nature as illegitimate. It is why it must not be tolerated. These dynamics are known.

We may further observe, as significant to the two articles observed to have currently attracted racists on OLO, as observed further consistent of their malevolent attitudes, this article, and the that of the thread, ‘Barack Obama: better never than late,’ that;

[1] relevant to this article, the finding just brought down for Mr Trevorrow, dismissing the appeal of the South Australian Govt, against the compensation awarded to him for his claim relating to his identification as one of the Stolen Generation, and,

[2] the decision by the US Govt, just handed down, to pass Health reform as introduced by the Govt of Barack Obama, after the first raising of the issue some century ago, and attempts to address it, of some half century duration.

These achievements comprehensively demonstrate the dislocation from reality of these disturbed racists malaise.

Continued

CJ
“Through my professional position at the time, I came to know several TSI people in NQ in the 1980s who had been removed from their communities and relocated to Aboriginal missions on the mainland and Palm Island. Obviously, I can't name them - however, that's why I'm so certain that such cases exist.”
Torres Strait Islander children were removed from their communities in the Torres Strait and sent to Palm Island and Aboriginal missions on the mainland? As I said in my previous post to Aka CJ, publish the details of your recollections. There are plenty of avenues available. Don’t you find it rather odd though that the “Report of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children” makes no mention of Torres Strait Islander children being sent to Aboriginal missions on the mainland and/or Palm Island?
“Of course, in the first half of the 20th century when the LMS was busily indoctrinating Islanders, the Queensland government made no distinction between Aborigines and Islanders”
The London Missionary Society withdrew its presence in the Torres Strait in the 1910s being replaced by the Church of England. The LMS arrived in the 1870s.
I guess you also make no distinction between Aborigines and Islanders.
Aka
“growl at you”. Cripes I haven’t that expression for a while.
“Like CJ states, a quick check of the names from Palm Island will give you an idea that all was not well in the Torres Strait.”
CJ naturally didn’t give any names. In fact CJ supplied nothing but an assertion.
“To reword my earlier words, your knowledge base is still very young and small”.
With regards to the occurrence of the “Stolen Generations of Torres Strait Islander Children”, my knowledge base is a large as yours. I can’t find any evidence to support the notion of “Stolen Generations of Torres Strait Islander Children” and you can’t present any evidence to support it.

You can never have met me Loudmouth/Joe, for our purpose as the Indigenous people of the land, as I stated, was to observe you, to ensure you were unable to harm anyone. If I had requested such material from you as you suggest, why did you not report me to the police and have me apprehended? Nothing you say adds up Joe.

Amicus, the explanation I gave is obvious to everyone except racists alike you. The explanation is in the form of sarcasm, for that derision is what your bigotry deserves, nothing less.

I observe the potential credibility of tolerating the voice of dissent as integral to our democracy, unfortunately, with racism we are not dealing with principles of democracy as racists would attempt to deceive us, but known mental disease.

I concur that even then your voices should be heard, however it should be heard in the perspective it is, of its malevolence toward the minorities its aimed at. The Apartheid experience and example, is a comprehensive case study of the extent, intransigence, and relentless nature of such illness.

Alike other psychotic illnesses, racism requires community effort and will to address the immediacy required of response to its malaise. Some, alike you, suggest promotion of its freedom to exist, however, the Apartheid experience reveals its risk if allowed to proliferate and organise.

That we now have laws for terrorist cells and activity, and the threat from racists is observed of corresponding scale of malevolence, services such as, mental health, and criminal investigation, are realised therefore, requiring corresponding weight, will, and resources. In Australia currently, that will is becoming increasingly observed of its absence.

Cameron R, the terminology I would define of these whackos, is the relentless intransigence of rabid dogs [obviously I enjoy perverse prose as a counter to assimilation]. Looking forward to your read also.

Ka kite! [Keep well]

blairbar: << Don’t you find it rather odd though that the “Report of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children” makes no mention of Torres Strait Islander children being sent to Aboriginal missions on the mainland and/or Palm Island? >>

There you go again. Earlier in this very thread I provided you with a quote from the "Bringing Them Home" report that refutes your erroneous assertion, which you acknowledged. Are you being disingenuous or do you have a particularly short memory?

<< The Inquiry was told of the practice in the Torres Strait Islands of sending children born to Islander mothers and non-Islanders to mission dormitories on the Islands (such as at Thursday Island) or to mainland institutions up until the late 1970s. >>

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/report/ch5.html

As you should know, there are professional ethical reasons that prevent me from identifying such people in a public forum such as this. Further, if you're bloody minded enough to disbelieve the National Inquiry, who's to say you would accept my recollections anyway?

Why on earth would you want to deny TSI victims of the Stolen Generations inclusion in the PM's apology, no matter how many there are?

ngarmorn "Amicus, the explanation I gave is obvious to everyone except racists alike you. The explanation is in the form of sarcasm, for that derision is what your bigotry deserves, nothing less. "

No it's not, it's rubbish and a convoluted attempt to BS and has failed miserably. Sarcasm, it sounds like a drunken ramble.

You act like a racist bigot and probably assume I'm a white descendant of colonial Brits - well you're wrong if you do, but of course that doesn't matter it's the outlet of your anger that's important to you.

Another OLO poster with anger management issues..

I think you're overly used to dealing with, and as you demonstrate, abusing everyone around you that might possibly think differently and disagree with your ideas.

That's actually a sign of insecurity, which explains your abusive and insulting tone. Maybe that works where you came from, but clearly its being challenged here and you can't cope.

Well good luck with the bullying, I've seen enough to realize your mind is so closed and you're only here as a BS activist.

I'm still not sure what to think of all the sides of this issue, but abuse and insults hasn't convinced me at all.

Maybe you all should post on OLO a warning when you post that "this article is in the intolerant zone, so if you think differently or question things, don't bother"

blairbar,
I am not sure you are interested in finding the truth, or merely supporting your whinge about whether Torres Strait Island children were part of the 'Stolen Generations'.

I suggest that you have no idea how much knowledge I have, just as it is not possible for me to know how much you knowledge you have. I am confident in my knowledge and understanding of the topic, however, I can make an educated guess about your level of understanding from the comments you make

Amicus, you’re fooling noone, for now you’re attacking me after failing against the author of the article.

No I don’t assume you are a ‘white brit,’ intellectually brittle perhaps, and its spelt morOn, morn is a prosaic term referring to the early part of the day.

However, you are patently racist, anyone observing your posts on the thread, ‘Barack Obama: better never than late,’ cannot fail to observe your bigoted malice. Attempting to denigrate those targeted for incursion of such malice is a known racist tactic.

Further galling to you is obviously those current media reports which annihilate the bigoted contentions of yourself, and those of like minded proclivity. The passing of Health reform legislation introduced by Obama in the US, and the findings in SA for the Stolen Generation claimant, Mr Trevorrow, observe the brittle contentions of your ilk, requiring intensive care.

You berate posters continually for their failings, but are seldom observed addressing the subject of the issues pertaining to the article. Cunning tactic alleging failings of other posters which in fact are particularly attributed to yourself, but noone’s buying it, morOnic behaviour is always readily observable of what it is.
You may be oblivious to that observation, ignorance apparent as being bliss.

Similarly blairbar is the classic bigot who observes no conflict in speaking of peoples issues and concerns of which he retains absolutely no competence, nor integrity of purpose. His intent is simply to be destructive, to deny any claims that may impugn his arcane colonial view of history.

Hi Dr Raynes,

Of course SA legislation is not part of GRG 52/1, why do you think otherwise ? Why should it be ? Copies of the legislation are held in the SA State Records, as GRG 52/1 is, but not together of course. In any case, I always use the set of legislation held in the State Library which, by the way, also has a fair collection of Aboriginal material in its archives. And as you say, Windshuttle could have been banned from accessing much of GRG 52/1, they were tightening up even ten years ago.

As to your claim that Windshuttle's work is second-rate, as if it's all cut and dried, I respectfully beg to differ: if you can come up with a 600-page work replete with footnotes (which BBoy has found nothing wrong with so far: see the first posting), which comprehensively covers all states and Territories over 200 years, then perhaps you can match Windsuttle's scholarship. Can you ?

And if Windshuttle was grading you, Cameron, I wonder what you would get.

If you can get approval from the families you mentioned to send on material to my email address, we can get down to business :) What are you claiming happened to these families ? You're not claiming that their children were put into dormitories, are you ? Incidentally, my wife was a Reid: her great-grandmother Martha was George Reid's daughter, born about 1875, and her mother was Reba Angie, born about 1848 around Port Broughton.

Still waiting, Dr Raynes.

[continued]

[continued]

Cath, point taken, but such a tiny proportion of kids taken into care at Raukkan - almost all of whom returned in a short time - a similar proportion to white kids taken (3-4 %) tempts one to suspect that a similar proportion across the entire Aboriginal population might have been taken into care.

In my mind, being taken into care relates very directly to the conditions of life of a family, Black and White, so surely one would expect a higher proportion of children from working-class families, or families with no bread-winners, would be taken into care ? That a higher proportion of kids would be taken into care where mothers' health was worse, or fathers worked in more dangerous jobs ? That fasmilies tend to break down more often where the fathers have to go away for work than in families with bread-winners in nice, secure, 9-to-5 jobs ? That kids are more likely to be taken into care from families which break down than from nice, secure middle-class families ? Surely one does not even have to propose anything to do with neglect or abuse to understand why so many poorer kids, Black and White, would be taken into care than kids from the eastern suburbs ?

You write: "there have been several instances of exaggeration and embellishment by Indigenous advocates, but they don't negate the veracity of the majority of claims."

Well, yes, they do: how can you trust any claim if some have turned out to be dodgy ?

As for the Apology, fine, but it should have been matched by something much more substantial, not just fine words to make the white middle-class feel comfortable @ cost-free. And as you say, there is so much more that any Apology should have included, but perhaps that is for future generations :)

Joe

Thanks, Ngarmada, for showing us all (including your friends Dr Raynes and CJ) the infinite varieties of ad hominem arguments, from the crudest (moron, racist, denialist) to the less crude. Fortunately we don't need an infinity of ways to ignore you, unless and until you are willing to discuss civilly and stick to the issues.

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Loudmouth, you continue to demonstrate your ignorance of even the most fundamental of professional and scientific principles, yet you continue to attempt to claim your chow hound study as retaining some abstract authoritative value, if in fact your claims are not fabrications. Well it cannot possibly you moron, it has no basis in fact because its basis may be only observed entirely misconstrued and without foundation of any creditable benchmark.

For that is the test of any body of work, alike the extensive scientific work demonstrating the premise of current climate change, as opposed to relatively observed, minor infractions with no impact upon the central tenets of the work. However you are obviously unable to apply such fundamental practices of critical analysis, or you would not be demonstrating such blatant ignorance of them, on a par with your dysfunctional capacity to only nit pick substantial work that discredits your loony tunes racist dogma.

Forget your BS attitudes of getting a cheap education by picking brains with mindless taunts, if you are sincere in your determination to know and learn your subject, you will apply yourself appropriately to the rigour required for the work. You would not attempt to fly an aircraft without training would you [although you particularly may]? You are fooling noone.

Windschuttle is talking semantics. The stolen generations needs to be seen, not just as specific cases where the racist laws were broken, but in the wider picture.

Lets get a bit real in the debate. Aboriginal people, particularly during the time of the worst of the stolen generations, were paid a pittance, if at all, for their labour. They were not allowed to live in towns; respectable neighbourhoods; their lives were controlled by the govt. They were forced to live in poverty, so it was not too difficult for the welfare agents to find something wrong with thier living arrangements. The powers that be, did little to improve the living conditions of people they bestowed poverty on, and yes there is proof of children being removed in order to breed out the colour. Read the aforementioned books.

Remember, we had no rights for much of the period of colonisation. People were told who they could marry, children were stolen with impunity particularly at the colonising 'frontier'.

Children as young as 2 were signed over into servitude by the Qld govt, with no mention of payment or time of release from servitude (it would have been called slavery, but the British outlawed slavery by then). See - Something like Slavery - mentioned earlier, for a copy of the original document.

Do you think that the people press-ganged into servitude in the Torres Strait were always adults, or that there was not some form of human trade.

Yes their are people who feel agrieved about their continued marginalisation and fools that continue to adhere to outdated myths of racial superiority. It is a natural outcome of a long history of racist policies and attitudes by the settlers.

Mellissa Lucashenko pointed out “If we are fully healed, we might find compassion for them for being so low as to need this racism in their arsenal of survival tools”. That is a tall ask in debates such as this.

Get over it. The Stolen Generations happened. That is a fact.

Apparently, Joe, you're struggling under the misapprehension that I'm at your beck and call. I've given you five or six names when you only wanted one. I've argued cogently and convincingly that Windschuttle is wrong in his understanding of the historical situation in SA and that his scholarship is second rate. And you still want MORE?
Joe, do your homework. I won't reply to you until you've read The Last Protector and can show that you understand the very clear argument presented therein. Here's a taste of what you'll find:

However, Penhall knew that his authority to remove or withhold Aboriginal children from their parents in favour of private religious organisations was highly questionable. In March 1943, writing to a man who had asked him to help remove his son from his Aboriginal mother, Penhall wrote:

"The difficulty about the baby is that I cannot prove that [Ally] has neglected the child, or that she is not capable of caring for him. I will watch the situation carefully, and try to get [Ally] to agree to placing him in a Home. This is the only course open to me, as I could not succeed in any action through the Courts to take him away from his mother."

Page 23 of The Last Protector.

And just to reiterate an earlier point:

Windschuttle knows of me and my work. He cites from The Last Protector in his latest book.
He doesn't want to engage with me because he knows he can't win against me. I've done the historical work and he hasn't. It's as simple as that.

Hi Keith! I know you're reading this. Why don't you join in?

Cameron Raynes

Aka,

Your thoughtful comments about Aboriginal conditions of life - it's exactly what I have been trying to get across. There were about 3-4 % white kids taken into care and why ? Because of family breakdown and destitution, death of mothers (and death/disappearance of fathers) - one does not have to posit neglect or abuse in understanding how and why white kids were taken into care, my dad and my mum's mum for instance. So if it happened for white kids, why assume some grand conspiracy to take Aboriginal children into care above and beyond those reasons alone ?

And if any government had ever wanted to make them into white kids (not likely in a racist and discriminatory society!), why did they ban contact between white men and Aboriginal women from the late thirties until the sixties ? Why put kids in homes out in the sticks, instead of well and truly in the suburbs ? Why dumb down the school curriculum from around 1908 until the fifties if they wanted to prepare Aboriginal children for forcible absorption into the white population ? The 'stolen' narrative doesn't fly.

Loudmouth, I understand its against the rules of OLO to repeat or copy posts to the same or other threads? However its further confirmation and example, of unscrupulous conduct known as attributed to disturbed behaviour alike racist bigotry.

At he risk of responding to your post, that was intended merely as rhetoric for observation by any readers, I may be able to respond to some of the issues raised in your post;

[1] The reason kids were put into homes out in the sticks was owing to the illegal definition of the practice. In that period the sticks were so remote, they were comparatively light years away from majority observation, of that isolation.

[2] the reason the curriculum was dumbed down was simply that Indigenous Australians were observedly, only considered the value of slaves, and noone wants an educated slave, relevant to the obvious risks to perpetuation of such ownership.

Also, at that time, evidence of these practices demonstrate these regimes were literally getting away with murder, so obviously they would be pursuing that advantage to its maximum, according to its potential, for illegitimate advantage inherently retains further potential for sudden or immediate decline.

[3] It is for these same bigoted policies in [1] & [2], orders were made for seperation between white and Indigenous people, and why the policies for white, and Indigenous, are incomparable of their intent.

Leigh, that Mr Trevorrow in SA has just won the case of the appeal brought by the SA Govt challenging the original finding of his claim as one of the Stolen Generation, and the compensation awarded to him, will you now apologise on this site for that fabrication you posted on Page 10 of this thread, claiming he was deceased, and the SA Govt had determined not to pursue his relatives for the compensation monies?

"Get over it. The Stolen Generations happened. That is a fact."
"Do you think that the people press-ganged into servitude in the Torres Strait were always adults, or that there was not some form of human trade."
Just present some evidence with respect to Torres Strait Islander children,, Aka, not assertions, end of story.

Reversal blairbar? Is that a position reversal?

Cameron,

Congratulations on keeping your patience in the face of Joe aka Loudmouth's continuing personal attacks and obstinate refusal to recognise that many of his objections to your argument.Particularly his repeated hectoring demand that you name just one South Australian Aboriginal child who was stolen, followed by instant refusal to recognise that his demand has, in fact, been met.

Aka,
[continued]
What if instead, we see unjust, racist and discriminatory societies as, generation after generation, trying to keep people separate, to keep Indigenous people OUT and down, not forcing them IN ? Compare Australia back then to the apartheid times in south Africa or the dreadful conditions for African-Americans in the southern states of the USA before the sixties - segregation, separation, exclusion, control and discrimination there too. Can you even imagine the whites there plotting to make the Blacks into little whites ?

A policy of discrimination needs to keep people apart, under control - where on earth did this crazy idea come from that the policy was to try to make Black kids into white kids ? White fellas got jailed (or warned off) if they got too friendly to Black women. Here in SA, when I first got to know Maria, it was just two or three years since it would have been illegal, not that we knew that. Actually, we should have got permission to marry, and permission again to go to Victoria - and permission AGAIN when we went to New Zealand. Little did we know - and this is probably one way that policies fall apart, i.e. by being unenforceable.

And do you know of any Black kids who actually were turned into little white kids ? Any at all ? No, there were other, quite standard and tragically common, reasons for taking kids into care, we don't have to concoct some state government conspiracy.

Cameron - love your self-assessment ! Did you give yourself an A+ ? And is that quote about Penhall straight from Windshuttle ? It certainly sounds like something he would have been happy to include in his book: yes, it was illegal to take a child from his/her mother without cause, the same cause as would have applied to a white baby. Windshuttle would agree wholeheartedly. Do you disagree ? She was a lovely lady too

Cameron,

No, of course, you're not at anybody's beck and call, I can wait :) Did you get those names out of the phone book ? I suppose I'll have to buy your book to find out. What a dastardly clever marketing ploy !

Paul,

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by personal attacks on Dr Raynes. In fact I keep calling him Dr Raynes out of respect, although I think he is only a Mr. Suck it up, girls.

Ngarmada,

At last ! You say something comprehensible: but Leigh is right, I'm afraid, yes, Mr Trevorrow tragically passed away in mid-2008, just before my wife, and no, the State government is quite properly not pursuing his family, relations or estate for return of the compensation monies. You might have missed it, it was probably at the bottom of page 11 of the New Zealand Herald at the time.

Anyway, to repeat for your benefit:

* in democratic states, governments have the fiduciary duty of care for all citizens, particularly of children, as a 'parent of last resort';

* it was never legal in any state or territory to take children from their parents, Black or white, for no reason which could not stand up in court;

* to date, only one case has been found which breached any such law, that of Bruce Trevorrow. Dr Raynes has given a list of names which he claims are of children taken illegally into care without specifying in what way, where or when (sorry, Paul, is that a personal attack? Sorry, dear).

Apart from that, Ngarmada, I will give your comments the full attention they deserve, to the extent that I can understand them: ....................................

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Dr BBoy,
In the first posting on this thread, you suggested that Windshuttle's research was full of holes and I respectfully requested that you find one. Still waiting :)

Mr Raynes,
On your reliance on oral history: surely, if any oral account has validity, it can be backed up by written documentation, from State Records, the archives in the State Library, the national archives, mission archives, even police archives. As you say, there are 24 shelf-metres of documentation in the SA State Records alone, boxes and boxes of material, real gold mines of information. For example, suppose we take the oral account behind the Rabbit-Proof Fence story - surely there would be oodles of written material to back up the assertion that, between August and November 1931, three little girls walked a thousand miles in three months, over rugged terrain, without food or water ? For example:

* the West Australian newspaper would have been onto this subject from the word go, following every police or Rabbit Department (yes, there was one) movement of staff, looking for human interest stories, something to embarrass the conservative Mitchell government;
* police records would have detailed transfer of staff from onedistrict to another, and emergency budget allocations would have been documented;
* the Rabbit Department would likewise have documented transfer of staff along the fence from the south to the north, with perhaps requests for supplementary funding from the government;
* Mrs Mary Bennett, a thorn in Neville's side, a wonderful woman and a prolific writer, would have got into him and sent articles and pleas to her friends in Communist and British anti-colonial circles about these three little girls;
* the Mosely Commission, set up in 1934 by the incoming Collier Labor government, would have mentioned it, either in its 600-page evidence, or in its piddly 24-page Report; and the Labour papers would have been happy to get stuck into the Mitchell government, not to mention the 'yellow press', the Truth/Smith's Weekly, for example.

Oh, well, that's it for 24 hours.

[to be continued]

Joe

CJ Morgan,
Just so you know, a racist is someone who objects/dislikes another due to a different complexion. If someone acts offensively then the other person criticises an attitude not a complexion. You, have to learn that difference if you have any dreams of ever achieving harmony. If you're prepared to do wrong then you have to also be prepared to take responsibility. It appears from your denialist posts that you're lacking the integrity that is the base of rationality. We all know about the wrongs of the past & many of us work on rectifying & preventing these mistakes in the future. You on the other hand appear to dwell & even relish the perpetuation of misinterpretation, denial & non-acceptance of responsibility. C'mon prove that you're not beyond some integrity.

Yes, thanks Paul. I feel like I've been rope-a-doped by Loudmouth. I actually thought he was interested in the topic and wanted to learn something. Ah well. You live and learn. Ignorance is always lamentable, but wilful ignorance, well, that's something else entirely. It's an untreatable condition.

[continued]

Further on this subject of the veracity of oral history, e.g. the Rabbit-Proof Fence:

* And Neville would have been writing to his three staff all the time about this issue, not to mention being badgered for a transfer of funds to the Police and Rabbit Departments - there would be records of these issues;

* Moore River records would show if these three girls had gone missing, if and when they did, just as Jigalong ration station records would have shown them turning up. Correct me if I'm ewrong, but i recall that two of the girls were in Moore River at the time they turned eighteen ?

Coincidentally, Arthur Upfield set one of his earliest 'Bony' detective novels, Mr Jelley's Business, published in 1937, on the Fence, at Burracoppin (yes, there is such a place), with the action taking place precisely in November, 1931. I checked it out again and couldn't find any mention of anything hinting at some sort of trouble further north along the Fence. This lack of any mention must be an exception, but after all, it's only a novel.

So there would be plenty of documentation of this particular historical event which, after all, ranks pretty highly in epic stories, along with Mao's Long March, Mungo Park's journeys through West Africa, and Lewis and Clark's journey across the US to the north-west coast.

And so it would be for any other genuine oral account: plenty of genuine documentation to corrobrate an apocryphal story.

Yes, Ngarmada, some of it it was probably faked, and some genuine information suppressed (the stock paranoid response) but perhaps not all of it.

Oral accounts can, and should, be backed up with some independent corroboration, the more diverse the better. Yes ? No ?

Yes, Individual, many wrongs were done to the Aboriginal people, neglect and exclusion primarily, but a 'stolen generation' wasn't one of them.

Morning Everyone,

Here's another extract from The Last Protector:

On 3 July 1911, W.G. South, ex-policeman and Protector of Aborigines, was
alerted to the fact that a nine-year-old ‘quarter-caste’ girl, Rose Latham, was at
Nilpena Station. South enlisted police officers to remove Rose from the station
while her mother was away. She was brought before a court, charged with being
a neglected child and sent to Edwardstown Industrial School, to remain there
until she turned 18. South visited Rose a month later and argued:

She is almost white and has scarcely a trace of Aboriginal features. To have left her
to the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp in the
interior would have been, to say the least of it, cruel.
The half-castes and quadroons are steadily replacing the blacks, who are slowly
but surely dying out, and if they are left in the camps it will not be long before we
shall have a race of nearly white people living like the Aborigines.

Just days before this report was submitted, the manager of Nilpena Station
wrote to the Port Augusta police, requesting the return of Rose:
The mother (who is also a half caste) was away at Hergott at the time and didn’t know anything about it until she returned to Stuarts Creek a few days later. She is now in a terrible state of mind over the loss of her child, and she came to me in a most pitiable manner to ask me to get her child back.
This affair has caused great consternation amongst the blacks in the camp
here, and on that account, & the sorrowing mother, I ask you respectfully to use
your influence in getting the child returned to its mother.

South refused this request, advising the manager that Rose’s mother could ‘rest
assured that the child is in good hands and well cared for’.

Pages 17 to 18 of The Last Protector. Click on the link in the essay to find the book on the Wakefield Press website.

so the mother abandoned her child and the child was "saved" .. correct?

Why don't you publish your book online?

If you really care about the narrative, and the people, and not the money.

Or is it all for profit that you attack Keith Windshuttle and off the back of his work try to stir up controversy to sell your own?

none of this shows there was a government policy to "steal" children, or "steal" a generation - there may have been some people acting illegally, or as they saw it, in the best interests of the child and applying the morals and ethics of society AT THAT TIME.

Any way, they were not supported by government policy, but by personal drives - isn't that the heart of Keith Windshuttle's work?

People were doing what they could and cared for children who were in danger, abandoned children, like your most recent example - how old was this child, NINE YEARS OLD, why did her mother abandon her? if that was today, most likely the same thing would have happened - the child was in danger and someone acted.

She was in danger, she was almost white in an environment where the blacks were totally racist against half castes and whites, so she was in mortal danger being abandoned there - this is awful!

"To have left her to the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp in the interior would have been, to say the least of it, cruel." What was that fate? Rape, murder?

Dear god a nine year old, abandoned today, jeez you'd be lucky not to be charged.

Thank goodness someone had the balls to save her! The child was probably grateful to be out of danger.

I'm not going to buy your book - it is patently obvious this is all a rambling advertisement, no wonder Keith Windshuttle ignores you, you have no relevance since all your data is about children being saved from danger and nothing to do with government policy nor a conspiracy to "steal" a generation of children.

The funny thing is, I tend to agree with Windschuttle on some of the main points in this debate. What points? The trick is to read what I've written carefully and not make any assumptions about my views.
This may be too hard for those people on this forum who are clearly interested only in shouting everyone down.
They will have to work it out for themselves.
Cheers,
Cameron

Hi Cameron,

Thank you for your best shot. Can we put the sequence of events into some sort of order:

* Rose Latham's mother abandoned her, a nine-year-old at the mercy of station-hands and stockmen, at Nilpena Station, south of what is now Copley, probably in late June, 1911, and went to Hergott (Hergott Springs: Marree), 200 km away by dirt track;

* South was informed of Rose's situation (no father, no mother) in early July, 1911;

* Rose was taken into care as a neglected child and taken to Edwardstown Industrial School through the month of July, 1911;

* Rose's mother returned to Stuart Creek (Copley) some time in late July, 1911 (not to Nilpena), and appealed to the manager of Nilpena to help her get her daughter back;

* South refused, on the grounds that the child had been neglected and exposed to the risk of 'the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp', i.e. being sexually interfered with by white station-workers, (a fate that had probably happened to her mother as a young girl ?)

I'm sorry, Cameron, what is your case ? Was the girl neglected and at risk or not ? Sexual abuse of nine-year-old girls was by no means unheard of at remote stations, so what were the obligations of the state in this situation, if not to protect the girl by taking her into care ?

By the way, what happened to her after she left Edwardstown ? Did she leave the School with an education and skills ? Did she return to the Flinders ?

Do you have any case which might be stronger than this one ? Remember: 'he who asserts must prove'.

Joe :)

A trick you say Cameron, well there's my problem, when I read about a nine year old being abandoned and "stolen" generations I guess not knowing the "trick" and when to apply it, I've been outraged that saving the girl is then used to denote "stealing"

Interesting value system, though I do understand now, you need to apply the "trick"

yep, all done, you just turn back to the old chorus of "stolen"

No wonder the majority of Australians don't believe in the "stolen" generation, and believe they were the "saved" generation.

I can see now that if all were able to apply the "trick", they'd see it your way.

The story so far:

* Mr Windshuttle has written a 600-page book suggesting that there were no stolen generations;

* BBoy has devastatingly and exhaustively demolished Windshuttle's research, but is yet to provide any examples;

* Mr Raynes has written a thorough exposee of the SA government's (or at least one of its agencies) intention to wipe out the Aboriginal population but, at least in his article, does not provide examples;

* a request has been made for examples and he has thrown a few names into the ring of public assessment;

* CJ Morgan and Aka have passionately gone off in different tangents about screaming babies and slave labour for 2-year-olds;

* Blairbar, individual, Ozzie, Amicus and spindoc have raised queries about the validity of the data presented so far;

* Mr Raynes's friend Ngarmada has cursed all and sundry from his redoubt in the Ureweras as morons and maggots;

* Paul has complained about personal attacks, poor little darling;

* Mr Raynes has given an example (Mr Penhall, head of the SA Aborigines' Protection Board) demonstrating that it was not legal for Aboriginal children to be stolen, at least in SA;

* Mr Raynes has declared that he will no longer participate in the enquiry provoked by his article;

* Mr Raynes and Paul have commiserated with each other about the evils of an unbelieving world;

* Mr Raynes has then given a good example of a child taken into care for neglect;

* quite properly, Amicus has drawn a logical conclusion from this example, thus putting the myth of a stolen generation to rest, once and for all;

* Notwithstanding, Amicus, spindoc, Individual, Blairbar, Ozzie, Foxy and myself are almost crushed by the weight of Mr Raynes' case - but wait ! All is not lost !

[continued]

[continued]

* The American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce comes to the villains' rescue with this:

'Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary, which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:

'Do not block the way of inquiry.'

And Salman Rushdie adds, at some risk to his own life, that the right of free speech is nothing if it does not include the right to offend.

Well, clearly having offended, and not inclined to think as we should, what are we villains to do now ? I guess we wait, for evidence that we have sinned, that Mr Raynes has ample evidence of mass evil, and that Windshuttle has been effectively exposed as a master of fraudulent research (BBoy) and that the stolen generation myth is not actually a myth (C. Raynes).

We can wait :)

Loudmouth, blairbar, Amicus,
you make some interesting comments; you ask for information and then do not read or consider the information you are given even though you give the impression you have the capacity for rational thought. You appear to have a deeply twisted urge to talk as a knowledgable person on the stolen generations as you distort anything that anyone else says.

You promote Indigenous success in academia, and then berate those who have achieved it. You are a hypocrite of the highest order.

Joe,If you were really interested in learning you might have read some of the evidence relating to the political and quasi scientfic reasons for the policies of breeding out the colour. But you really couldn't be bothered, or aren't capapble.

Systematically you and your colleagues demand proof, but that is just a ploy to push your distorted and twisted views onto others.

I do hope you and your colleagues enjoy being such dour and twisted folk.

Dear Aka
"quasi scientfic reasons for the policies of breeding out the colour"
Aka if one was going to "breed out the colour" why would you send Torres Strait Islander children to Palm Island and other Aboriginal reserves? Doesn't make sense does it?
The information you have supplied and your references, where they do mention "Stolen" Torres Islander children, contain nothing but allegations and assertions.
"Systematically you and your colleagues demand proof, but that is just a ploy to push your distorted and twisted views onto others.”
Well Aka just supply some proof and voila no more pushing of distorted and twisted views. Easy. And why would others accept my views and not yours?
They could surely see through my argument so you should have nothing to worry about.

Hi Aka,

Thanks for your ad hominems - where would we be without a bit of invective and passion on OLO ?

To respond to your actual ad rem comments:

* I fully support Blairbar on this issue - where is there any actual evidence that any government (forget about their rat-bag agencies) passed laws to 'breed out the colour', in that hateful phrase ?

Lke Blairbar, my wife was Indigenous, from Raukkan (Point McLeay, lower lakes, SA). After 42 happy and wonderful years myself and two beautiful children, I fully support inter-marriage to the extent that Indigenous people themselves are comfortable with it. Currently, around 80 % of Indigenous people are marrying non-Indigenous people, most likely people with whom they work and socialise, i.e. 95-99 % of their work-mates. In the process, non-Indigenous people are taken out of circulation and incorporated into the Indigenous world, to a large extent: overwhelmingly, their children identify as Indigenous. Those non-Indigenous people have siblings and parents and other relations who are introduced to the Indigenous world, often for the first time. In that way, Indigenous people are enriching the experiences of non-Indigenous people in ways that they would never otherwise encounter.

Inter-marriage is helping to massively boost the Indigenous population: while only 2.2 % of the Australian population is Indigenous, around 4 % of children are Indigenous. And it doesn't take much maths to realise that in a generation, around 6-7 % of all children will be Indigenous. In a generation after that, 10-11 % of all children will be Indigenous, and so on.

Think about what that means: 10 % of children being Indigenous will mean that most non-Indigenous people by, say, 2050, will have Indigenous children or grand-children or cousins or nephews and nieces.

Won't it be a beautiful world by 2050 ?! But the thought alone will scare the daylights out of all those racists out there ;) They'll start talking about the evils and dangers of inter-marriage once they realise what's happening, so get ready for it.

Joe Lane

Aka,
Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall that Palm Island was chosen for trouble makers from the other communities to be sent to. A mild version of penal colony which then became a working community but in the 80's started to decline again. I haven't visited there but I have spoken with many ex DAIA people who say Palm Island was a great community until Labor changed all the policies.

Aka,

"Joe, if you were really interested in learning you might have read some of the evidence relating to the political and quasi scientific reasons for the policies of breeding out the colour. But you really couldn't be bothered, or aren't capable."

The late Raul Hilberg has proposed that a racist society/government attempts first, to identify an out-population and to make discriminatory legislation against the people involved; second, it physically separates them from the in-group and concentrates them in out-of-the-way camps; third, it takes steps to exterminate them.

A generation after Darwin died, his views were thoroughly distorted to dove-tail with the most vicous and racist policies, tarted up as 'science', namely eugenics and differential treatment, especially in education. The banning of inter-marriage was a key essential to these policies.

Whatever we think of policies from the thirties onwards, it is clear that governments had decided to unwind some of the discriminatory and exclusionist polices of earlier times, and to wind down some of the remote communities to which Indigenous people had been sent.

[Bear in mind that nowhere in Australia was there a majority of Indigenous people in such remote communities, with poor educational provision, the great majority were free to live and work wherever they liked, but usually confined to rural areas.]

But hand in hand with those new policies, was a ban on white men associating with Aboriginal women. This legislation was obviously aimed at sheep and cattle stations and other enterprises in remote areas, and to stop the abuse of Aboriginal young girls and women there. Where it was impossible to oversee such a necessary separation, young girls were taken into care in all-Indigenous institutions. Anecdotally, most of these young women married Aboriginal men, as was expected. So, if anything, government policy was trending AGAINST 'breeding out the colour'. Right ? Wrong ?

In SA, this ban was lifted in 1962-1963. So currently, what may be happening is the 'breeding in of the colour' into non-Indigenous families. Three cheers !

Joe

Read the books I suggested and you will find most of what you are looking for.

Palm Island was a penal colony, like many of the reserves/missions etc, where children were raised in dormitories until they were old enough (although that can be questionable - see 'something like slavery') and they were sent out to work. People did not necessarily have to do anything wrong to get sent there though, some were sent there to protect them from the settlers, to remove them from land the settlers wanted, and for the state to control thier labour hire. Most of their pay, if they were paid at all, was put into the Aboriginal Welfare fund, but that is another story.

Young girls and women were sent off to work, hired out by the state, and when they became pregnant, usually within 2 years, they returned to a mission, gave birth and then were sent back to another job. It is in the books I told you about.

Individual, it is somewhat idiotic to take the word of the jailkeepers, ex DAIA, about Palm Island, rather than the word of the people whose lives were controlled by the racist govt policies. The stories out of Palm Island, although there were some positives, are mainly too horrific to document in an open forum. Suffice to say that SOME of the jailers were sadistic perverts and deviates.

Don't be lazy, read the histories, told from the people who suffered from these policies.

"girls and women were sent off to work, hired out by the state, and when they became pregnant, usually within 2 years, they returned to a mission, gave birth and then were sent back to another job. It is in the books I told you about."
So there are these Torres Strait Island girls who have been sent out somewhere, given birth to a child, then sent back to another job? Are you serious?
This is breeding out the colour?
"Don't be lazy, read the histories, told from the people who suffered from these policies."
I would love to read these histories....just gve me a lead.

Hi Aka,

My understanding, from talking to women who went out from missions into service in the forties and fifties, is that if they got pregnant, they would come back to the mission, but not be allowed to go out to another job, they would be confined to the mission. Do you have evidence otherwise ?

What you describe is certainly terrible, but not really evidence of a stolen generation: if anything, you describe the forced segregation and discrimination against Indigenous people, the denial of their equal rights, and their confinement as families to Palm Island: not exactly conducive to turning Black kids into white kids.

To summarise Mr Raynes' claims so far:

* he has claimed that there was a stolen generation, at least in South Australia;

* as evidence he has proposed a number of families, I think mostly from the Lutheran mission at Koonibba, 40 km west of Ceduna (question: were these families part of a common practice, of allowing parents to go out to work on farms and stations during the week, while their kids were looked after in a dormitory back on the mission, and so that their kids could go to school with the other Aboriginal kids on the mission and maintain continuity in their schooling ? That the parents came back on the weekends, or the Friday nights, to be reunited with their kids in the village ? If the answers are: yes, yes and yes, then these kids could hardly be said to have been stolem. From whom and from where ? To where ?)

* he described how the Protector in 1943 admitted that he could not, by law, take children away without the permission of their mother;

* he described the removal of a nine-year-old fatherless girl to the Edwardstown Industrial School after her mother abandoned her and went off to a town 200 km away, coming back about a month later.

Is that it ? Not a very strong case, Mr Raynes, not exactly wholesale removal, genocide, or even particularly evil ?

We can wait :)

Joe Lane
Adelaide

blairbar,
you say 'I would love to read these histories....just gve me a lead.'

I can certainly give you a lead. Go down to your local library and borrow the books I have suggested. You can also ask your librarian for some help finding more books. As you are keen to learn more I am sure that you will make the effort to read these histories. It is more effective if read with an open mind though.

Loudmouth,
you talk specifically about SA, whereas I am referring to Australia wide, but particularly Qld where some of the atrocities are in living memory.
Breeding out the colour is well documented,but if you want to know more simply go to the library etc. As to the way of ensuring Aboriginal children are born fairer skinned than thier parents, I am sure you can figure out how that happens. If not, ask your kids, they should be able to explain it to you.

You are being overtly obtuse simply to stir the pot. I suspect that you will never be satisfied with any evidence that is presented to you, therefore you will be waiting till hell freezes over.

Aka,

I hope you're not trying to suggest that inter-marriage is some sort of plot, a devilish racist conspiracy, some way of forcing Indigenous people to marry non-Indigenous people ? Choice is a consequence of equal rights, and for all people in small minorities who can move and work and socialise fairly freely amongst the whole of society, their colleagues and friends and lovers are very likely not to be from their particular minority, but from the vast mix of people who make up the majority. Ergo, inter-marriage. Ergo, children. Ergo, yes, probably paler kids than their Indigenous parents. But vice versa, that many more non-Indigenous people who will not have non-Indigenous children, which sounds fine to me ? Do you have a problem with that ?

Obtuse ? Moi ? How do you mean ?

Let's run through it all again: Cameron has given what he claims to be examples of stolen generations:

* He has offered the names of seven individuals/families without any details: were they put in dormitories while their parents went out to work ? were they taken into care on spurious grounds ? what grounds ? in what ways were these grounds spurious ?

* he has described the dilemma for the head of the APB Penhall in not being able to take a child from its mother legally;

* he has described the case of a nine-year-old girl abandoned by her mother and taken into care.

With the greatest respect to Mr Raynes, it could, at a stretch, be said that he is being obtuse (forgive me, Pauly, for this vile personal attack) by not providing details of the first cases above. But I'm pretty sure that even he would agree that the other two cases have nothing to do with children being 'stolen'.

Joe Lane
Adelaide
rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

We're up to Page 26 now on this topic. If that's anything to go by then I can't envisage to ever achieve reconciliation. One lot perpetuates the wrongs, the other lot perpetuates the myths of the wrongs. No-one seems inclined to put forward any solutions. We're wasting time & resources with this to-ing & fro-ing of the past. WE CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST ! We can acknowledge the past & there's no logical explanation for letting this past interfere with attempts of reconciliation. Keith Windshuttle,Henry Reynold's, Noni Sharp etc. have written their stuff & we cannot change it. What we can do is to focus on the future & stop making mountains out of anthills & denials on both sides of the argument. Put paid to this pontification & we just might make some progress.

I think Aka's on the mark here. These disgruntled old non-Indigenous men will never accept any evidence that the Stolen Generations existed, because that would belie the fantastic self-narratives that they've constructed. It's quite fascinating that two of the most intransigent denialists are 'white' men who married Indigenous women - one wonders how the existence of the Stolen Generations threatens their identities so much that they would support the second-rate 'research' of a disciplinary pariah like Windschuttle over much better scholars such as Reynolds, Reid and, indeed, Raynes.

individual, you're correct when you say

<< We're wasting time & resources with this to-ing & fro-ing of the past. >>

That's what the Apology was about. It was an attempt to draw a line under this sorry chapter of Australia's history in order that we can move on together. Why it is that people like you and the other denialists on this thread want to keep picking at the scabs of societal and cultural wounds that might otherwise have some chance of healing is truly beyond me.

One thing that is common to all the denialist posturing on this thread is that all of you claim authority on the basis of your individual perspectives, with little reference to the copious information that comprises the big picture nationwide. It is people like you who stand in the way of reconciliation, regardless of your denialist bluster.

CJ,
That did hurt :( I can't help being an old non-Indigenous man, but I take comfort in the fact that I will never have non-Indigenous descendants. Unless I get lucky, of course, and have a one-night stand when I'm ninety two.

You're right, that bird has already flown.

And after 45 years or so loosely involved with Aboriginal people in many situations, why do you think I might be disgruntled ? I've met some wonderful Indigenous people, people who I love and respect now decades later, but like with any human group, especially amongst those with power, I've regrettably known some utter b@stards, scumbags, incompetents, frauds and thugs: Indigenous organisations have their share of alpha-male bullies: yes ? no ? Such people, I believe, destroyed my wife's career and contributed to that extent to her passing (pass that on, please). So yes, you're right, I'm a disgruntled old non-Indigenous man.

Individual, I agree with you 95 %: but if we misunderstand the past, we don't really understand the present, and we can make fundamentally wrong predictions about the future. To use CJ's metaphor, if we pick at the wrong scab, the wrong ones get neglected and can infect the whole body - to use another metaphor, we can find ourselves barking up the wrong tree.

But like you, I want to know the truth: what really happened in the past. Were Indigenous people forced to live in such dreadful conditions that family unity and physical existence was threatened ? Crudely, were they more hard-up than white fellas ? 3-4 % of all white kids were taken into care up until the time women could get the single mother's benefit, so why assume that a smaller proportion of Indigenous children were also taken into care, and for the same reasons ?

So if Mr Raynes, or anybody else, can give me some reason for believing in the existence of a 'stolen' generation, I'll run with it. Not a denialist (ptuh ! ptuh !) CJ, but a sceptic.

A disgruntled sceptic. I think there are a lot of us around.

Joe

Cameron,

Is it true your book is only eighty pages long ?! Good grief, Windshuttle's 1500 footnotes would be longer if they were compiled into a book. And BBoy hasn't found one of those to be inaccurate or dodgy yet, but we live in hope.

BTW, what has happened to BBoy ? And Tom Clark (sorry for that vicious ad hominem, Tom) ? Haven't heard from the Nga Tamatitoe lately either :>( I guess he is preoccupied with his boyfriends' kohunas, but I liked your term 'murdochrity', quite inventive.

To summarise and elaborate yet again:

* it was never legal, in any state or territory, to take children, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, from their families, more particularly from their mothers, without a reason which could stand up in court (and in the court of posterity, i.e. us);

* apart from the tragic case of Bruce Trevorrow, no case has yet been brought in any court in Australia which demonstrated that an Indigenous child was taken (or kept) from her/his mother without reason, consonant with the state's duty of care for all children within its jurisdiction. Even you concede this:

"What I can say is that the Supreme Court in South Australia found that the Aborigines Protection Board in SA had no authority to remove a child from their parents other than by using s.38 of the Act. And almost none of the removals and withholdings that did occur were done under this part of the Act." (Cameron Raynes, 20 March, 3.29 pm).

How else then, what other 'part of the Act' ? Once you provide a few details, Cameron, we can get this show on the road.

Joe

Well CJ seeing as my and Joe’s views on the “Stolen Generation” have been influenced by the ethnic background of our wives, in the interest of fairness perhaps you could reveal the ethnic/gender background of your partner, if indeed you have or had one.
“It's quite fascinating that two of the most intransigent denialists are 'white' men who married Indigenous women”.
And if you are going to mention Professor Henry Reynods just cite one reference from him supporting “Stolen Generations” from the Torres Strait. After all one of his friends was Eddie Mabo.

Now blairbar - I haven't recruited my partner as some sort of aid to my credibility in discussing this issue. On the other hand, both you and Loudmouth have both done so. If it's not relevant to your quixotic project, why did you mention it? Incidentally, is your wife aware of her involvement in your denial of the Stolen Generations as the issue applies to Torres Strait Island people?

As for Henry Reynolds and the late Koiki Mabo, I'm quite sure that both of them are and were aware of people from the Torres Strait who are members of the Stolen Generations.

At least Loudmouth is honest enough to reveal that at least part of his motivation for denial are other agendas associated with Aboriginal politics as they impacted on his late wife's career. What's yours, really?

Well, motivation for scepticism, CJ, not denial: actually, I'm amazed that there have not been similar cases to Bruce Trevorrow's elsewhere in Australia over the past one hundred years - where laws were actually broken and Aboriginal children taken into care illegally - one thinks, surely, in that sense there WOULD BE stolen chidren, surely. One would expect so, from some officious copper or bureaucrat. But so far, no cases. Perhaps when we get the details that have been requested of Mr Raynes, we will have more to go on. So, I'm not a denialist, but I AM a sceptic, and I hope I always will be, of every scam that is tried on in the future.

Cameron,

Another thing we forget in 2010 is that the school leaving age in the early twentieth century was twelve, then raised to fourteen (perhaps in the twenties?), then to fifteen in the sixties. My grand-dad went out to work at nine, in 1888. Those things happened. But you're surely not claiming that kids who had reached the school leaving age and who were sent out to work were 'stolen', are you ?!

Cheers,

Joe

denialist bluster ??
CJ Morgan, I am afraid I don't quite understand. Are you saying I am a denialist ? When on earth did I ever deny anything on OLO ? If I did can you please point it out ? No CJ M, I'm not at all standing in the way of reconciliation & for you to say so shows a crystal clear lack of integrity. I am daily striving for harmony in the community I reside in & I will do so as long as I can. I will not like you do, circumvent the unpleasant truth. BTW, don't forget to quote some of my denials ok ?

individual, the definition of denial for CJ is that anyone who disagrees with him, is a denialist, i.e. one who denies that CJ is correct is akin to someone denying the holocaust happenened.

We see it in other fora that he posts in, intolerence and bigotry.

Don't be offended .. its his normal state and he rarely has anything to offer apart from the venting of his spleen.

I must apologise, Cameron, it seems that you really are a Dr: I would be very interested in your thesis :) Did you expand it into book form ? And your book is not just eighty pages long, it covers 118 pages (@ $22.95, Wakefield Press), counting intro, references and index (I presume ?) 118 pages and it gets you a doctorate - where woudl that leave Windshuttle with his 600-page book, let alone his other books ?

I hope that Philosophy students are studying this thread, especially those studying Logic or Epistemology (esp. Political Epistemology ?). It provides a rich seam of fallacies, non-sequiturs and ad hominems especially; and shows clearly how people define 'knowing', what constitutes knowledge (especially 'gut feelings' and intuition, the flagships of Indigenous research methodology), who has the right to 'know' and therefore the right to 'speak' and therefore who have the obligation to 'believe' what they are told. The variety and sophistication of ad hominems on this thread (including some of my own) would provide all the material one would need for a dissertation that even Dr Raynes would give at least a conceded pass.

Actually, I half-believe that many Indigenous children must have been stolen, in the sense that they were taken into care illegally - surely, across six states and two territories, over a hundred years, there are more than one case (Bruce Trevorrow's) of bureaucratic abuse of obligations and breach of law ? Surely kids were being seized and taken off somewhere in Australia every year ? But gut feelings is one thing, evidence and proof is quite another, even though gut feelings are much more comforting.

So my constant question is: were there such cases ? Who, and how, and where ? Evidence, 'proof', details - if something exists or happened, there must be evidence of it. What is the evidence of a Stolen Generation ? (Of course, how many 'stolen' children does it take to make a 'Generation' ?) What is the evidence of cases of bureaucratic abuse ? Is Bruce Trevorrow's case the only one ?

Joe

"I hope that Philosophy students are studying this thread, especially those studying Logic or Epistemology (esp. Political Epistemology ?). It provides a rich seam of fallacies, non-sequiturs and ad hominems"

... and irony.

My apology, individual - you're quite correct that you haven't actually quite denied the existence of the Stolen Generations in this thread. Indeed, you haven't actually said anything very much of substance beyond suggesting that it all must have been necessary and that it was all in the past anyway so everybody should just get over it.

Loudmouth - Dr Raynes has already answered your hectoring demands, but it seems that on this issue no amount of evidence will sway your increasingly offensive denialism. In this thread you've gone way beyond skepticism, apparently for emotional rather than empirical reasons.

odo - back under your rock, troll.

Indeed, Paul. Sarcasm too.

It's understandable that many people have 'gut feelings' that the Stolen Generation has to be a reality, not a con. There is a lot of 'gut feeling', intuition, in Aboriginal affairs generally, a lot of what people believe in their bones, but which may still not have any basis in fact - it's a human thing to do: you don't demand chapter and verse for every single belief, you just take it sort of for granted: 'yeah, that sounds about right'. We all do it, but that doesn't make it a valid way to conduct research or to further inter-group relations.

A vastly more effective mode of investigation than intuition is scepticism and the search for evidence, painfully and slowly refined over the past couple of thousand years. We can see this in every pre-school play-ground, where some kid is arguing hotly 'It is so ! It is so !' [intuition, gut feelings] while some other priggish kid is expounding in detail why it isn't so [scepticism and evidence]. Of course the prig is just as likely to get clouted by a plastic sand-bucket, to resolve the dispute. Perhaps a collection of the best of research into Indigenous 'knowledges' (or 'beliefs') could be called 'The Sand-Bucket of Belief.' [come on, you fellas, get angry !]

So it may well be with the Stolen Generation narrative: the evidence may well be there, but many people seem to be content to just 'believe'. This is prejudging the issue and there is a word for that: prejudice. Dear angry reader: ask yourself, yes I believe, but do I know of any examples of a Stolen Generation ? If the answer is no, then withhold your judgment until you get some evidence.

[signed] Disgruntled old non-Indigenous male prig.

The myth of a stolen generation is not the only example of gut feelings (and prejudice), so is the myth of the myth of terra nullius.

When I was going through the SA State Records at Netley about ten years ago, looking at the activities of the SA Pastoral Board around 1899-1900, I was amazed to find that Aboriginal people actually had far more rights to use land in traditional ways - at least in law - than we realise now:

In every pastoral lease was a clause that lessees had to take note of and sign up to, declaring that Aboriginal people had the right to come on to their lease and hunt, gather and collect water, camp on and carry out their ceremonies on that land, 'as if the lease had not been made'.

That last clause in the lease document intrigues me: AS IF THIS LEASE HAD NOT BEEN MADE. In one document it was phrased: 'in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this lease had not been made.' Does it mean that Aboriginal people had those rights over crown land, land that had been reserved from sale or lease, as well ? In that case, we are talking about the vast majority of Australia.

Unfortunately, after Mabo when people thought they had no rights ('All whites are b@stards, they took all our land, we got nothing ! Nothing !'), the lawyers did not carry out due diligence and find out first-up what the legal situation was, as lawyers are supposed to do, they also assumed that Aboriginal people 'had nothing' and went into negotiations with government agencies, and accepted a lousy deal accordingly. All the people got out of it were a few piddly ILUAs and regional agreements. So thanks to 'gut feelings', Aboriginal people now are left with less than they actually had before: at least in SA, they now have to apply to a Committee for a permit to enter land that they had the complete free right to enter barely fifteen years ago

'Loudmouth - Dr Raynes has already answered your hectoring demands, but it seems that on this issue no amount of evidence will sway your increasingly offensive denialism...'

Thanks for the serve, CJ, but with respect, no he hasn't - yes, I was dopey enough to ask for names, but pretty obviously I meant cases: bare names you can get out of a phone book, but cases give us some detail, some direction, some idea of what sort of subterfuges would have been employed IF. As well, Dr Raynes should give us some idea of sources: whether he has seen documentation and where it can be found, or if he has only had a verbal report with no documentary back-up whatsoever.

Oh, my goodness.

Dr Raynes, surely you are not relying only on word-of-mouth, on oral accounts only, are you ? Again with respect, surely you could not be so naive as to rely on oral accounts AND NOTHING BUT ?! You must surely have documentation to back up your names; surely you've checked the files in GRG 52/1 or in other archives ?!

Morning Everyone,

I haven't read any comments since about #143. (The truth is I've pretty much given up on trying to have a rational debate with some of you. Loudmouth, I don't quite know what your point is about the reliability of oral history. There is NO oral history in The Last Protector. You would've known this if only you could bring yourself to read it.)

And don't bother responding. I have no intention of reading any more of your posts.

When Keith finally musters the ticker to respond to me, he has my contact details.

In the meantime, here's a short extract from The Last Protector, vol. 2. To be published in 2011.

On an evening in May 1951, Dr ___ examined a four-year-old Aboriginal boy from ___ and diagnosed tetanus. He ordered that the boy be sent immediately to the ___ Hospital.
At the time there was a long-standing dispute between the doctor and the medical staff of the hospital regarding the admission of Aboriginal patients. This dispute had played out over the previous decade, and more, with disastrous consequences for the health of the Aboriginal residents of ___.
On that night in May 1951, when he heard that an Aboriginal patient was on his way, the doctor in charge of ___ Hospital set up a road block to turn the utility away. Despite evading the doctor, the young boy was refused admission to the hospital. He was returned to the station and then transported to the Adelaide Children’s Hospital the following day. He died that same day.
This is the story.

That should ruffle a few feathers.

Cheers,

Cameron

So, really, a book on racism, I thought you were on about proving, the stolen generation?

Ruffle feathers - you are inclined to exaggeration and drama aren't you, what you have described is racism - do you think that's novel?

We are wasting our time with this thread, Cameron. Loudmouth is hoping that we will provide him with information - he is a lazy researcher, which is why he is so peeved at not having achieved a PhD.

Loudmouth is firmly attached to the Windschuttle side of politics and seems to be offended that even though he wrote one paper, he, with his right-wing super capitalist - born to rule concepts, is not accepted as an authority on Indigenous issues. Poor thing.

He is hurt that so many educated people don't buy into believing the sloppy research that his mate Windschuttle, and the others in the rightwing think tank that loudmouths'sole paper was published in.

He and his old buddy windy were probably sitting there conferring over Loudmouth's posts, giggling about stirring the pot, and hoping to turn up some information to advance their somewhat suspect research.

I suppose you are judged by the company you keep, eh.

Loudmouth, it is not too late to go for that PhD that you appear to envy so much, but you might have to open your mind a bit

A terrible story, Cameron, a terrible way to treat a child. But was he stolen ? By whom, from where - to the ACH ? Are all your stories this irrelevant to the SG myth ?

On the highest estimate, you are claiming, what ? that a dozen children were taken into care illegally, or without cause ? Over how long ? Fifty years ? Even if they were 'stolen', it does not quite make up the equivalent of a generation, wouldn't you agree ?

What is a 'generation' ? How many kids were in the 'Stolen Generation', all-up ? In the period between 1900 and, say, 1970 - let's say three generations - there would have been from three to seven thousand Aboriginal children born each year across Australia, totalling roughly 350,000 in that time.

Peter Read declares that between 10 and 30 % of those children were stolen. That amounts to between 35,000 and 105,000 children.

Aboriginal people in South Australia make up about 6 % of the national total, so around 21,000 Aboriginal people were born in South Australia during those three generations..

So extrapolating from Peter Read's Compendium of Fairy Tales, all things being equal, between 2,000 and 6,000 Aboriginal children in South Australia would have been stolen between 1900 and 1970, in addition to the children who were quite legally taken into care, as the state was obliged to do, in circumstances of deprivation and poverty.

2,000 to 6,000 Aboriginal stolen children in South Australia - and Dr Raynes has not been able to document a single one ? Just a few names plucked out of the air ? If you were a lawyer charged with bringing such a case, CJ, or Aka, and this was all you had, I would strongly advise you to check out getting a taxi license or set up your own lawn-mowing business, because this tinny ain't gonna float, not even in a backyard pool.


Gee, some of those disgruntled old f@rts know how to have a good time ;)

Drats ! Aka has unmasked me, so peeved at not getting a Ph.D. ! That explains everything ! Certainly saves any further analysis.

And yes, Aka, unmasked again ! I had a paper published in - horrors ! - Quadrant. [Actually, a couple of others published by the CIS as well, and an article in The Australian, that Murdochrity. And a few published a while ago in The Aboriginal Child at School, that right-wing rag. And a paper with Maria published by the Bennelong Society in 2008: check it out on Google.] Perhaps it shows that Quadrant is a broad church, not so right-wing, if it can publish a paper by a left-wing rat-bag like me ?

Is that your best shot, Aka ? Unrequited ambition ?

What really intrigues me about all this is: why come up with this SG story ? To justify a suspicion about assimilation, of turning Aboriginal kids into white kids ? [Which didn't happen, did it ? Not at Oodnadatta, not at Kinchela, not at Palm Island, not at Retta Dixon.] And why should racist goverments WANT to turn Black kids into white kids ? Has that really ever happened before, with racist governments in South Africa or the southern states of the US ?

But believers must keep believing the SG story, in order to keep believing in the turning-Black-into-white story. But if not one, then probably not the other either: if there was really no policy to turning-Black-into-white, then to a large extent, the SG story collapses. But if that happens, so much of the Victim Paradigm collapses as well. It's all a package, really.

The implications of NO stolen generation are fascinating ! And, I suspect, very wide-ranging, possibly paradigm-changing.

Aka,

You always know when someone does not have a case to argue, or a feather to fly with, when they resort to insult and ad hominem - in other words, grannie, they try to take the 'discussion' away from the issues and hope that everyone will get diverted by a sh!t-fight.

The issue: is there, or isn't there, any evidence of a Stolen Generation in South Australia and, by extension, in Australia, including the Torres Strait islands ? Yes/No

Evidence: None so far, apart from bare names, no details, no circumstances, let alone anything to justify the term 'generation'.

Spurious Rationale for an SG: that the racist system wanted to turn as many Aboriginal children as possible into white kids. Without this rationale, there was no particular reason for taking children illegally.

Evidence of a policy of wanting to turn Aboriginal children into white children: none.

Ergo, no need for 'stealing' children.

Ergo, no Stolen Generation: no evidence and no reason.

Pretty rock solid, I reckon.

The next question then becomes; why believe that any racist (exclusionist, separatist, segregationist, discriminatory) society would even want to turn Aboriginal kids into white kids ?

Racist societies and racist people are usually terrified of a 'mixing' of groups, of inter-marriage, of kids even going to the same school. True or not ?

Most racist societies ban inter-marriage, segregate schools and theatres, and ban people from the oppressed group from even being on the streets or in town after a certain time.

Evidence of racist governments wanting to mix up Black and white: none

Evidence of racist governments wanting inter-marriage: none

Ergo, evidence of any racist government wanting to turn Aboriginal kids into white kids: none, they are too exclusionist.

Exclusion and control is the rule in racist societies, that's how power is exercised by a particular group, Black or white, plus keeping people remote and poorly educated (now we're getting somewhere).

So why believe it in either an SG or in TLACIWC ? Who benefits and who loses from such a false belief ? Both Black and white ?

Stay tuned ;)

Good afternoon Everyone,

Here's another extract from The Last Protector:

The removal of Aboriginal children continued throughout the first few years of
the operation of the Act. In May 1913, South visited Bordertown at the request
of the Commissioner of Public Works to investigate the circumstances of several
‘light-skinned’ Aboriginal children. He wrote to the commissioner:

I have the honor to inform you that I visited the Native camps at Bordertown on
the 10th instant, but owing to the short time I could remain there, I was not able
to get full particulars of the names, ages and circumstances of two families of half-
caste and quadroon children living in the camps, but what I saw leads me to
think the children should be at once removed and placed under the State
Children’s Department. Two of the children are white, with blue eyes, and one has
auburn hair.

These children included the four children of Andrew Allan. In June 1913,
Mounted Constable Redpath reported that although the children’s mother had
died, two of their aunts lived with the family, the eldest two children attended the
state school and Andrew was in full-time employment:

They live in two rooms, the interior of same having a clean appearance. The chil-
dren are white and were neatly dressed, and evidently fairly well looked after.

Nevertheless, on 1 July 1913, the secretary of the SCC requested that the
Bordertown police charge the children as being ‘neglected [and under] unfit
guardianship’. Within three weeks, all four of Allan’s children had been sent to
the Industrial School at Magill, with three children from another family similarly
dealt with.

Thank you, Dr Raynes - talk about the Owl of Minerva :)

So there WERE Aboriginal children taken from their families, and with no cause. I'm happy to stand corrected. You also give details of another case on
http://inside.org.au/secret-history/

and this is useful too: http://www.adelaidereview.com.au/archives.php?subaction=showfull&id=1111110120&archive=1112321192&start_from=&ucat=1&

Given the secrecy involved, and the ban on any research using GRG 52/1, it would be very difficult to get an accurate idea of numbers of children taken in this way, but would you be able to make an estimate ?

It would be a criminal act for the SA government to destroy files, so unless they have already done that, those files and others would still be in existence. Would they be held in the Attorney-General's office or that of the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs ? What steps could be taken to get access to them, or would there be an Executive Order to ban access ? There would have to be a minute of that Order somewhere ?

Thank you again, Dr Raynes, you have done us all a great service. I might even buy your book now ;)

Joe Lane

beyond suggesting that it all must have been necessary and that it was all in the past anyway so everybody should just get over it.
CJ Morgan,
your statement suggests either utter stupidity or utter hypocrisy but most likely both. You & the likes of you will never cease to feign indignation because unlike many real indigenous victims the only hurt you ever experienced was falling off the bandwagon at times. Stop making it harder for the real victims.

Dr Raynes,

There's just a couple of things (maybe many things ?) I don't understand about the case of Andrew Allan's kids. As a widower, he would have had sole legal custody of his children, and surely would have done something to stop his children being taken away ? As well, was he Aboriginal ? If not, it was not unknown for the white father of Aboriginal kids to have them put into care (the Solomon boys, the Adams boys, the O'Donoghue children). I'm not saying that this must have happened, but is it possible ?

I guess unless somebody has full access to the records, in the absence of details otherwise, we have to assume that your version is the correct one, that the Allan children were taken into care illegally, that is, stolen.

This is why it is imperative that the government makes those records available, otherwise rumour and suspicion will never be dissipated. In any case, they would become available next year, at the expiration of the hundred-year rule on them.

Joe Lane

Sorry, in three years' time, not next year :)

Cameron - I do believe you're actually making progress! Loudmouth seems to be grudgingly acknowledging that there were Indigenous children who were wrongfully taken from their kin under the pretext of being "neglected". I must say I admire your patience.

individual - thanks for the insults. I'm neither "hypocritical" nor "indignant" about the Stolen Generations - I just know from personal and professional experience, together with years of academic research and teaching in a related field that they certainly exist. I also think that the historical policies and practices that constitute the Stolen Generations played a very large part in creating the clearly dysfunctional Aboriginal communities that we have today.

While you haven't actually denied the Stolen Generations, neither have you shown any knowledge or interest in how they relate to the conditions in which you claim you work every day. If they are so bad and you are so appalled at what you see, why do you choose to work there instead of somewhere else? I understand that competent tradesmen are very much in demand in mainstream society.

Do you actually know what the word 'hypocritical' means?

Hi CJ,

Isn't it fun to sink the boot in ?

'Grudgingly' ? No. The important thing is that Dr Raynes has provided EVIDENCE, not just relied on tearing at the heart-strings and called it 'knowing'.

'Neglected' ? I didn't say so, or even hint at it, but thanks for raising the possibility: It's hard to say on the information available. That's why it is vital that all records be made available.

'... the historical policies and practices that constitute the Stolen Generations played a very large part in creating the clearly dysfunctional Aboriginal communities that we have today.' ?? Then why are the worst social problems in the 'communities' least touched by the evil hand of colonialism, where people quite possibly weren't even aware that they had lost some of their land rights, until they were told that they had been 'victims' in the 70s-80s ? Do you think that people in the settled areas had it so easy ?

'Generation' ? Not quite: one family of four kids, and one child from Point Pearce = five children stolen, on the available evidence, over one hundred years. Frankly, I would have thought that there would be far more examples of bureaucratic abuse and resort to illegal behaviour, over one hundred years, by officious coppers and assorted bureaucrats [South had been a copper in the NT, and I think Penhall had been a patrol officer or welfare officer up there as well]. Wouldn't you agree ? [Oh, sorry for that vile personal attack.]

Here's one: your vile personal attack on Individual, for devoting his time to working in some remote community, and having the temerity to raise concerns about the conditions of life there - when are you going out to emulate him - is despicable. I look forward to the day when blowhard Aboriginal professionals in cushy city jobs do just a token five years or so of work in remote locations.

Yes, CJ, both Individual and I know only too well what 'hypocritical' means: we've seen examples of it every day.

Need a hanky ?

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Loudmouth: << Need a hanky ? >>

No, but after reading your last post a bucket might be useful.

CJ,

May I suggest you use your Sand Bucket - it's barely half-full and doesn't look like ever getting any fuller. Perhaps Barnaby could lend you the necessary.

So, on the face of it, Dr Raynes can produce, say, a dozen authentic cases of children taken into care illegally. But also, on the face of it - in the absence of the full records - that's it. We can't check out either side of the story satisfactorily while the records aren't available. A dozen children taken into care illegally, in one hundred years. Not exactly a generation.

But perhaps a word for the Defendants, in absentia: South (and Neville in WA) faced a dilemma that had faced bureaucrats ever since 1836 in SA: bureaucrats usually had no trouble giving out rations to people of the full descent, but what about people who were, after all, as they saw it, half-white ? Three-quarters white ? They did not understand, as we do now, that identity was social and historical, not 'racial' or cultural (which is often treated as the same thing by racists) and one could say now that it was none of their business anyway.

But, in the distribution of rations, it did become their business: 'should people who are three-quarters or even seven-eighths white, people as white as South or Neville, get rations ?' After all, technically, that little girl taken from Nilpena had three white grandparents and presumably so did the children of Andrew Allan, at least as many. Should such children come under the authority of the Protector, to be restricted and monitored Under the Act ? At what point, from their perspective, their 'knowledge' - seven-eighths white, fifteen-sixteenths white - does a person cease to be an Aboriginal person for the restrictive and control purposes of the Aborigines' Act and become 'white', freed from the restrictions of the Act?

[TBC]

[continued]

In taking such children from camps and stations, South and Neville after him may have thought they were acting in the best interests of these 'near-white' children, as they saw them. Of course, their racism comes into play when they didn't even consider the welfare of children, young girls of the full descent, who were surely just as vulnerable to the depredations of white blow-ins at remote stations.

This dilemma may explain the desire of bureaucrats to segregate 'half-castes' from whites by extending the definition of 'Aboriginal' in the 1939 Act, and to certainly discourage, wherever they could, interaction between whites and women of the full descent. In SA, under the Acts of 1911 and 1939, there were no restrictions on interaction between 'half-castes' and 'full-bloods', but there were between whites and Blacks generally. Racists of today, white and Black, would frown on such interaction, even though it has been legal for fifty-odd years, Aka. Whether it's an issue even today is not for me to say.

BTW, in the nineteenth century, [according to the Protector's letters, in GRG 52/1] 'rations' here in SA included, not just a bit of flour and a blanket once a year, but: a 12' by 12' tent every seven years, a 15' 'canoe' every seven years, a rifle or shotgun [yes ! when the Rev. Taplin was scouting around Lake Alexandrina for a mission site, he gave shotguns to a couple of Aboriginal guys he found and asked them to get him some ducks. He describes it in his Journal [available from me by email] - this surprised me as much as it does you] every seven years - all repaired free - as well as fishhooks and fishing line every year. And access to all pastoral and crown land for all Aboriginal people. True.

In the 1880s, at Point McLeay, people received free bread, free meat, free firewood and free milk, and were paid standard wages. True.

Sorry about the unwelcome information. I came as a shock to me, too. :)

Jo

years of academic research
CJ Morgan,
Apologies for the late reply but I've been out of the 100% Telstra coverage.
Apologies for being "heavy" but nevertheless I now understand thanks due to your explanation above. I'll leave it at that.