Week 6.7 Flashcards
APS apology to Indigenous Australians (5)
- For exploitive and disrespectful practices that contributed to the erosion of indigenous culture
- For inappropriate use of assessment techniques that conveyed misleading and inaccurate messages about the abilities and capacities of ATSI people
- For developing treatments that both implicitly and explicitly dismissed the importance of culture in understanding and promoting social and emotional well-being
- For the societies silence and lack of advocacy on behalf of Indigenous Australians in the face of [Government] policies such as the forced removal of children from their families [stolen generation]
- For conducting research that benefited the careers of researchers rather than improving the lives of ATSI participants
Stolen generation
refers to Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families under Government laws/policies
Stolen generation involved (6)
- About 1 in 5 children were forcibly removed
- Over half the children were below five years of age
- Moved to missions, institutions or adopted by non-Aboriginal families
- For a select few [17%] were adopted to white families, widespread media stories showing how these children were better off [now considered racist]
- Media stories focused on being dressed in European clothing and school attendance - nothing on social-emotional adjustment
- No systematic evaluation of the [positive/negative] effects of these Government policies
Reasons/justifications given by Governments for this action Pre- 1930s
Pre-1930s - justification by government was to develop European values in Aboriginal children [ethnic cleansing]
Reasons/justifications given by Governments for this action 1930s-1940s
1930s - 1940s - justification by government was control reproduction of Aboriginal people by inter-breeding them with the non-Aboriginal population [eugenics]
Reasons/justifications given by Governments for this action 1950s-1960s
1950s - 1960s - increase assimilation [not integration - multi-cultural issues] to provide equality within the dominant [white] culture
Reasons/justifications given by Governments for this action 1970s to Rudd apology (2007)
1970s to Rudd apology - mainstream Australia insisting children were only removed for self-protection [neglect and abuse]
Reasons/justifications given by Governments for this action currently
Currently, using same child protection rationale for the current NT Intervention - although one of the original reports [indicating widespread sexual abuse of children] was written by a Canberra bureaucrat who did not visit or interview any one in the community he reported on
Short-term consequences - from Natural Inquiry into Stolen Generation (10)
- Many care-givers told their parents had rejected them, parents were worthless or parents were dead
- Children were forbidden to use their [indigenous] language
- Children had their culture denigrated [it was primitive, it had no value]
- Most children were exploited [non-paid labour] or abused [psychological and physical [including sexual]]
- When this was done to European children as an exercise - these parents and mainstream commentators said that this amounted to child abuse and the exercise should never be repeated
- Were paid to accept them, didn’t take them because they wanted to
(If had other children, discriminated against Indigenous children; Told Indigenous children that their parents gave them up; Had to work for food, even as adults - labour; Lots of abuse)
Outrage over ‘emotionally abusive’ Stolen Generation history lesson
A Sydney catholic school has been accused of emotionally abusing students after telling them they were being taken away from their parents as part of a lesson on the stolen generations.
Students at St Justin’s Catholic Primary School were distraught after being told the Prime Minister had written a letter informing the school that their parents would no longer be looking after them
It wasn’t until the end of the day that the class was told it was part on an indigenous history lesson.
They were then instructed to write down how the exercise made them feel, with emotional studies eventually returning home in tears.
Psychologists said you can’t do that - damage them for the rest of their lives but yet they were happy to take away Indigenous children
Long-term consequences - from Natural Inquiry into Stolen Generation (6)
- Minority participants told positive stories
- Most reported psychological and social damage
- Community - major impact on the cohesion of the Aboriginal [collectivist] culture (communities broken apart)
Individual:
- Denial of their heritage
- No contact with their families and the wider Aboriginal community
- Reported they did not belong to either the Aboriginal community or white society [severe impact on their sense of identity]
(loss of sense of self, No connection to Aboriginal to culture but also no connection to white culture because discriminated against)
There was no…
No evaluation
Along with financial exploitation, these children had what consequences … (8)
- Had lower educational achievement
- Lower levels of employment and under-employment
- Higher levels of poverty
- Increased self-harm [including suicide]
- Increases in all areas of mental ill-health
- Increases in substance abuse
- Increases in physical health problems [morbidity and mortality]
- Increases in anti-social [including criminal behaviour]
Inter-generational impact (4)
- These children [and the originally impacted Aboriginal communities] have developed
- Psychologically damaging parenting practices [lack of modelling]
- A raft of individual behaviour problems which has negatively impacted on the community civic engagement/participation
- High rates of learned helplessness and learned hopelessness - unresolved grief and trauma
