Many of these children were forced to work as domestic servants for the families they lived with. Those removed also no longer received any assistance from the Board or the government as they were seen to be functioning members of the white society.
This was problematic as the colonists refused to accept them as part of the community due to them still being considered Aboriginal on a non-official level. He was critical of the Boards inhumane treatment of Aboriginal people and believed that assistance be given to Aboriginal people outside the reserves. The Aborigines Act re-established those who were half-caste as Aboriginal again granting them assistance those on the missions and reserves received.
This did not, however, stop the removal of children from their families and communities. The previous legislation cemented the belief that government should and could control the lives of aboriginal people and paved the way for the Stolen Generation to occur.
These children were removed or taken under government laws that sought to 'assimilate' them or raise them to be the same as white people and deny their culture. They were not allowed to practice their culture or speak their language and often were not allowed to see their family. They were frequently prevented from contacting their families or staying connected with community and culture. The report contained 54 recommendations about how to address and heal the effects of the forced removals and the laws and policies of previous governments on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
They locked us in the police cell up here and mum was walking up and down outside the police station and crying and screaming out for us. There was 10 of us. By the late s it was clear the Board's institutions could not cope with the number of children being removed. As the Board did not have the funds to establish new institutions but remained firmly committed to its policy of child removal, alternative arrangements had to be made. During the s and s the Aborigines' Welfare Board and the Child Welfare Department worked closely together to place Indigenous children.
A child's skin colour often determined the type of placement made. Lighter coloured children were sent to institutions for non-Indigenous children or fostered by non-Indigenous families.
By wards had been fostered, 90 of them with non-Indigenous families Read quoted by Link-Up NSW submission on page Until the Board was still exploring the possibility of constructing more institutions to house all its removed children.
In that year it was finally decided not to proceed with another institution because they encouraged segregation and, moreover, they were too expensive. Adoption was another method of removing Indigenous children from their families. Mothers who had just given birth were coerced to relinquish their newborn babies. Those whose children had already been forcibly removed were pressured by Board officials to consent to adoption. The Child Welfare Department processed the adoption but relied on Board officials to obtain the mother's consent.
The Child Welfare Department did not check to ensure that Indigenous mothers understood they were being asked to agree to the permanent removal of their child. Most of us went to Crown St. That's where my son was born, and then we went back to the hostel with the baby.
Once we were there, we had the Welfare coming in, asking you what you was going to do - telling you most of the time that your parents didn't want you, the father of the baby didn't want you And then they said the only one they could find that was willing to take me was my eldest sister, who I'd never seen since I was a little girl - she'd gone before us: she went away with some white people that were supposed to take her away for a good education - and they said she was the only one who was willing to take me, but she didn't want the baby.
So they brought the papers in and told me to sign and that was it. The powers of the NSW Board differed from those in some other States in that it never had guardianship of Indigenous children and therefore could not consent to the adoption of one of its wards. Rather than endeavour to contact the mother of a child whose foster parents wanted to adopt him or her, the Board applied to the Children's Court to waive the consent requirement. This marked a shift in policy for foster care.
Previously the practice had been to place children with an unrelated foster family in NSW. Restricted contact with their natural family and continued foster care arrangements meant that these placements, in effect, often became pseudo-adoptions.
From , the practice of Commonwealth Departments was to place children in residential care in the ACT and attempt to reunite the child with their family ACT Government interim submission page Almost none of them was being raised by Aborigines, still less by the child's own extended family' Dr Peter Read submission 49 page Kinchela and Cootamundra closed shortly after the Board was abolished but the home at Bomaderry was still functioning until I was taken off my mum as soon as I was born, so she never even seen me.
What Welfare wanted to do was to adopt all these poor little black babies into nice, caring white families, respectable white families, where they'd get a good upbringing. I had a shit upbringing. Me and [adopted brother who was also Aboriginal] were always treated different to the others I found my mum when I was 18 - she was really happy to hear from me, because she didn't adopt me out. Apparently she did sign adoption papers, but she didn't know [what they were].
She said to me that for months she was running away from Welfare [while she was pregnant], and they kept finding her. She remembers being in - it wasn't a hospital - but there were nuns in it, nuns running it. I was born at Crown Street. They did let her out with her brother one day and she run away again. Right from the beginning they didn't want her to have me. Confidential evidence , New South Wales: woman taken from her mother at birth in and adopted by a non-Aboriginal family.
Once Cootamundra and Kinchela had closed, Indigenous children who rebelled against their removal and foster placements could be sent to a detention centre. Mt Penang Training Centre [in the early s] was described to me by a former deputy superintendent as a para-military institution which followed the tradition of treatment of young offenders which commenced in the early days of colonisation The atmosphere was one of absolute regimentation with very strict practices and procedures throughout the centre.
The regime would have been very harsh for any young person but must have been particularly oppressive for Aboriginals like Malcolm, having regard to the relative freedom with which he had lived his early years, and the racist attitudes Wootten pages It is the deep and natural desire of Aboriginal people, particularly the young adolescents, to be housed and cohabit with those of their own race and foster placement within the Aboriginal community would help to resolve this situation Annual Report , quoted by NSW Government submission on page In 12 Aboriginal caseworkers started working with the department on the placement of Indigenous children.
However, Aboriginal submissions for separate legal consideration of Indigenous children in the Community Welfare Bill were rejected by the department Milne page Indigenous organisations such as the Aboriginal Children's Service and Link-Up NSW pressured the department to change its stance in relation to making specific provision for Indigenous children.
A conference of Aboriginal Community Workers in proposed changes to the adoption process to ensure that Aboriginal mothers were advised of alternatives. Departmental policy changed in with the development of policies for adoption and fostering that recognised that Aboriginal children who have been removed should be placed with Aboriginal families whenever possible.
The Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, under which an Aboriginal family must be the preferred option for an Aboriginal child needing out-of-home care, was incorporated into the Children Care and Protection Act It was then transferred to the Commonwealth Department of the Interior.
My grandmother, Rebecca, was born around She lived with her tribal people, parents and relations around the Kempsey area. Rebecca was the youngest of a big family. One day some religious people came, they thought she was a pretty little girl. She was a full blood aborigine about five years old.
Anyway those people took her to live with them. Rebecca could not have been looked after too well. At the age of fourteen she gave birth to my mother Grace and later on Esther, Violet and May.
She married my grandfather Laurie and at the age of twenty-three she died from TB. Grandfather took the four girls to live with their Aunty and Uncle on their mother's side. Grandfather worked and supported the four girls.
Mum said in those days the aboriginals did not drink. She often recalled going to the river and her Uncle spearing fish and diving for cobbler. Mum had eaten kangaroo, koala bear, turtles and porcupine. She knew which berries were edible, we were shown by her how to dig for yams and how to find witchetty grubs. My mother also spoke in several aboriginal languages she knew as a small girl.
The aboriginals had very strict laws and were decent people. They were kind and had respectable morals. Even though the girls fretted for their mother they felt secure with their own people. Years later Grandfather told my mother a policeman came to his work with papers to sign. The girls were to be placed in Cootamundra Home where they would be trained to get a job when they grew up.
If grandfather didn't sign the papers he would go to jail and never come out, this was around My grandfather was told he was to take the four girls by boat to Sydney. The girls just cried and cried and the relations were wailing just like they did when Granny Rebecca had died. In Sydney my mother and Esther were sent by coach to Cootamundra. Violet and May were sent to the babies' home at Rockdale. Grace and Esther never saw their sister Violet again.
She died at Waterfall Hospital within two years from TB. Cootamundra in those days was very strict and cruel. The home was overcrowded.
Girls were coming and going all the time. The girls were taught reading, writing and arithmetic. All the girls had to learn to scrub, launder and cook. Mum remembered once a girl who did not move too quick. She was tied to the old bell post and belted continuously.
She died that night, still tied to the post, no girl ever knew what happened to the body or where she was buried. Aunty Esther was a big girl for her age, so she was sent out as a cook to work at twelve years of age. Mum being of smaller build was sent out as children's nurse at fourteen. She had responsibility for four young children; one only a baby for 24 hours a day. Mum said they used to put girls ages up if they were big for their age and send them out to work on properties.
Some girls were belted and sexually abused by their masters and sent to the missions to have their babies. Some girls just disappeared never to be seen or heard of again. Eventually after several years Mum was sent to Rose Bay to work. Whilst in Sydney she met her sister Esther who was working in the Chatswood area. As far as I know neither Mum or Aunt Esther ever got paid for those hard working years under the Board.
My mother often recalled the joyous time Aunty May came to Kempsey to see her sisters and father. The three young women hugged one another and cried with happiness and sadness for their sister and their mother.
Early one morning in November the manager from Burnt Bridge Mission came to our home with a policeman. The manager said he can do what he likes, they said my father had a bad character I presume they said this as my father associated with Aboriginal people. The Act had a disastrous impact on Aboriginal families and culture.
The Bringing Them Home Report found that children removed from their families were disadvantaged in the following ways:. Because of poor record keeping, no one knows the precise number of children forcibly removed under the Act, or under other similar legislation deployed around the country. Estimates vary. Peter Read, who has carried out extensive research on the removal of Indigenous children in Australia, has suggested a figure of up to 50, people 'would not be unreasonable'.
The Bringing Them Home Report suggests a maximum figure of one in three Indigenous children were removed and a minimum of one in 10, and stated that no Indigenous family is untouched by forced separation.
The lack of accurate records some of which were deliberately destroyed or not created in the first place also prevents many family members wishing to be reunited from finding each other. One of the main recommendations from the Bringing Them Home Report was for the government to make a national apology to the Stolen Generations. This finally took place on 13 February and is another featured moment. The Aborigines Protection Act was finally repealed in but the legacy of the legislation and that of other states endures among the thousands of Stolen Generations in Australia.
Many remain deeply traumatised by their experience as children. Because this trauma can be trans-generational, these policies continue to affect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community today. The National Museum of Australia acknowledges First Australians and recognises their continuous connection to country, community and culture. Defining Moments Aborigines Protection Act.
See our classroom resource. As described by then Premier Alex Stuart in a Cabinet minute, the Board was to fulfil: the duty of the State to assist in any effort which is being made for the elevation of the race, by affording rudimentary instruction, and by aiding in the cost of maintenance or clothing where necessary, as well as by grants of land, gifts of boats, or implements of industrial work. Seeking greater control Growing increasingly ambitious, the Board began to seek greater control over the lives of Indigenous people.
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