stevenlmeyer: << I had never heard of the "stolen generation" until I arrived in Australia. >>

You've been here for quite a while, haven't you Steven, like more than a few years?

How come it's taken you so long to look into the Stolen Generations? It's an issue that has been quite intensely and publicly debated for years in Australia, which culminated in a quite famous Apology by our very own Prime Minister. I'm sure you were resident here while much of that was going on.

You work at a university, don't you? I cannot believe that you're unaware of the 'History Wars', in which the odious Windschuttle was a leading protagonist. And Albrechtsen's beneath contempt.

So I guess this is just another narcissistic stevenlmyer troll, eh?

Everybody - look at Steven, look at Steven!

No matter how you try and spin it and despite all the current window dressing, the specific policy of the Government of the time was to eliminate the aboriginal race by assimilation and by "breeding them out" and was expected to take only a few generations.

Even when I was in school during the sixties we were told that they were a dying race and would not be around much longer.

It was no so much a matter of stealing the children of a generation but stealing their childhood and families from them.

Interesting to see the lack of dispute and cries of potential litigation when it was the turn of the British immigrant children for recognition.

Better if you had stayed out of this one Steve, foxy has described your champion very well.
Along with Quantum, Howard, and camp followers truth mattered little to those who denied it.
While I am not exactly ancient I did live in the 1950,s as a child.
A white child from a big family.
Different ideals ruled then, at the drop of a hat welfare took loved and cared for whites into custody.
It is true, some thought, you may even have been one of them if you had been in control, half cast Aboriginals should be taken away.
Children taken away, whites too, always in my experience, got harsh cruel treatment.
At the public swimming pool in a southern highlands town, white kids in care not more than 10 years old, got what was a public bashing for no more than splashing water on each other.
Separate the fact we are far from resolving the mess that we helped make, the failure even today to get a better life for our first Australians.
If we stole kids, and we did, we failed them and our selves look at the results of that Church driven crime.
While no Christian, and actively blaming them for much of todays troubles, I think we must do far more than talk about the past, concentrate on todays failure.
Look at failure to truly commit to change, from both sides.
And do not hide our past, both sides have to feel some shame.

I need to correct something that CJ Morgan wrote.

I severed my last links with academe two years ago. While I continue to have many friends in the academic world, and while some still do me the honour of asking my advice about their research, I currently have no official ties to any university. All going well within two years I shall have no official ties with ANY organization that requires me to work. :-)

CJ Morgan

As usual you indulge in ad hominem attacks but decline to address the issues.

Windschuttle does not appear to me to be in any way "odious". On the contrary he displays a quality I admire; to wit, a healthy scepticism towards the received wisdom in his field coupled with a determination to get to the bottom of things.

That is not to say – and I cannot repeat this often enough – that Aborigines did not suffer at the hands of the European settlers. Plainly they did.

Also let me repeat again what I should have made clear in my original post. I do not take the view that no Aboriginal child was ever stolen.

I do profess to be sceptical, repeat sceptical, not denialist, about there being a stolen GENERATION. To me the evidence for this seems scanty but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Albrechtsen strikes as being no more "odious" than any other journalist with strong opinions. I would put her on a par with, say, the ABC's Tony Jones. Albrechtsen and Jones appear to me to be opposite sides of the same coin.

Suzeonline,

Interesting perspective.

Wobbles, Belly,

I am sure everything you say about White attitudes towards Aborigines is true. That Aborigines, and others, who were removed from their parents were often treated atrociously is undeniably true. But none of that proves the existence of a stolen GENERATION.

I am certainly not going to believe in stolen generations just because Kevin Rudd (and others) say I'm a nasty horrible "racist" if I don't.

I had a singular experience in my fourteenth year. My father, who was a bit of a gad-about, managed to install me for a period of three months in an aboriginal mission (he was working on a mine site in central WA at the time) I am not aboriginal and have no idea how he achieved this.
However - it does give me firsthand experience, at least in observation, of how some of these children seemed to be affected.
This Christian mission consisted of a series of houses, each populated by a white Christian family, and each house also contained about five aboriginal girls (the boys at that time were accommodated in a hostel in a nearby town).
The domestic arrangements and general daily life here was fairly well organized and I saw no cruelty or questionable treatment during my time at the mission.
What I did see, however, was a complete dislocation of emotional connectedness by my aboriginal counterparts between themselves and their caregivers. suzieonline mentioned a "sadness" and I'm sure that applies - after the fact- to me it was more of an ingrained silent resentment. Most of the children in "my house" were full blood aboriginal. I don't recall them having any contact with their families or their culture in the few months that I was there.
They "parents"of our house were a couple with two young children. they had separate quarters within the house for their own use. The mother cooked the meals and loaded the washing machine and looked after her two young children. Apart from this the only other thing she did was delegate all the other work in the house to her charges.
I think that many of these girls felt like navvies - I know I did.
These children were well fed, well dressed and yet had no spiritual or cultural connection with the people or environment around them.
I don't know if any of them grew into strong leaders for their people - it seems unlikely from my standpoint as they seemed to be lost and totally adrift between two cultures.

Yes it could be justified on one level at times. There are many variables. I see it along the lines of celebrities adopting African children in a sort of way. I always think if you care for a child in Africa and want to parent that child then you move to Africa and raise the child in it's environment. That way you also contribute to the local economy. I see overseas adoptions as a sort of stolen generation.

If this had occured in Indigenous society then they perhaps would have been able to modernise at their own pace and in their own vision. A sort of bridge without being dominant. Offering only what is needed without patronising.

So yes the removal of a child from a family can be justified but not the outright removal from community and culture. I also do not agree with religous cultural imperialism...at least I am consistant on that front..not like many.