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.