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The Forum > Article Comments > Heritage road > Comments

Heritage road : Comments

By David Leigh, published 29/4/2011

When it comes to indigenous affairs, sorry is not enough.

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Firstly, all white people born in Tasmania are "indiginous".

Secondly, there are no "original inhabitants" in Tasmania, the last one was Truganini, and she died a long time ago. The present people claiming enhanced social status and government funding are at the very least half white. One of the most notorious even has blond hair and blue eyes.

Thirdly, comparing a hillside which "may" have stone tools buried in it to the Pyramids, is like comparing an outhouse dunny to the Opera House.

Fourthly, Tasmania is covered in hillsides which "may" have a lot of stone tools buried in them, but they still ned to build roads, railways and bridges in order to keep the economy functioning, so that they can pay blond haired and blue eyed "indiginous" people their "sit down money."
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 29 April 2011 6:43:21 AM
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"Sorry is a word; nothing more"

how bloody ungrateful!

After all the carry on for years, the insults, the marches the huffing and puffing, it comes to this?

"we want, we want, we want .." like a bunch of kids

You can't save everything, even if it has historical value, regularly in civilized parts of the world, older things get built on, life goes on .. we're not living in a museum you know.

"We pay homage to the Aboriginal people when any event takes place and when any meeting or parliamentary session is commissioned. We do this out of respect for the original landowners "

We do for political correctness and nothing more, it's an insult to Australians, all of us to have this stupid farcical BS that was only invented recently anyway.

Put it to a vote and see what happens.

All manner of crap is thrust upon us by lobby groups and those with an overblown sense of entitlement. We also have those who think they know what the community wants .. "we do this out of respect", what complete and utter crap, do you think we respect the con men who dress up and talk to whales, that live in cities and tweet about their country cousins? They are like anyone else int he community, except they hide behind politically correct barricades.

There is nothing any more noble about aborigines than any other Australian and to say there is such a difference is racist.
Posted by rpg, Friday, 29 April 2011 7:38:13 AM
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Thank you David,
I feel saddened by some of the comments here. Unfortunately the aftermath of the "White Australia policy" very much still remains in this country. Slowly with education people will learn and respect what this country has to offer and understand that Australian history is at least 170,000 years old. Eventually people will know, respect, understand and feel pride in the rich history of this country and not just focus on the last 200 years.

Thank you for your article and pointing out the importance of actions, not just words. I don't understand the comments about what people look like in teh comments to your article. I can go to Uni or follow my traditional culture or use twitter and no one judges me on who I identify as. I can be French and Australian and look any way I please. It is the experience and that of my family and community that is my identification. So why is it different for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples?

And comparing one culture to another is difficult as well. How sad that traditional culture in Australia is disrespected with such emotion. Is it that people do not want to acknowledge what happened in Australia? Wouldn't the fact that there are no more people identifying as Tasmanian Aboriginal people make it more important to preserve the culture? How as a country can we not acknowledge the massacres which occurred in Tasmania?

Thanks again for trying to get across the importance of preserving our country and its past for all Australians
Posted by Till, Friday, 29 April 2011 9:55:29 AM
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It was never the intention to suggest that Indigenous people are any better or worse than any other Australian, that innuendo was yours, rpg. There is however a hypocrisy in saying sorry and then paying homage to the original landowners whilst allowing desecration of a site to take place.

The fact that many aboriginal people are no longer black or that they have blue eyes and blonde hair does not make them un-aboriginal anymore than a it makes a German ex-patriot un-Australian. The original inhabitants of Tasmania were mostly exiled to the islands, have interbred and have now returned to their land. They have maintained spiritual ties, through their culture and like any other caring person, want their history preserved. It makes very little difference in the scheme of things whether this road moves to the left or the right but makes a lot of difference to these people. I am not a city dweller as suggested and I am certainly not a bleeding heart. I do however despise hypocrisy and even more political agenda, for the sake of big business.
Posted by David Leigh, Friday, 29 April 2011 10:01:14 AM
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David, Oh dear.

So what started this little hissy fit off then? The good news is you can always turn to something you can understand, like film making perhaps?

Sorry was never going to be enough. It was a populist, tokenistic and cynical political ploy perpetrated by a government comprising those very same values. It was however done with good grace and supported by many with great sincerity.

Sadly it is those same values from academia, celebrity advocates and urban elites that have consistently and repeatedly driven our aboriginal communities into the national disgrace to which we have subjected them to today.

Every conceivable form of “recognition and acknowledgement” we have been asked to give has been accommodated unconditionally. Now we must ask why this is not working and who asked for it to be done? We ask this because it was clearly wrong in the first place.

When we assist and encourage the creation of agreed goals by these communities, for these communities and respect those decisions, great progress will have been made. Until then we will continue to ignore their wishes, impose our goals, our values, create division amongst them and then blame them for failure.

Indigenous communities are not entirely blameless of course, particularly those who have been exposed to our education system and unfortunately, have adopted the “victim nation” values. At some stage, educated indigenous youth must stop espousing and excusing victimhood and strongly promote self determination within the existing systems.

Why do we retain democracy for ourselves and deny it to our indigenous communities
Posted by spindoc, Friday, 29 April 2011 10:10:04 AM
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“The archaeological surveyors claim that there could be up to 3-million artefacts on the site and that this would make it one of the oldest Aboriginal sites in Tasmania and possibly one of the oldest in the southern hemisphere.”

That’s a bit mind-blowing.

“Sorry is a word; nothing more…”

Yes it becomes nothing more than a word if harm continues.

I am amazed at how incredibly resilient the Aboriginal peoples really are and anything done to preserve and respect their heritage shouldn’t be in question. I’ve met a few with blond hair and blue eyes, I didn't think it diluted who they are.
Posted by Jewely, Friday, 29 April 2011 10:46:39 AM
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Jewely once again you nailed the issue.

"It is not easy to define Aboriginal identity. People who identify themselves as 'Aboriginal' range from dark-skinned, broad-nosed to blonde-haired, blue-eyed people, very much to the surprise of non-Indigenous people.

Aboriginal people define Aboriginality not by skin colour but by relationships."

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/aboriginal-identity.html
Posted by Ammonite, Friday, 29 April 2011 11:04:15 AM
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It doesn't make a scrap of difference whether Aboriginal people still live in Tasmania (of course they do!), or how pale they might be now - from this article, it seems that this site is incredibly valuable for the study of paleolithic societies and their technologies - 100 artifacts per sq. metre works out to a million per hectare, and there are probably many hectares at least as rich in history as the few that have been excavated.

If thorough excavations can be carried out, who knows how much we can learn about how the technology changed, and over forty or fifty thousand years ? This is relevant to all of us, since we all have paleolithic ancestors: how did they/we have to live, how did they/we get by in harsh environments ?

Keep digging !
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 April 2011 1:23:00 PM
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Where in Great Britain do we hear the descendants of the Jutes, Celts, Angles, Romans and Franks bemoaning their destiny as "victim nation"? Massacres have occurred all along the road of history. But that sadly enough is history. Ever hear of conquest? An ugly word? Yes ofcourse. No one disagrees but that is the reality of history which is something you dear old bleaters have forgotten...if you ever understood your history.

All this talk about aboriginal rights and how badly they are treated.
I for one would like researchers to come up with a verifiable figure of how much "conscience money" has been doled out to this victim nation and to what use it has been put and what it may have actually achieved.
It has created an industry of mainly white Anglo-Saxon and blue eyed indigenous dole bludgers who have acquired a facility in making politically designed banners and artifacts.

socratease
Posted by socratease, Friday, 29 April 2011 5:47:21 PM
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Soc:“Where in Great Britain do we hear the descendants of the Jutes, Celts, Angles, Romans and Franks bemoaning their destiny as "victim nation"?”

I don’t know – were they still having their babies taken in the 1970’s?

“All this talk about aboriginal rights and how badly they are treated.”

Because they have rights and were treated badly maybe?

“It has created an industry of mainly white Anglo-Saxon and blue eyed indigenous dole bludgers who have acquired a facility in making politically designed banners and artifacts.”

Yes yes because they were stolen to breed with whites you ninny. After fighting in WWII attempting to destroy a race just cruised along like normal back here.

Interesting link Ammonite, and sad. Soc didn't look at it I guess.
Posted by Jewely, Friday, 29 April 2011 7:10:43 PM
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Sorry, Jewely, your comment that many Aboriginal people are pale " .... because they were stolen to breed with whites ... " is complete rubbish, and denigrates all those freely chosen marriages and partnerships that thousands of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people have entered into quite happily, especially over the past thirty years.

With inter-marriage, completely free and happy inter-marriage, of course the kids might be paler than their Aboriginal parents. That's how it goes. What's the "solution" ? Not to allow inter-marriage at all ? Re-segregate ? Bar white men from associating with Aboriginal women, as they did in most states from the late thirties until the early sixties (the notorious 'assimilation' years - how to explain that, I wonder) ?

How would that go down in New Zealand ?

And I thought that the Stolen Generation myth only applied UP TO the seventies ......
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 April 2011 7:24:09 PM
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“And I thought that the Stolen Generation myth only applied UP TO the seventies ......”

You believe it is a myth? How comforting for you.
Posted by Jewely, Friday, 29 April 2011 10:00:53 PM
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Yes.
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 April 2011 10:34:27 PM
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Deborah Melville.

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

A manslaughter trial and coronial inquiry was told that Deorah probably died in excruciating pain, and that she had been unable to control her bowel and bladder in the days before her death. Because of this, her carers, Denise Reynolds and Tony Melville, put her outside and left in the dirt.

Though Deborah was living in filthy circumstances, FACS reported that she was “happy and healthy.”

Peter.

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

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

Joy.

Joy was assessed by health workers as being ‘at risk of severe harm”, and she was one of eight teenage girls in a remote mining town who were being sexually abused by a government official. The teenager, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, had a long history of neglect in her aboriginal family. As early as two, she was deposited at a local health clinic because nobody was looking after her. But repeated attempts by the police to get FACS to intervene to protect Joy came to nothing.
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 30 April 2011 7:11:33 PM
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LEGO,

I'm certainly not saying that Aboriginal kids have not ever been taken into care, of course they have, just like white kids - my mother's mother and my father, for instance (my English grandmother never knew that she was actually 100% Scottish but born just over the border in Durham, and I still don't know my father's real name).

Take the local orphanage here in Adelaide, at Goodwood, a huge place: I haven't come across any Aboriginal friends who were ever put in there. Other homes, yes, but not that one.

Of course kids, Black and White, were put into care, and for much the same reasons:

* mother died, usually in childbirth, or had chronic post-natal depression;

* single mother, couldn't afford to keep the child (i.e. up until about 1971);

* father died, mother re-married, 12-year-old daughters put in girls' home;

* family destitute, father out of work (this was especially the case in cattle country), mother couldn't take the kids back to her home country, so they put the kids up for care 'for a while, until they get back on their feet', which never happens;

* father injured at work (i.e. for Aboriginal men, rural labour), clearly not able to supporta family, wife either leaves him, or puts kids into care 'for a while';

* one parent or both hit the grog and couldn't really look after their kids, and the grandmothers were just buggered from doing it for fifty years;

And so on. Do such situations arise these days ? What is probably scandalous - as you allude to - is how often Aboriginal kids were in a destitute situation, and the State WOULDN'T take them into care, as it had the duty to do.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 30 April 2011 7:28:17 PM
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[cont.]

Lego,

The cases that you cite are examples of situations where obviously some government agency should have intervened: they should have taken the children 'away': children are not simply possessions or property that parents can do what they like with, as if they were bloody dogs. Not that people should do what they like with their dogs, either.

To get back to this thread, it is neither here nor there that Aboriginal people may or may not be pale or dark or anything in between: this site, and maybe others too, may contain artifacts going back tens of thouands of years, and should be preserved and excavated properly for the simple reason that they are part of the heritage of all of us.

A cornerstone of racist ideology a hundred years ago was that humans were of different species - this was one reason why inter-marriage was banned (not that people took much notice - people still fell in love across the boundaries). Surely such racist ideas are not still around.

Go back ten or fifteen thousand years and all of our ancestors, in Africa (where we/they all ultimately came from), or in Europe or Asia or Australia, were living in much the same way: what people were doing thousands of years ago is thus part of everybody's history. In that sense, we are all part of one family, with similar DNA. All of us, Black and White. These sites could be immensely significant for all of us.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 30 April 2011 7:40:53 PM
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this is not another Hindmarsh bridge con is it? Why some people want roads to be stopped being built defies belief. Why is it every time someone wants to improve this country or mine suddenly the place becomes of great cultural importance? The place where I was born has now been demolished and made into a aboriginal propaganda musuem at great cost to the taxpayer. No wonder Hanson gets a million votes. Meanwhile woman are beaten, children are abused and remain uneducated while money is wasted on this nonsense.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 30 April 2011 7:41:49 PM
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Loudmouth, the "Stolen Generations myth was the most successful con job since the publication of "The Eternal Jew'.

The charge was, that successive state and federal governments had "stolen" "GenerationS"(plural) of aboriginal children from their parents in an attempt to "breed out the black" and therefore commit "genocide" on the aboriginal race.

Thousands of compensation claims were lodged in state and federal courts seeking compensation, and the matter was so important it reached the High Court of Australia. The High Court ruled that the removal of aboriginal children by the Federal Government was not 'Genocide" but a "humanitarian obligation". Don't believe me. Look it up yourself. The entire "stolen generations fiasco is now legally as dead as a dodo.

Every "stolen generations" court case has now failed bar one. This case came from South Australia where a well meaning social worker broke the State Law by refusing to allow a mother to access her baby, who had been removed by the social worker because the staff at the local hospital attested that the baby was malnourished.

The most famous court case was "Gunner and Cubillo", which the activists claimed "was the very best example available". The case failed, not because (as the activists claimed) the records were destroyed, but because all the records exist, and they recounted facts which the western hating activists did not want to hear.

Thousands of compernsation cases were withdrawn, because if Gunner/Cubbillo" was the "best", then God help the worst.

This monstrous and totally fabricated charge was created by white activists who never tire of always finding some way to attack and slander their own people. The unintended consequece of this lie, is that government organisations such as FACS are extremely unwilling to remove any more aboriginal children from atrocious circumstances today because they are terrified of being accused of "stealing" aboriginal children.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 1 May 2011 7:33:52 AM
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LEGO,

I'm not arguing. Why can't people understand that life for Aboriginal people earlier this century was pretty dreadful:

* that people had few rights: they couldn't vote, drink or live in towns. Because they couldn't live in town areas, their kids couldn't get any secondary schooling, and therefore were condemned forever to unskilled and semi-skilled work, on the whole: it's amazing that quite a few men taught themselves high level skills in working with machines and animals;

* that men were confined to rural work, that unemployment benefits were not available to people living on missions or in government settlements, and that birth control was discouraged (well, was it ENcouraged ?), so large families were common (not that governments would have foreseen this happening);

* health conditions were poor, due to over-crowding and poor facilities. Mothers often died in childbirth, or of exhaustion. Yet their kids were usually not put into care, or 'taken away';

* work for men was patchy, income was lousy, so large families were often destitute. What do parents do, for Christ's sake ? They 'temporarily' put the kids into care: they don't know (like we might now) that that arrangement might become permanent.

You don't have to posit some paranoid scenario of any government deliberately taking kids away: if anything, governments neglected their duties of care and DIDN'T take kids into care who desperately needed to be.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 1 May 2011 10:15:01 AM
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[contd.]

At one community, for example, from the birth, death, marriage, and school records (Aboriginal people are very well documented), between 1880 and 1960, about 800 kids were enrolled at the school. Forty of their mothers died while the kids were still of school age, leaving about 120 kids (plus pre-school age children).

Of the 800 kids enrolled at some time at the school, only forty kids were ever put into care, and all but one came back within a year or so (and that one was the daughter of a single mother who had died of TB). Some of those kids, like any kids anywhere, were sent to the Reformatory/Boys' Home for offences.

Some mothers who had lost their husbands had re-married, and sent their daughters off to homes. Three or four of the kids went to hospitals and one died while in hospital. Most of those who returned married local girls.

Yet, hundreds of those kids, out of the 800, would have faced periods of financial destitution, when Auntie or Grannie had to take them in and feed and care for them, while the parents sorted themselves out.

Significantly, at this particular community, just when the most enterprising people were leaving to find work in towns after the War, in the late forties and early fifties, and the 'less enterprising' families had fewer people to fall back on, this was the time when the most kids were being taken and put into care - from amongst those who had stayed behind, unemployed, on the settlements.

It was also the time, surprisingly, when - after a hundred years - a police station was set up in the local area.

Join the dots.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 1 May 2011 10:21:49 AM
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J Isdell Pilbara, WA Legislative Assembly, debate on 1904 Aborigines Bill:

leaving children with their Aboriginal mothers is 'wrong, unjust and a disgrace to the State'. It 'is maudlin sentiment' to consider their feelings 'They forget their children in 24 hours and as a rule... are glad to be rid of them'.

solution: place children in missions to become 'useful workers ... and humble labourers', to have no contact with mothers and not to be allowed to return to their families as they would revert 'to a more evil, because educated, barbarism than before'.

Also strong racial prejudice of the period enshrined in White Australia policy, demands for segregation

If Australia is to be a country fit for our children and their children to live in, we must keep the breed pure. The half-caste usually inherit the vices of both races and the virtues of neither. Do you want Australia to be a community of mongrels?

The government responded by adopting the policy of biological absorption:

this advocated state intervention to strictly regulate Aborigines' choice of marriage partners so as to produce children with progressively less Aboriginal features. Combined with social engineering programs involving the wholesale removal of mixed race children, this would ensure the breeding out of Aboriginal physical characteristics and cultural practices and over several generations Aboriginal mixed race population would completely disappear.
http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/CRCC/fellows/haebich/stolen.html

Aborigines Act 1905
Regulations may be made for `the care, custody and education of the children of aborigines and half-castes' and `enabling any aboriginal or half-caste child to be sent to and detained in an aboriginal institution, industrial school or orphanage'. Repealed by Native Welfare Act 1963.
http://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/removeprotect/prov/wa_prov.html

Nationwide, Aboriginal children comprise just 4.4 per cent of all children, and yet make up 24 per cent of all children in care.
http://icnn.com.au/breaking-news/the-new-stolen-generation/
Posted by Jewely, Sunday, 1 May 2011 10:56:22 AM
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I get your point, David, but what would you like done in this situation? My thoughts are as follows:

Is/was the site a 'sacred place'? Were the artefacts deliberately buried there for some reason? If so, perhaps the site ought to remain undisturbed. Of course, that would also mean that it would be off-limits for any invasive forms of archaeology.

Were they simply abandoned tools, covered over in time? If so, perhaps an archaeological excavation is appropriate. Excavate then build the infrastructure. This is how it works in Europe and many other parts of the world where archaeology is taken seriously. If the site is of significance, it is preserved; if artefacts are significant but the site is not, they are removed from the site and the twenty-first century is allowed to continue.
Posted by Otokonoko, Sunday, 1 May 2011 11:16:20 AM
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tokonoko, yes, the artefacts are primarily tools and sharpening implements. The problem is that insufficient access to the site has been granted. Limits have been placed on the archaeologists with regard to time and area. These restrictions deny both the exploration team and the indigenous people proper rights, regarding Aboriginal heritage and historical documenting. The site already shows continual use by earlier Aboriginal people, of the area, for a culturally significant reason. Whether the site contains any sacred items or can be considered a sacred site remains to be seen and that is the point; exploration needs to continue. Realignment of the road is not rocket science and neither is restoring the rail line, which has been disgracefully neglected by successive state governments. Most of the traffic is industrial and for environmental and economic reasons the heavy freight should go by rail, where possible. Money is continually wasted in Tasmania on projects of little significance to the state and of great benefit to large corporations. It is time that culture was considered instead of the profits of big business.
Posted by David Leigh, Sunday, 1 May 2011 1:31:46 PM
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The current situation with the construction of a new road over the Jordan River has not come about due any racist policies of the Tasmanian government. If anyone wants to find out the detail of this controversy you can start at http://www.transport.tas.gov.au/infrastructure_projects/brighton_transport_projects and use the menu to access the permit, archaeology reports and even pictures of the artefacts, graphics, video and maps.

The bypass route was subject to detailed heritage assessment before work was comenced, yet it was not until 2008 that the Jordan River Levee site was identified to contain artefacts and that the site of the artefacts dated to 40,000 years.

Once the site was discovered in late 2008, the Government supported and funded an extensive archaeological investigation. Many of the methods utilised in the investigation were a first for Tasmania. The cost of the investigation was around $1.3 million with $3 million spent across the Brighton projects on Aboriginal heritage investigations.

This seems hardly the action of a racist government paying lip service to the "Sorry" declaration.

The web site link gives access to maps of the area and discussion on alternatives and mitigation strategies, it also has photos of the site and artefacts so that readers can judge for themselves wether they are equal to the Pyramids of Egypt and wether the protection measures required by the permit will be adequate to ensure their heritage value is saved.
Posted by cinders, Sunday, 1 May 2011 5:25:55 PM
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Loudmouth, life for aboriginal people was always pretty dreadful. But the best thing that ever happened to them was the coming of the white man.

In tribal aboriginal society, power was held exclusively by the Old Men. All of the breeding women were their exclusive property, and the young men were not much more than slaves. This power structure was maintained through the terror of a sequence of painful and degrading "initiations" where young men were mutilated and scarred for life.

Young boys were "stolen" at aged 10 to be made "hunters" and were never allowed to speak to their mothers or sisters again. Those that did not die of sepicemia advanced through initiations from "hunter", to "warrior" to "men".

Girls were handed over to the Old Men to at puberty, underwent an "initiation" ceremony where a "fertility object" was thrust up her vagina to make her a "woman". Unborn female children from girls were then promised as wifes to men already in their forties.

Women were very badly treated, while old aboriginal people were simply abandoned. To aboriginals, people did not just "die". if a person died, someone was responsible for "singing" them to death. The witch doctor devined the guilty party, and that person was then murdered. Second born twins were always kiled, because the aboriginal people considered the second born twin as an "evil spirit."

The reason why Australia did not suffer from the same degree of warfare by their indiginous people against the settlers was because the young aborigines, both male and female, saw in the coming of the white man a chance of a better life.

They walked away from the tribal system in droves. On the frontier they were needed. Many became exceptional stockmen and women. Many aboriginal women became wifes for lonely pioneering settlers. Today, many remote towns have local whites who obviously have aboriginal ancesters.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 1 May 2011 7:32:44 PM
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[contd.]

Lego [above],

So, no, people certainly faced dreadful discrimination and destitution, but I don't think any government ever had any intention of taking kids away forcibly to raise them as little white kids. That's a paranoid fantasy.

I don't think governments on the whole gave a toss about Aboriginal people, and if anything thought they were all still dying out - to which they 'tut-tutted' and turned to other, more important things.

And isn't the essence of a racist system to ensure that outsiders DON'T somehow get to share the benefits of the system, that in this case, inter-marriage is made MORE difficult, or even illegal ?

Think about it for more than a few seconds: if any government had ever meant to merge the Aboriginal population into the general population, why did they allow local government ordinances against people living in towns or urban areas ? Why ban inter-mixing ? Why oppose kids coming to towns for secondary schooling ?

And what did Aboriginal people do, once they could seize opportunities after the war ? They came to towns and cities, where the jobs and schooling were, where the opportunities were.

Jewely,

Thanks, but none of what you cite is actually evidence of anything, only of wishes and intentions, and legal provisions: what were the actual numbers, and what were the causes of removal in each case ? Was the demand of some MP in the WA Parliament ever translated into action ? And isn't a complaint about 'a community of mongrels' a vile attack on mixed marriages ?

And, as you write, the situation today is appalling - why is it that 24 % of children in care are Aboriginal ? Is a single one of them 'taken', for no reason ? And if this is the case nowadays, then in the past, when people were far more likely to be destitute, isn't it logical that the discriminatory policies against Aboriginal people had even more devastating effects ?

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 1 May 2011 8:05:44 PM
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No.Sorry isnt ever enough. I'll tell you what is....GIVE ME THE MONEY

socratease
Posted by socratease, Sunday, 1 May 2011 8:05:52 PM
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Lego - re your last posting,

I was trying to find something there to disagree with, but point by point, I have to admit, I couldn't find it. But you could have mentioned:

* the policies of exclusion from towns after about 1870, i.e. policies of segregation.

* the dreadful destitution that people were plunged into, between about 1905 and 1960, when schooling was modified to provide only a dumbed-down primary curriculum, so that the new secondary education would not have to be provided for Aboriginal people, since after all they would have to come into towns and cities to access it, and that was not allowed, i.e. policies of blatant discrimination and what they called 'culturally adapted curriculum' - racism, in other words;

* the consequent forcing of Aboriginal men to look for work only in rural areas, and only semi-skilled and shearing jobs - it's documented that rural labour is actually the most dangerous occupation, with the most injuries. How could families expect to cope if their bread-winner was injured ?

People are still recovering from these catastrophes alone. One does not have to posit any policy to take kids away forcibly, for no other reason but to raise them as white kids.

You know, if I had met my wife three years earlier, in 1962, I would not have been able to associate with her. I would have been fined or jailed for trying, and she would have been sent back to the settlement. Those were the realities, not some fantasy of forcible mixing.

But still, jail or whatever, it would have been worth it ;)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 1 May 2011 8:14:26 PM
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great to read posts from people who care and aren't afraid to face the truth of the past rather than repeat leftist mantra.
Posted by runner, Sunday, 1 May 2011 8:26:11 PM
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Loudmouth, Australia was once a poor country and even white people were destitute. Your assertion that governments “did not give a toss” about aboriginals” is refuted by the fact that so many aboriginal children were taken into care. But there are academics who really do have a problem with capitalism, and these people will do anything to rupture the young Australians natural inclination to be proud of their own people.

The “Stolen Generation(s) is a perfect example of where a humanitarian obligation performed by Australian governments can be twisted by evil people to resemble “genocide”. These academics rely upon the fact that well meaning people such as you, are completely ignorant of their own people’s history, in order to push their Socialist agenda.

The reason why successive state and federal governments forbade white men to have sex with aboriginal girls, was to protect aboriginal girls from the sexual depredations of white men. Girls could be purchased from the Old Men for a handful of tobacco. If the successive Australian governments had wanted to get rid of the aboriginal people, all they had to do was to allow white men to continue buying aboriginal girls.

Half caste children born from these unions were either killed by the tribes, or if allowed to live, were called “yeller fellers” by the tribesmen and treated extremely badly. You only have to read “Rabbit Proof Fence” to learn that. That is why every half caste aboriginal child was taken into care.

The governments knew that there was almost nothing that they could do to integrate Stone Age people into modern society, but they could at least try and save the kids. They could educate them, teach them job skills and hygiene, and impart a bit of western morality.

I am not asking you to believe me. I am asking you to do some research yourself and learn the truth. When you realise that the people that you so admire are lying to you, and treating you like an easily led fool, then you might start thinking for yourself instead of accepting everything they say.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 2 May 2011 5:33:05 AM
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“They could educate them, teach them job skills and hygiene, and impart a bit of western morality.”

Read the reports and the apologies from the shining lights of western morality who ran the institutions, charities, and read stories from the children themselves. Or not… not doing so will be more comfortable.

“And, as you write, the situation today is appalling - why is it that 24 % of children in care are Aboriginal ? Is a single one of them 'taken', for no reason ? And if this is the case nowadays, then in the past, when people were far more likely to be destitute, isn't it logical that the discriminatory policies against Aboriginal people had even more devastating effects ?”

Yes children continue to be taken for no reason. No matter how poor this country has been at any time the govt has always been able to afford lawyers and the not-for-profit orgs will always profit and be protected.

But I am now getting an understanding of why it continues to happen. I’m going to work on a new thread to discuss if I am correct because I think we’re derailing this one.
Posted by Jewely, Monday, 2 May 2011 8:25:02 AM
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Hi Jewely,

You, know, there are a host of reasons why children might be taken into care. What appals me sometimes are the cases of neglect and abuse and other dysfunctions and catastrophes, where children are NOT taken into care, Black and white, where parents simply cannot look after their kids, or families break up so violently that 'home' becomes a dangerous environment for children.

So you really have to sift through the background of particular cases, before you can assert that a particular child was taken away for no reason. And one problem with asserting something like that is that the circumstances have to be laid open to scrutiny, in order to be able to say yay or nay. And that can be very hurtful and traumatic.

Keith Windschuttle thoroughly examined thousands of documents in his earch for any child who might have been taken away and he came to the conclusion that Bruce Trevorrow, from Meningie here in South Australia, was the only documented case so far. Actually, I find that hard to believe, even if so - just in the normal course of doing their job, there must (one would think) have been coppers, doctors or social workers, in every state who over-reached their powers - maybe a few cases every year since 1900, which should amount to thousands. But where are they ?

You can't just assert and leave it at that, and then build an elaborate rationale on the basis of it, about how governments wanted to turn Black kids into white kids - where on earth is the evidence of that ? What is meant by 'turning Black kids into white kids' ? Teaching work-skills ? Finding people work ? Teaching kids to read and write ?

Nobody likes to think that their parents may have been incapable,or too destitute for a time, to look after them; if their mother had died, say, then surely another relative could have looked after them, they would have been all right.

The truth can set you free, Jewely, but sometimes it can be too painful.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 2 May 2011 11:58:27 AM
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Hey Joe, I agree with what you say but not the context here. I’ve seen it happen, experienced how traumatic it is when it does happen etc and I am only one person who has witnessed it a lot. But I also see how it is hidden and information kept from the public and the victims. Painful mostly doesn't begin to describe it.

Lot’s of “it” words there. I mean the removal of children going back through a very unpleasant Australian history.

You got me thinking and reading a lot of material which soon as a wrap my head around it I’ll be really interested to see what answers or thoughts other people here have.

We could make it legal for anyone with the name of “Joe” to be taken into care. "Legal" aint where I see justice in these circumstances.

Osama news is boring… guess it will be awhile before we see what comes next without the screaming and flag waving stuff. Obama did say Justice was served though, love that word.
Posted by Jewely, Monday, 2 May 2011 2:22:57 PM
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Funnily enough, even though I'm not Aboriginal, I spent some months at a mission. (cos my dad pulled a swifty, I think) It was run by a Christian group (can't remember which one) and provided adequate material care for the "girls".

I don't know the circumstances of each girl's situation, but I do remember that although they were well provided-for materially, there was almost no "connection" between them and their care-providers. They were expected to do "all" the chores. As far as I could make out, there was no prominence or concentration given to their culture - the only thing given prominence was Christianity.

They faced it with a sort of passive-resentment. It was as if they were temporarily "lost" and it was something to endure stoically until they could find their way back to their culture.

Just an observation from someone who spent a little time in the same position, although not from the same cultural background.

This was in 1974.
Posted by Poirot, Monday, 2 May 2011 2:39:42 PM
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They may have been homesick, Poirot: you need to make further investigations :)

Jewely,

Yes, as you say, " ... We could make it legal for anyone with the name of “Joe” to be taken into care ... "

Or people between 155 and 160 cm. Or people with an 'm' in their names. Or people who like cats.

But we don't. But the question is:

- was it legal anywhere in Australia for authorities to take Aboriginal children into care without any reason, without good reason, without cause ? Windschuttle writes that it was not, anywhere, legal to do that. Not anywhere. In no state was it legal. If you can find any such law on the books, let me know. Let Windschuttle know too.

Of course, the other thing is: even though it wasn't legal, were any children taken ILLegally, without cause, with no reason, not for their own good but for some other evil purpose ? With nobody who had any authority over the children, such as a white father, or Aboriginal parent, agreeing ? If so, why aren't they pursuing the matter through the courts ? Otherwise, it's still just hearsay and rumour.

For me, it raises the issue: WHY ? In a racist society, why should authorities want to bring Aboriginal children into 'their' society, and not expect inter-mixing, and ultimately inter-marriage ?

What a strange coincidence that, just when these removal policies were supposed to be in force, governments were banning white men from associating with Aboriginal girls ?

Isn't exclusion, separation and segregation more likely in racist societies ? Forms of apartheid ? Forms of the sort of racism that was raging in the southern US ? Isn't that more likely than 'forced' equality (how do you do that?), equal rights, equal opportunity ?

This is top-of-the-head stuff, unless you have examples. He who asserts, must prove.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 2 May 2011 3:20:52 PM
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Jewely,
I think you are being led on by Joe for despite direct quotes, links to references and so forth, he prefers to give Windshuttle's poorly researched works precedence over any other souce.

Joe,
if you were truly interested in searching for the truth you would look wider than SA and consult more of the literature than poor old windshuttle and his biased colleagues.

Have you read Anna Haebich's (2000)'Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000' by Freemantle Arts Centre Press?

What did you think of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Taskfoce on Violence Report, chaired by Boni Robertson and published by Queensland 2000?

Did you get a hold of 'Something like Slavery?: Queensland's Aboriginal Child Workers, 1842-1945' by Robinson, S.(2008):Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd?

Your assertions that Aboriginal children were only taken into care for their own sake does not have the backing of literature. To claim that childre were taken because their parents were destitute denies the reality that Indigenous Australian's were not allowed to be paid more than about a third of settler Australians.

Getting back on topic, the atefacts discovered in Tasmania are of great worldwide significance as it challenges many long held theories on human origins/migration.
Posted by Aka, Monday, 2 May 2011 4:04:20 PM
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Joe:“Or people between 155 and 160 cm. Or people with an 'm' in their names. Or people who like cats.
But we don't. But the question is:
- was it legal anywhere in Australia for authorities to take Aboriginal children into care without any reason, without good reason, without cause ? Windschuttle writes that it was not, anywhere, legal to do that. Not anywhere. In no state was it legal. If you can find any such law on the books, let me know. Let Windschuttle know too.”

Yes it was “legal”. Lots of things get made “legal” or laws are not carried out in the way their creation intended. In this case the Acts gave people in authority the right to do certain things that were harmful and abusive in the extreme. The culture or society at the time permits it or doesn’t do anything about it.

Poirot what on earth were you doing there?

Gotchya Aka, but it has helped with this other train of thought I have now and I’m going to go look up your suggestions. I’m really wishing I did further English, grammar etc studies.
Posted by Jewely, Monday, 2 May 2011 4:27:42 PM
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I really hate to destroy your natural inclination to look for something insidious about every Australian government policy towards aborigines, Loudmouth, but I feel it is necessary to dispel your fantasies.

I can not attest for every state, but I do know that while it may have been illegal for sexually predatory white men to obtain sex by buying girls from a tribe, it was not illegal for whites to marry blacks in Federal mandated territories. Not only was it not illegal, the Federal government responded to the fact that marriageable white women were in very short supply in the Territory, by instituting a policy which encouraged white men to legally marry aboriginal girls.

Under this Federal policy, men who married aboriginal girls would receive preferential selection for scarce and covetted government jobs.

Now that you have been acquainted with this fact, I am sure that you can dream up something which could be construed (with a little pushing and shoving of the facts) into something that can be presented to the world as positive proof of racist genocide. As a matter of fact, some activists have already beaten you to that one. One fantasy already tried on by the “blame the white guy for everything” caste, was that the purpose of the “stolen generations” was to produce educated half caste marriageable young females, that would marry white men, and therefore commit genocide by “breeding out the black.”

With a bit of imagination and creativity, you could probably think up something better than that,
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 2 May 2011 6:45:45 PM
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Jewely,

"What on earth were you doing there?"

Well, that is a very good question....

Here's the lowdown.
Dad and I had been living in a rather nice western suburb of Perth. He was a bit of gambler and a drinker, but he was always in work. So he gets a job out in whoop whoop at a nickel mine....and I stayed with some folks - an arrangement that didn't work out...so I went to my auntie's...but she had her own issues...so...she put me on a little plane and sent me to Dad...but I couldn't stay at the minesite so we went to a big town....and on a Sunday morning we got in a taxi and next thing I knew I was at this mission (quite different from that suburb I'd been living in)

So I stayed a few months until Dad moved to town.

All in all, however, it was an enriching experience (and in the end they didn't want me to go - coz I'm so charming :) )

I still don't know how Dad cooked it up.
Posted by Poirot, Monday, 2 May 2011 6:56:53 PM
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That’s kinda cool really Poirot. How much do you remember? Was it like a poor boarding school or something?

Did they make you say prayers and stuff? These days you just go say you are temporarily homeless and kids will be cared for then you can come get them back.

Lego: “Now that you have been acquainted with this fact, I am sure that you can dream up something which could be construed (with a little pushing and shoving of the facts) into something that can be presented to the world as positive proof of racist genocide.”

From what I read breeding out didn’t meet the criteria to be labeled “genocide”. Umm... so they encouraged whites to marry blacks and took away the half’s. This doesn’t sound dodgy to you? Did they encourage black men to marry any white women?

What’s wrong to admitting to a racist past anyway?
Posted by Jewely, Monday, 2 May 2011 8:09:30 PM
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Thanks Jewely,

Assert, therefore prove. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Yes, the mistreatment and consequent destitution of Aboriginal people has been a very unpleasant - tragic - Australian story. But if you can point to any legislation which came any government power to take any children without cause, let me know. My point is more that governments only acted when they had to, and even then probably reluctantly. They usually didn't give a toss about Aboriginal kids. They were racist, why should they ? So: which states made no-cause removal legal ?

Thanks too Aka,

Your statement that " ... To claim that children were taken because their parents were destitute denies the reality that Indigenous Australian's were not allowed to be paid more than about a third of settler Australians."

defies logic. Destitution ? Yes, indeed. Can destitution conceivably provoke situations where parents cannot care for their children ? Yes, indeed. I have many Aboriginal friends whose parents were in this situation, over and over.

About thirty years ago, when we got hold of the birth, death and marriage records of my wife's community, from 1860 to 1960 orso, I did a rough study of mortality by decade by age-groups. I was horrified to find that the worst decade for infant mortality at this community wasn't in the nineteenth century, or the early twentieth, but in the 1950s. Nineteen fifties. Children died of starvation, malnutrition, various other terms for the same things, gastroenteritis, even TB. I know families which had lost three or four children, one family in which three children had been given the same name, one after the other, until one survived. Men were restricted to working in on-off rural work, for lousy pay - you got that right. So destitution ? Yes, indeed.

Yes, I've looked over those publications, including those which are relevant, thank you.

Inter-marriage, yes, fraternising, no: governments didn't want casual liaisons (fat chance of stopping them) but approved stable marriages. That's marriage for love, Aka. Go figure.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 2 May 2011 8:38:37 PM
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Jewely,

No, it wasn't like boarding school. It was arranged as a settlement of houses. Only girls were accommodated there as the boys had a dormitory arrangement in the nearest town.

So each house had about five girls assigned to it. We had "house parents" who were reasonably nice. Our house parents had two very young children and they had part of the house partitioned off as their private quarters.

I remember taking note that our house mother only carried out two tasks - apart from delegation and attending to her own children. She "loaded" the washing machine. Us girls hung it out, brought it in, ironed our stuff and had "their" stuff divided among us for ironing.

The other thing she did was "cook". We prepared the raw ingredients, we set the table, we served the meal. we cleared away and we washed up. We vacuumed, washed floors, cleaned bathroom and toilets, we dusted, did windows...but she "cooked" and "loaded" the washing machine.

But in general the atmosphere was okay. There was a dinky, rather twee chapel in the dusty centre of the settlement where we would go on Sundays.
I think, all in all, the place was well run - but the feeling from the girls, as I said, was one of disconnection - as if they were there in body but not in spirit.

Btw - I did once stay in a "home" when my dad got into a "bingle". It was a huge two-storey Victorian building with cavernous dormitories (just like in the BFG) and there was a "matron" with a white starched uniform...now that was cool.
Posted by Poirot, Monday, 2 May 2011 8:46:59 PM
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Jewely,

Yes, there were marriages between Aboriginal men and white women, going back - at least down here in SA (and, I've heard, in southern Queensland at least, Aka) going back to at least the 1850s. That's the eighteen fifties.

Plus a couple of marriages I know of in the 1880s and 1890's: one where an apprentice shoemaker at Raukkan ran off with the trainer's wife and lived happily together for sixty years, the other of a guy on the railways, first in the south-East and then at Tailem Bend. Then there were quite a few marriages in the 1950s and many after that. After all, it wasn't illegal for Aboriginal men to associate with white women, and/or to marry each other.

I guess is the glass half-full or half-empty ? To some, inter-marriage was anathema, 'breeding out', as you call it: to others it was a wonderful example of two people loving each other and wanting to be together for life. That certainly was the case with me and my beautiful darling.

People should be able to marry whoever they like, no force, no restrictions. Long live a coffee-coloured world and to hell with the racists on both sides.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 2 May 2011 10:02:12 PM
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Joe,
there were many inter-racial marriages but that is not the issue relating to 'breeding out the colour' policies as well you know. I am aware of these marriages over the entire time since colonisation - sometimes it was done on the sly by obliging priests. When the law prohibiting cohabitation between Indigenous Australians and settlers, marriage by the churches circumvented the legislation. Remember that most Aboriginal people were not free to choose thier spouses - that was the role of the so called 'protectors of Aborigines'.

Warwick Anderson's 2005 'The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (2nd ed.)': Melbourne University Press gives a clear picture of how the policies for breeding out the colour were developed and the quasi science that was used to justify it. But I am sure I have suggested this and other references to you before in similar threads on similar topics.
Posted by Aka, Monday, 2 May 2011 11:23:42 PM
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Hi Aka,

Are you referring to Cooke amd Neville's attempt to assist what were called 'quarter-castes' and 'octoroons' to socially merge into the general population ? My understanding is that extremely few of those attempts were successful, that there was no force used and that, anecdotally, the people involved usually married each other (i.e. male and female) or eventually married other Aboriginal people.

But believe the myth if you want to, Aka :)

I'm fascinated by the way myths get circulated without much evidence, how they might resonate with the way people might be thinking - "Oh yeah, that sounds about right ... " - and how often they promote the themes of either segregation from or distrust of whites, or both.

Either way, they seem to be spurious ways to try to build a sense of oppositional identity, when there are many other more positive and healthy ways to celebrate identity.

And when one looks for any evidence of a particular myth, either the myth falls apart altogether (secret women's business, for example), or the evidence just isn't there (deaths in custody, for example).

But those are other cans of worms ;)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 1:18:37 PM
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Didn’t you get scared Poirot or want to go home?

Wonder what the house mother got paid for being there, sounds like a 24/7 supervisor role.

Was there education happening in these places?

What’s the BFG?

Joe:”Assert, therefore prove. Sorry, I don't make the rules.”

What rules are you talking about?

“My point is more that governments only acted when they had to, and even then probably reluctantly.”

I wish I lived in this world you’ve made where the native peeps were always treated with dignity and respect and lived lives where love ruled the races and children were only removed reluctantly for their own good by the nicest and kindest of folk.

La la lalala la la lalala la… oh crap I tripped over an ancient artifact... lala la la lalala la...
Posted by Jewely, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 2:10:40 PM
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Jewely,

I wasn't so much scared as totally bemused - I had been lifted from one environment to something totally alien to me. I was used to swimming at Cottesloe (nice suburb by the sea in WA) - I was a city girl.

....so that first evening, I waiting until I got under the shower and I cried and cried....

But, as with everything, one adapts and I soon found myself getting used to my different surroundings.
We used to get bused into the nearest big town for school.

The BFG is a Roald Dahl book about a big friendly giant who takes a young girl on an adventure - from her bed in a dormitory in the middle of the night. It's a classic children's story and absolutely delumptious : )
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 2:49:04 PM
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You poor thing Poirot and sounds like my first day at boarding school.

The other girls you met seem to have shown symptoms of not being attached to anything. Kids go from scared or hysterical and terrified then enter this kind of ‘slate’ phase. Wonder if the house parents could see it.

I can imagine you adapting with the knowledge someone would eventually come back and get you or visit you, situation temporary.

Strikes me that no matter the intention of people removing children from their families it is a horrible abuse for a young one to endure.

I missed the whole Roald Dahl thing somehow but I remember my kids having some of the books. But that BFG sounds appropriate and I remember reading books when younger about a girl at a boarding school which I remembered fondly when I found myself in the same situation.

Way off topic now I guess. I’m kinda surprised any country would question preserving such a moment in time.
Posted by Jewely, Wednesday, 4 May 2011 8:21:32 AM
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Jewely,

What rules ? The rules of evidence. You can't just assert and expect it to be believed - you have to provide some sort of back-up.

I wonder though, when you write -

" ... I wish I lived in this world you’ve made where the native peeps were always treated with dignity and respect and lived lives where love ruled the races and children were only removed reluctantly for their own good by the nicest and kindest of folk."

- do you actually ever read what other people write ? What don't you understand about the implications of 'destitution' ? Do you know what the word means ? Can you begin to imagine its dreadful effects on the most neglected and excluded population in this country ? Life and death matters ? The effects on family stability ?

I guess it's no wonder you would prefer to just skip over the fields, singing " ... La la lalala la la lalala la… oh crap I tripped over an ancient artifact... lala la la lalala la..."

Here's a serious question: since, I believe, you come from New Zealand, have you ever heard of, or can you imagine, the forced removal of Maori children, in order to bring them up as Pakeha ? Does that strike you as a bit fanciful ? Wouldn't you expect a person asserting this to come up with some evidence ? Cases ? Even just names ?

But carry on, dear, singing " ... La la lalala la la lalala la… oh crap I tripped over an ancient artifact... lala la la lalala la..."

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 4 May 2011 11:21:55 AM
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