Stolen Generations Flashcards
In the case of the lost generation, how did colonisers attempt to justify their behaviour?
Claims of benevolence. Authorities separated children from their families in order to ‘provide welfare and education’
What do you think this cultural genocide was driven by?
Deeply xenophobic fears of a growing Aboriginal population, and deeply sexists fears of white women being lost to the aboriginal man. Australia had become increasingly concerned with the ‘half-caste’ problem
Along with racist and political motives, what other things was this colonial violence driven by?
Economic desires- Canada. First nations often opposed settlers and construction of telegraph lines on their ancestral land, before the residential schools were established. ‘They came for the children’ speculates that the schools acted to break up communities so that the colonial government could seize land more easily.
How did they ensure that the indigenous groups were completely fractured?
Put siblings into separate schools - so that an entire generation would grow up with virtually no attachment to their community. This also meant they could not communicate with each other.
What sort of conditions did the children in residential schools have to deal with?
Low-quality teaching, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Makes it clear that education was not the priority. Very few children went on to higher education
When was the forcible removal of Canadian children into residential homes deemed to be a genocide?
2015
What did Bahadur Khan argue in relation to cultural genocide?
That cultural genocide could not be divorced from physical and biological genocide since the crimes were complementary in so far as they had the same motivations.
The Genocide Convention in 1998 came to a definition of genocide. Name a number of articles that genocide refers to.
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
As a result of these genocides, what long-term problems has this caused for the indigenous communities?
High infant mortality rates, restricted access to state healthcare etc.
Aborigines have a life expectancy 17 years shorter than that of white Australians
What actions did the Australian and Canadian governments take in order to overcome these wrongs?
AUS- $59million provided to create an archive to allow Aboriginals to find their lost families. Undertook an oral history project
CAN- created a list of missing children, allowed families to find their children. Canada took a more international outlook and looked to other countries for guidance on how to proceed. They wanted every territory in Canda to show commemorations.
Would you critique any of the attempts made by these governments?
The money they are awarding to individuals that have experienced the trauma of being forcibly removed should be matched in the amount given to communities to help tackle problems they still experience due to this cultural genocide. As Bryony mentioned, receiving larger sums of money could alienate members of poorer communities.
This needs to span generations
What is the place of oral history?
It could be beneficial, especially in the case of the Stolen Generations in Australia. Vital to extract information, as, without spoken testimony, significant volumes and detailed information would not have been revealed
What issues does Bain Attwood highlight in regards to oral history?
Spoken testimony is a difficult form of evidence for those historians keen to provide a factual authoritative account, and concepts such as collective hysteria
What shows that their main aim was not to educate?
Poor teachers, some were selected because they were bad/criminal
