From Racial Assimilation to Cultural Identity: changing views on the adoption of Aboriginal Children

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From Racial Assimilation to Cultural Identity
changing views on the adoption of Aboriginal
Children

• Christine Cheater
• University of Newcastle

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White people have never been able to leave
Aborigines alone. Children particularly have
suffered. Missionaries, teachers, government
officials, have believed that the best way to
make black people behave like white was to get
hold of the children who had not yet leaned
Aboriginal lifeways. They thought that
childrens minds were like a kind of blackboard
on which European secrets could be written

• Peter Read, A Rape of the Soul so Profound the
  return of the stolen generations, 1999, p 49

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Field of Handsa show of reconciliation for the
Stolen Generations

• It is impossible to talk about the adoption of
  Australian Aboriginal children without addressing
  the issue of the stolen generations
• Policies on the removal of indigenous children
  from their families determined whether children
  could be adopted and in what circumstances
• Even today the effects of these policies
  influence discussions about Aboriginal child
  adoption especially the demonising of adoption
  practices and of white adoptive parents

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Assessing the number of stolen children

• Records of the number of children removed from
  their families are poor
• Partly result of the number of agencies involved
  state governments, missionaries, Aboriginal
  Protection Officers, Aboriginal Protection Boards
• No records kept by some missions and protection
  boards, state records patchy
• Multiple placement records often lost
• Assessing the number of adoptions even harder
  because of
• confused figures on fostering and adoption
• children not recorded as being of Aboriginal
  descent
• To date historians have relied on oral
  testimonies -with their findings being fed into
  government inquiries such as the Bringing Them
  Home Report

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Conclusion of the Bringing them Home Report

• Nationally we can conclude with confidence that
  between one in three and one in ten Indigenous
  children were forcibly removed from their
  families and communities in the period from
  approximately 1910 until 1970. In certain
  regions and in certain periods the figure was
  undoubtedly much greater than one in ten. In
  that time not one Indigenous family has escaped
  the effects of forcible removal (confirmed by
  representatives of the Queensland and WA
  Governments in evidence to the Inquiry). Most
  families have been affected, in one or more
  generations, by the forcible removal of one or
  more children

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What happened to the children?

• Media coverage of the stolen children has focused
  on the removal
• Portrays close to two hundred years of child
  removals as a uniform process - children carried
  off by white men, never to be seen again
• What happened to the children after the removal
  varied according to the
• Childs gender
• Childs age
• Contemporary racial politics

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What happened to the children?

• Generally
• Over 80 of the children were institutionalised
• Before the 1940s the majority of removed children
  were half caste girls children usually over 7
  years
• Gender ratios reversed by the mid 1950s
  preference for removing infant children
• Less then 17 were put up for adoption
• Most adoptions by white parents occurred in the
  1950s and 60s

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Why no adoptions before the 1950?

• Pre 1950s adoption was not an option
• Authorities actively discouraged formal adoption
• Focused on restricting contact between black and
  white people particularly contact between white
  men and black women
• Focused on training children for roles suited to
  their racial temperament domestic service for
  girls and station hands for boys

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Why adoptions during the 1950s and 60s?

• In the 1950s policies shifted from racial
  solutions to the Aboriginal problem to cultural
  solutions
• Moved from a gradual absorption of the Aboriginal
  race by the white race to a policy of guided
  assimilation
• Assimilation has been described as the process of
  making the not us more like us
• During the Menzies era this meant conforming to
  the middle-class ideals of home ownership, father
  with a stable job, stay at home mother, self
  reliance and respectability

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Hasluck visiting an indigenous classroom in the
NT

• Under Paul Haslucks assimilation policies
  Aboriginal people were to be given equal rights
  the right to vote, equal access to welfare
  payments and education eventually
• Aboriginality seen as an impediment to attaining
  these rights
• Aboriginal people had to learn to live like white
  people

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Assimilating children

• Under assimilation the number of children removed
  increased
• Authorities removed children for alleged neglect,
  juvenile delinquency or because their mothers
  were deemed unfit
• As well as protection officers children could be
  removed on the advice of welfare workerss,
  teachers, ministers of religion, police officers
• Depending on their age, the children were
  institutionalized, fostered, adopted, or
  subjected to a series of multiple placements that
  sometimes culminated with them being sent to a
  reformatory.
• The children most likely to be adopted were
  light skinned infants who authorities
  determined would be better off if they were
  raised in the white community

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Reasons why adoption became popular

• Overcrowding in institutions
• Recognition of mother / child bond
• Social importance of having children
• Rise in the acceptance of adoption as a way for
  infertile couples to have a family
• Campaigns promoting the fostering and adoption of
  Aboriginal children

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Impact of Adoption on Aboriginal communities

• Adoption was the logical solution to the
  assimilation of Aboriginal children
• It cut the link between children and their
  culture the children were lost to their
  communities
• This did not happen with institutionalised
  children who maintained links with other
  Aboriginal people
• It is the reason why adoption has become such a
  big issue for the stolen generations
• Adoption was the practice Ronald Wilson had in
  mind to when he called indigenous child removals
  cultural genocide

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Impact of Adoption on Aboriginal Children

• its a triple theft because theres no files
  you can have access to so its a complete denial
  of not only any other history or family at all,
  but also a complete denial of Aboriginality and
  your Aboriginal history. It also robs you of the
  company and support of any other Aboriginal
  people kids or adults that could help
  counteract all the different insidious forms of
  racism against what I am, that is Aboriginal
• (Interview take by Link Up)

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1st Australian Conference on Adoption

• The issue of loss of cultural identity was
  addressed at the 1st Australian Conference on
  adoption
• Held in 1976 this conference was influenced by
  the widespread questioning of welfare practices
  that occurred during previous decades
• Delegates suggested that the rights of the child
  and those of the relinquishing parent(s) should
  be consider in the adoption process
• Aboriginal delegates called for an end to the
  placement of Aboriginal children with white
  families by white adoption officers
• At the second conference (1978) delegates agreed
  that it was essential for adults to know their
  cultural origins and that adoption practices
  should be altered to accommodate this

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Conclusions

• Adoption played only a small role in the tragedy
  of the stolen generations
• But it was a practice that tore the largest hole
  in Australian Aboriginal society
• Adoption removed children from their communities
• Many never returned and some, to this very day,
  may not be aware of their Aboriginal identity
• Because of the secrecy surrounding adoption,
  inaccurate records and official deception the
  exact number of Aboriginal Australians adopted
  out may never be known