February 12.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Children and families
An Indigenous boy’s childhood fears
The Alawa man Barnaby Roberts from the Roper River country in the Northern Territory recorded his childhood experiences in the 1960s. As a little boy he was terrified of white men and of being shot. He was never allowed to cry because his mother said the white men would hear and shoot them all. He was never happy, just worried all the time, frightened, running, hiding. His family was hunted from his father's country by the attacks of the stockmen: 'shoot 'em people like kangaroo, like bird'. His family was constantly on the move: 'all-a-time we go, we go, run away from white man and his bullet'. They had to cover their tracks or walk on grass and stones, and they were often too frightened to light a fire at night and had to eat raw meat. [1] There is nothing in these recollections to suggest the fear was exaggerated or that the experience was exceptional.
The reminiscences were recorded by Margaret Sharpe in 1966 and published in L Hercus and P Sutton (eds), This Is What Happened: Historical Narratives by Aborigines, AIAS, Canberra, 1986, p. 66.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War, pp. 116-117, 264, n.71.
____
“...a rupturing of tens of thousands of Aboriginal families...”
The official assimilation policy of postwar Australia saw a more fervent round of removals of Aboriginal children of mixed descent, which had been happening since colonial times. It only slowed by the 1960s. No overall statistic of the number removed is available, mostly due to a lack of continuous and consistent records, although searches are still being made. The controversial Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's [HREOC] Bringing Them Home report of 1997 estimated, in the face of a lack of records, that between one in ten and one in three Aboriginal children were removed from their family across the country between 1910 and 1970. Regional studies have come up with more satisfactory numbers. Peter Read has calculated from detailed government records that about 10,000 children, or 15 per cent on average were removed in New South Wales from 1899 to 1968. My research found that about 10 per cent on average were removed from 1899 to 1968 in Victoria. This was over 1000 children, but exact numbers are elusive due to the sparseness of the remaining records. The intensity of removals varied over that time, being greatest from 1940 to 1968, when the practice was stopped in Victoria. A Queensland public servant quietly claimed during the HREOC enquiry in 1996 that in Queensland over 6000 were removed since 1911, but this was quickly claimed to be an underestimate. [1] The number may prove to be in excess of 50,000 across Australia over a period of 70 years. Even though the children's material conditions and Western education have been improved by removal, even though some removals were necessary, and even though some people were thankful for it in retrospect, overall it was a disaster. The removal of children was massive and a racially driven psychological assault on 50,000+ individuals. It was a rupturing of tens of thousands of Aboriginal families, aimed at eradicating Aboriginality from the nation in the cause of homogeneity and in fear of difference.
See R. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, pp. 362-4; P. Read, A Rape of the Soul so Profound: The Return of the Stolen Generation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999, pp.25-31; Courier Mail, 21, 22 June 1996.
Acknowledgment: Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians – A History Since 1788, pp. 215, 400 n.59.