The central character for the government who administered the law in Western Australia at thst time was the long servicing Commissioner for Native Affairs A.O. Neville who was appointed Chief Protector of Aborigines for the state in 1915. Neville remained in control until 1940.
According to Warwick Anderson, in his book 'The Cultivation of Whiteness:Science, Health and Racial Destiny', Neville is reported to have said in 1937:

"Are we going to have one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia?"

Given Neville had the autonomous authority to administer the law as he seen fit, and given his stated attitude on the removal of children, Moseley Royal Commission 1934;

"they (Aboriginal people) have to be protected against themselves whether they like it or not. They cannot remain as they are. The sore spot requires the application of the surgeon's knife for the good of the patient, and probably against the patient's will."

As Neville had both the desire and the means to remove children, there is no doubt in my mind that children were removed against both their's and there parents will.

Neville believed he was acting for the good of these children, and at that time his thinking was not contrary to the general white opinion. Such thinking would not be acceptable today, but certainly was in the 1930's.

Dear Steele, and Paul,

There's an interesting link that covers a good range
of issues from :

1) Free Stolen Generation Resources (worth looking at)
as it provides further documented evidence that is available.

2) Denying history - covering the "not stolen, but
rescued topic".

3) The "white stolen generations."

4) Stolen generations in other countries.

And so on.

It's worth a read.

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/politics/a-guide-to-australias-stolen-generations#toc6

Hi Steele,

A nice little Clare Valley Temperanillo, actually. Mmmmm, still a bit left.

Stolen ? All you or anybody else has to do is get hold of the Departmental files and check them out. Let me know what you find. What, you thought there wouldn't be any paper-work ? One thing about Aboriginal affairs everywhere is that there are mountains of paper-work. My wife could easily find far more documentation about her family and everybody else in her community than I could find out about mine. Birth, death, marriage, school records, and probably oodles of police records, hospital records, etc.

That was the big mistake that the scammers in the Hindmarsh Island case made: they were oblivious to records (true, they really were), and thought that they could make up whatever they liked and nobody could check. Sorry, ladies. Birth and marriage records clearly set out who was, and who wasn't, descended from Ngarrindjeri mothers, and grandmothers, etc., who were supposed to have passed down secrets, mother to daughgter. But a very high proportion of women, like anywhere else, had a mother/grandmother/ etc. who wasn't, and therefore couldn't have passed on any of those 'secrets'. So when, the scam was put together on Friday, May 10, 1994, at the Mouth house on Hindmarsh Island, they thought they had a free hand. Sorry.

When people cook up a scam, they really do need to do a lot of research, to brainstorm, to make sure that there aren't any holes in their story. Otherwise, anybody else can do the research and see them coming. During that controversy, I was constantly reminded of a group of burglars stealthily approaching a house to rob it - but a team of coppers, with night-scopes, in position, watching them.

And lying gets so complicated. It needs a very good memory.

[wait, there's more]

[continued]

What really pissed me off about that scam ? When one woman started slagging one of the dissident women, calling her a 'woman of the streets'. Clearly she pitched her outrage at the gullible white audience, since the old lady was her mother's sister. I was disgusted that someone could attack her auntie just to scare them into keeping quiet, and just to suck up to a white audience.

Hi Paul,

A slight sleight of hand there. Neville expressed those views at the1937 Conference (transcript available on my web-site: www. firstsources.info , on the Conferences page). But no, his word, or hope, was not law. No, he didn't have the legal means to take children willy-nilly. No, I suspect that was never the case anywhere. Find the records and prove otherwise. Or, of course, keep believing without question :)

As for his 'desire' to take children from northern cattle stations: his rationale, right or wrong, was that - since some of those stations were huge, like villages - the children of Aboriginal women, paler each generation, were likely to be condemned to stay on those stations, with no school, and no matter how pale they might be. If they were girls, it was pretty much certain that they would be sexually abused and, in turn, produce another generation of paler girls. From photos of the girls when they were elderly, they seemed pale, under their Pilbara tans.

We forget that, by the 1930s, four or even five generations might have passed of Aboriginal women having relations with white men on those stations, kids getting paler every generation; as Neville says, many children would have been indistinguishable from white kids, and yet, because they were counted as Aboriginal, they were condemned never to get schooling, etc., and to stay on the station; and in turn, girls would .....

Of course, there could have been other ways to improve conditions: mandate schools on stations, for instance; require station hands to contemplate marriage, or at least acknowledge parenthood and pay maintenance for their kids' education.

[even more to come ... ]

[continued]

After Neville retired in 1940, he helped to set up the Coolbaroo Club, for mixed-race' people in Perth; it did wonderful work in helping Aboriginal people in the city come together, socialise and marry. I think there would be a video about it, so you can check it out. So, while Neville's suggestion that those people might marry non-Aboriginal people only partly came to fruition, an Indigenous urban, working - and eventually educated - class rose up. Thanks partly to Neville.

Get stuck in :)

Anyway, back to topic ....... Just one bit of documentation which indicated that yes, there were coppers out on the Fence looking for girls, might do it. Just one.

That raises another issue: were the cops so dopey that they didn't decide to get up in front of the girls, say fifty miles, and just sit and wait ? Probably with blankets, food and water. Gosh, I wonder if there could be any documentation about that. Police overtime, Hotel records. Bills sent from the Police Department to the Native Welfare Department. Mentions in parliament, now in Hansard (so easily checkable, in every main WA library). Wouldn't it be nice to find mention of this amazing journey in Hansard ?

Think, with both your heart AND your head.

Cheers,

Joe

SteeleRedux, in response to your comment about rights to culture, firstly, the small children removed wouldn't have known much about culture, but they did know about hunger, pain and abuse. That's not to say all aboriginal mothers were abusive, in fact most of them loved their babies greatly, but the fact remains that fair skinned babies were not generally wanted in a tribe and were frequently killed at birth. My husband used to tell me a story about how black women would try and deceive their husbands when they produced a light skinned child. They would tell him that the fair skin was the result of them eating too much white mans flour! So, those children didn't know culture and had the right to know their fathers culture.
As for the older ones, almost always girls felt to be at risk of sexual exploitation, well, to say they had no right to know their dominant culture is like telling an aboriginal child raised in a white home that they have no right to get to know their aboriginal culture.
The fact is, most of the older, teenage kids weren't removed as such, they were put into apprenticeships in work that they could find employment in when older, if they didn't want to return to their community. And in fact, most didn't return, they remained in towns and cities, whilst still keeping in contact with their bush family.
You need to look at this in context of the wider community. Single white girls had their newborn babies taken from them, in far greater number than black ones ever were. And deserted white wives frequently had their children removed because they had no means of support. There was no welfare for those women back then so Child Protection would remove the children and put them in homes.
It wasn't a black/white issue, it was a child protection issue.