The Stolen Generations

In a submission he co-wrote for the Human Rights Commission inquiry in 1996, Peter Read claimed the Aborigines Protection Board’s use of the terms ‘orphan’ and ‘neglected’ to justify many of its removals was misleading. ‘The vast majority of the children taken by the Board fitted neither category,’ the submission said, ‘they had mothers, fathers and other relatives who wanted to look after them.’[1] Read also contended that, in pursuit of their policy of attempted genocide, white officials used the different family rela­tionships and child-rearing methods of Aboriginal people as one of their reasons to remove their children.

The whites were so mesmerized by their own view of society that they could not perceive the value of alternative child raising methods, which were an integral part of the ‘non-existent’ black culture. One official wrote that the children of a certain woman at La Perouse should be seized because she kept leaving them with relatives for hours while she went shopping. He must have been unaware that such practices had been common since the white invasion, and probably for thousands of years before that. No granny, according to the whites, no cousin or auntie, could look after the children as well as the parents. As soon as the parents ceased to look after their children in the manner approved by officials, there was the opportunity for the children to be removed.[2]

While reading the Ward Registers, I looked out for this example from La Perouse but could not find it in any of the forms between 1907 and 1932. Read does not provide a reference for this incident or even give it a date, so I could not check the veracity of his claim. Nonetheless, there is enough data from the publicly available regis­ters to suggest that, even if it occurred at a later date, this would have been a most unusual reason for removal. To show this, we first need to examine the family status of those children who were removed from their parents, and then look at the reasons the government officers gave for why they took the action they did.

The Ward Registers recorded the names and addresses of a child’s parents, where they were known. If a parent was dead they recorded this too. They also recorded information about the child’s extended family, including the names and ages of its siblings, the names and kinship of other relatives, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and step-parents. This information allows us to compile a numerical table of the family relations of these children.

The accompanying table shows one thing fairly clearly. The majority of the separated children did not come from stable, two-parent families. Instead, they included a disproportionately high number of orphans and children from single-parent families. Table 2.4 is a record of the 631 families in the Ward Registers where there is enough information about family status to draw comparative data about family status. It records 134 orphans removed between 1907 and 1932 who comprised 21 per cent of the total. Another 209, or 33 per cent, were from single parent families. A total of 288, or 46 per cent, had two parents whose names and location were known to the board. Not all of this group were children of intact two-parent families, it should be noted, because a significant number of the forms record different addresses for the mother and father.

This profile reveals a high proportion of welfare dependency. More than half the families had no male breadwinner. One thing consistent in the history of social welfare is that welfare-dependent families, whatever their ethnic or racial background, suffer a much higher degree of family dysfunction than two-parent families with a male breadwinner. In other words, such a group profile should be expected to produce a higher number of children than normal who would need to be taken into care.

If this was so obvious, however, why didn’t the authorities adopt a more culturally sensitive policy? Why didn’t those responsible recog­nize the Aboriginal tradition of alternative child raising meth­ods: the use of grannies, aunties, cousins and other family members who, as Read says, could look after the children just as well as parents?

The data in the Ward Registers suggests that this option was not available in the majority of cases. Although the form asked for infor­mation about other relatives, as well as parents, they record that only 231 out of 800 separated children had known relatives who could have cared for them. That is, only 29 per cent of removed children were in this position. Having said this, I should point out that this figure should not be taken as entirely reliable since it may well have reflected not the reality of Aboriginal extended family relations but a lack of information, or lack of effort, by those who filled out the forms. Nonetheless, we can at least say that this par­ticular source of evidence does not support Read’s claims about the ready availability of extended family members to provide alternative child care.

Table 2.4: Family status of Aboriginal wards, 1907–1932

Source: Ward Registers, Aborigines Protection Board, State Archives of NSW. There is at least some information about the parental or family status of 759 children. However, because of the blank spaces left unfilled on the forms there is recorded information about both parents (known, dead or unknown) in only 627 cases.

* ‘Unknown’ means that the parent was either recorded as ‘unknown’ or ‘not known’ by whoever filled out the form, or the parent was named but his or her whereabouts were recorded as ‘unknown’ or ‘not known’ or similar. If no parent’s address was recorded or that section was left blank, the parent is not recorded here as unknown, since blank spaces sometimes meant a form had been left incomplete rather than the information was not known at the time.

Some of the oral history on the topic supports this inference. In some cases, the death of a husband or wife could lead the surviving spouse to deposit either all or some of the children with an institu­tion, while the remainder were left with members of the extended family. Ella Hiscocks, the matron of the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls’ Home from 1945 to 1967, recalled:

Occasional times, a parent would bring the children. In the Smith girls’ case, the father had died and the mother couldn’t manage and she brought them to the Home herself. There was one family of seven, too, the Wen­bergs, and the mother died. The father did it the right way and asked me to have the children. I had one of them here the other day — she came from Albury to see me. The aunt took the two boys and I had the other five children.[3]

In the case of orphans, it is not unreasonable to draw a firmer con­clusion. Of the 134 orphans in the files, the Ward Registers record that only 35 were known to have extended family members: in most cases a grandmother. The other 99 Aboriginal orphans appeared to be completely alone in the world.