How we
tried to destroy
a culture
This man would walk and look at them like they
were some prized horse or something. He would look them over and as soon
as he saw someone with a light skin, he would just grab that person, the
little girl or the little boy, just grab them. And the mother would be
sitting there, crying her heart out, and kids would all be put on these
trucks and just taken.
Indigenous children were stolen from their families
since the early days of British occupation. The government policy (often
carried out by churches) continued until the 1970's. While the policy has
ended black children are still far more likely to be removed from their
families than white children, either by welfare or by the police.
The separation policies were based on the racist
fiction of "breeding the black out", but stolen children also represented
free labour to pastoralists and many were enslaved.
Other indigenous children were "cared for" by churches.
Many churches profited from stealing children as they were often granted
the land they had "cleared" of Aboriginal communities.
It is now recognised that any child (black or white)
who is removed from their family is more likely to come to the attention
of the police, more likely to suffer low self-esteem and other mental health
problems. They are more vulnerable to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Indigenous children who were stolen also lost their
land, their culture and their language. For the parents of stolen children,
their grief at the loss of their children has often been compounded by
a sense of guilt - that they could have done something more to protect
their kids.
The stolen children endured lives of poverty, neglect,
abuse and servitude. For many women who fell pregnant (often to their white
masters) their babies were taken from them immediately after birth and
the women were returned to "service".
As many as half of the indigenous people who have
died in police custody were stolen children.
It is estimated that at least 1 in 10 indigenous
people aged over 25 was removed from their families - in other words tens
of thousands of people.
Last year the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs,
Senator John Herron claimed that many indigenous people were better off
than they would have had been if they remained in their own community.
Aaron Ross, a gay black man who works for the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Commission said: "These things happened within
our living memory. People were stolen and herded onto trucks.
"We really have to get away from the sinister misunderstanding
that this is about some long dead past. For thousands of Aboriginal people,
the stolen generation was yesterday, and it is today."
The language
gap
Ngarranydja dhuwala yothu
baman'puy
Yolnguwa dhiyakuy wangapuy
nhakuna rawak dharpa gadayka
Ngarranydja dhuwala riyaia
gapu gangga liyaman nhina
I am a child of the
dreamtime people
Part of the land like the
gnarled gum tree
I am the river softly
singing. |
Nina tunapri mina karni?
That's Palawa Karni for Do you understand what I
am saying?
Palawa Karni is just one of hundreds of Aboriginal
languages which have survived despite two hundred years of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people being discouraged, if not forbidden from
speaking their own language. Palawa Karni is actually a composite language
that developed during the 1830s when T'asmanian Aborigines were incarcerated
in Flinders Island .
Palawa Karni allowed indigenous members of eight
different nations to speak to each other.
In many places around Australia efforts are being
made to maintain or revive Aboriginal languages. Jeanie Bell, an indigenous
linguist siiy;: "You don't have to be speaking your language daily for
it to be important to you. It's the whole feeling of knowing your language
is there and that you can go and pick up a book, or speak words and know
that it is your language... We can never get that from English, no matter
how well we speak it."
"Wangkangku culture kanyini manu culturengku wangka
kanyini. Wangka wiyaringkuntjala, culture kulu wiyaringanyi."
Lizzie Ellis of the Pitjantjatjara people just
said : Language maintains culture and culture maintains language. When
language finishes culture also finishes.
In the Torres Strait Islands (which lie between the
tip of Cape York and Papua New Guinea) most indigenous people are bilingual,
and many speak three or more languages.
Perhaps the best known Torres Strait Islander is
singer Christine Anu. Her first language is Kala Lagaw Ya/Kala Kawaw Ya,
although like most Torres Strait Islanders she speaks Torres Strait Creole,
a composite language.
The
cultural
chasm
Well-known dyke opera singer Deborah Cheetham is
a stolen child. She was raised by adoptive parents who told her that she
had been found in a cardboard box.
Cheetham had no idea she was an Aboriginal
woman until one night when she was performing in the lesbian cabaret Dykes
on Parade she noticed someone in the audience who looked just like her.
They spoke after the performance and realsied they had the same uncle,
singer Jimmy Little.
Her newly discovered cousin helped her find
her biological mother, Monica. Her operatic play White Baptist ABBA
Fan explores the chasm between her indigenous biological roots.
In an interview with the Sydney Star Observer
last September Cheetham said: "It's even more interesting when you're adopted
into a different culture. As an experiment, they were taking a child and
placing her in a different culture, to destroy the Aboriginal culture.
"When I met Monica, I couldn't handle it. All
of my images of Aboriginals were horrible. It wasn't until nine years later,
when the death of my youngest biological brother brought us together, that
I could handle it." |