Genocide in Australia

Indeed, in response to the High Court’s Wik decision, the Coalition government under John Howard has introduced amendments to the Native Title Act (known as the 10-point plan), which aim to extinguish native title in all but name, perpetuating the cycle of dispossession and alienation. In what has been described (not only by socialists and Aborigines themselves) as “the biggest land grab since 1788”, Howard’s legislation takes from the Aborigines to give to the richest pastoralists in the land. At the time of writing, the Senate has rejected this legislation for the second time, setting the scene for a double dissolution and a general election.

Howard derides what he calls the “black armband view of history” – that is, a history which tells the truth about what happened to the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and how Australia’s wealth was built on the theft of their land. He does so for both pragmatic and ideological reasons: to advantage his rich mates and make Australia safe for the mining companies, pastoral interests and capitalism generally, and to justify his assault on the gains Indigenous people have made in recent years, meagre as they are.

The Howard government has also given the go-ahead to Energy Resources Australia’s Jabiluka uranium mine, situated on the traditional lands of the Mirrar people in the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, in direct contravention of the wishes of the traditional owners. Once again, the rights of Indigenous people have been trampled over in the rush to make profits.

The government therefore wants to sweep the Stolen Generations report under the table. A crucial aspect of its strategy to enrich the miners and pastoralists is to deny any spiritual or traditional connection with the land as the basis for a native title claim – and this is the only kind of claim many of the stolen generations can make.

They must not be allowed to get away with it. In the past, Indigenous people have won rights through struggles – such as the freedom rides, the Gurindji strike and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – in which they and their supporters took to the streets to gain popular support. Today, we need that kind of fight again.

Opinion polls, the numbers who attend demonstrations in support of Indigenous rights and the establishment of organisations like Defenders of Native Title and the Jabiluka Action Groups show that there is widespread support for justice for Indigenous Australians. That support needs to be mobilised into a powerful movement that can stop Howard and turn the tide against the rising racism that he has fostered.

This pamphlet looks at some of the issues raised by the Stolen Generations report – and in particular addresses the criticisms and disclaimers emanating from the Howard government and its supporters in big business – not to mention Pauline Hanson and her racist One Nation organisation. In order to build the kind of movement described above, we need to be able to counter Howard’s arguments with the real facts. Hopefully this pamphlet is a small contribution to building such a movement.

In 1949, Millicent was four years old. That’s when she and five of her siblings were taken from their parents and placed in institutions. She never saw any of them again, apart from one brother who was subsequently removed to another institution.

The authorities told Millicent that her parents didn’t want her, when actually they prevented them from visiting her. After a horrific childhood consisting largely of domestic servitude, beatings and religious indoctrination, Millicent was sent into unpaid domestic service, where she was raped, bashed and slashed with a razor for resisting. On reporting the rape, she was beaten for lying. The resulting pregnancy earned her yet more beatings. Millicent was overjoyed to have a baby – someone she could love – but her joy was shortlived. They took her baby away and told her the infant had died – a lie only revealed when the two were reunited many years later.

The immense human tragedy of the stolen generations is made up of thousands of stories like Millicent’s.

The practice of forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families has a long and dishonourable history, dating back to the very beginning of European settlement in Australia. The early settlers often simply kidnapped children to work for them, as personal or domestic servants, or on the land. They were effectively enslaved: paid no wages and supplied with only the barest necessities of food, shelter and clothing. In the north of Australia, this type of thing was happening up to the early twentieth century.

While settlers stole children purely for personal gain, governments and churches came up with a range of ideological justifications for the practice of systematically removing children from their families. These justifications, though on occasion presented as in some sense “benevolent”, led to the same outcome for their Aboriginal and Islander victims – lives of misery and physical, cultural and spiritual deprivation.

The motivation of the missionaries and governments also reflect a deep underlying racism. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were seen as backward and barbaric, incapable of determining their own future and therefore without rights. They had to be “civilised”, their languages, culture and way of life destroyed, so that they could take their place – a subordinate one, naturally – in European society. Crucially, they were to be inculcated with European values and work habits so that they would be fit for service to the colonial settlers.

You didn’t have to scratch the surface very far to find the real motivations behind seemingly “altruistic” actions. In 1814, for example, Governor Macquarie funded a school for Aboriginal children. ............