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]

[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]

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/

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.

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.

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.