Where does blairbar come from? S/he can't have tried very hard, because s/he's apparently unaware that more Torres Strait Island people live in mainland Australia (mostly Queensland) than on the Torres Strait islands. They were very much part of the Stolen Generation in Queensland.

As for the Kriss Donald red herring - that was the point of course, although I'm unsurprised that the irony is lost on someone of blairbar's intellect. Duh.

Well CJ Morgan
Thanks for telling me that most Torres Strait Islanders live on mainland Australia. No doubt my wife and mother-in-law who were both born on Saibaii Island are unaware of that as all the Pitts from Darnley living in Mackay.
" They were very much part of the Stolen Generation in Queensland."
Well just give me one little reference. Neither my wife, mother-in-law and their relations know anything about it. And you would think that as the Torres Strait Islanders main annual celebration is "the Coming of the Light" referring to the arrival of Christianity in the Islands, they would remember such unChristian events as the stealing of their children.
And as for your ironic red herring, no doubt you saw the humour in it; but then who laughs at their own jokes?

One little reference, blairbar?

How about the "Bringing Them Home" report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families:

<< The Inquiry was told of the practice in the Torres Strait Islands of sending children born to Islander mothers and non-Islanders to mission dormitories on the Islands (such as at Thursday Island) or to mainland institutions up until the late 1970s. >>

<< 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. >>

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/Social_Justice/bth_report/report/ch5.html

One wonders if blairbar and his wife live in the Torres Strait or on the mainland?

"The federal government must make it conditional that on receiving education grants all public and private educational institutions; primary, secondary and tertiary, are required to deliver a term (minimum of 13 weeks) of compulsory Indigenous studies that cover pre and post contact years of British rule in Australia."

What about a term of compulsory Western civilisation studies? Or how about a term of compulsory British history?

Given that a disproportionately large amount of attention is already devoted to Aboriginal studies in our schools, your claim that Aboriginal history is somehow being ignored or neglected is really quite absurd.

In reality, we have seriously unbalanced situation in this country where the history of a small minority is essentially being elevated above and promoted at the expense of the history of mainstream Australia.

Rainier wrote: "If you can picture Leigh as an impotent lonely old white man too scared to engage with his own neighbourhood let alone communicate with the wonderful diversity of people in the world - you will start to get the picture. They are their own social, cultural, and political prisons."

A question for OLO's resident anti-white racist Rainier:

If diversity is so wonderful, then why didn't the Aboriginals embrace the diversity brought to this continent by the British in 1788? Why weren't the Aboriginals tolerant and inclusive enough to accept the European settlers rather than attack them? Why were the Aboriginals too scared to interract with the wonderful diversity of people in the world?

There is quite clearly a glaring contradiction between your bitterness over the British settlement of Australia and your support for racial and cultural diversity. Put simply, if you genuinely considered racial and cultural diversity within the same territory or country to be a good thing, then you would be welcoming, rather than incessantly deploring, the arrival of Europeans on this continent back in 1788.

Dear CJ Morgan
Of course I am aware of, and have read, the “Bringing Them Home Report”. But those quotes you cite are the only references to “stolen” Torres St Islander children in the whole report! Not even one case study to support or illuminate those statements.
The report states that Islander children were sent to mainland institutions yet the report does not identify one such institution despite naming the many institutions to which aboriginal children were sent.
Besides how can adopting out male children to other Islander families be considered as stealing? Adopting out and in is still a widely practised custom of many Torres Strait Islander parents.
You would think that if Torres Strait Islander children were part of a “stolen generation” than at least one such Islander could be found. I am not aware of any and you haven’t given me any leads.
What is the relevance of where my wife and I reside to the argument about the existence or otherwise of a “stolen generation” of Torres Strait Islander children? Are the members of this stolen generation somehow hiding on the islands in the Torres Strait unknown to anybody?