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.