Week 6.4 Flashcards
Up to current time what was the justification for the stolen generation?
Focus on self-protection:
- Current NT intervention
- Current rates of foster care
Current rates of foster care for Indigenous children
More children are being taken today into foster care than during the Stolen Generations period
- Bringing them home report (1997) ~ 3000
- 2016 ~ 15,000
How is this perceived by some Indigenous people
Some indigenous people perceive this as creating a new stolen generation
Very early
Cambridge expedition to Torres Strait Islands, while Anthropological, they did test psychological aspects regarding sensation and [colour] perception
Psychological research in the past in Indigenous people was based on (2)
1) Origins in Social Darwinism
2) Focused on a deficit model
Social Darwinism
Social evolutionary theory that provides the scientific rationale for the preoccupation with the cognitive and social limitations of indigenous children and adults
Deficit model
Looking for deficits - looking for differences, but saying peak of evolution is European one because of their ethnocentric views
Psychological research often tried to explain differences in terms of…
Looking to explain it in terms of genetics
Negative impact of this type of research
- Type 1 error
- In a full-issue article on Australia that ran inNational Geographicin 1916, aboriginal Australians were called “savages” who “rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings” and were conceptualized as the “missing link’ in evolution
What deficits were focused on under the deficit model? (4)
- Cognitive deficits
- Motivational deficits
- Social deficits
- Community deficits
Cognitive deficits
Cognitive deficits explained difference in terms of genetic inferiority [primitive man] and subsequently in terms of cultural inferiority
Motivational deficits
Motivational deficits explained educational under-performance in terms of evolutionary divergence from European thinking
Social deficits
Indigenous adults were judged as inferior role models and incapable parents for their children (Social systems weren’t in place - weren’t organized; This culture does not lead to ‘appropriate thinking, family structures’)
Community deficits
Culturally inferior, lack of motivation, poor role models directly supported [and justified] the forced removal of indigenous children from their parents and the community [Government policy leading to the Stolen Generation]
