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.

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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.

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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.

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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.