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.

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,

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.

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?

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

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.