Stolen Generations - Historical Debates Over The Stolen Generations

Historical Debates Over The Stolen Generations

Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the Bringing Them Home report, the nature and extent of the removals documented in the report have been debated and disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings and asserting that the Stolen Generations has been exaggerated. Sir Ronald Wilson, former President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a Commissioner on the Inquiry, has stated that none of the more than 500 witnesses who appeared before the Inquiry were cross-examined. This failure to cross-examine has been the basis of criticism by the anthropologist Ron Brunton as well as by the centre-right Liberal Party Federal Government, which was in power at the time that the report, commissioned by the previous Labour Party Government, was delivered. An Australian Federal Government submission has questioned the conduct of the Commission which produced the report, arguing that the Commission failed to critically appraise or test the claims on which it based the report and fails to distinguish between those separated from their families "with and without consent, and with and without good reason". Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned (critics often quote the ten percent estimate, which they say does not constitute a 'generation'), but also the intent and effects of the government policy.

In 2009, Keith Windschuttle published a 656-page book examining the claims of the Stolen Generations thesis, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three, The Stolen Generations, 1882–2008 (Macleay Press). His detailed analysis of the archival evidence concluded that "not only is the charge of genocide unwarranted, but so is the term 'Stolen Generations'. Aboriginal Children were never removed from their families in order to put an end to Aboriginality or, indeed, to serve any improper government policy or program. The small numbers of Aboriginal child removals in the twentieth century were almost all based on traditional grounds of child welfare." Windschuttle has put the entire book on the internet, along with other material.

Some conservative journalists, such as Andrew Bolt, consider the Stolen Generations is a "preposterous and obscene" myth or "theory" and "propaganda" and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children. Professor of politics at La Trobe University, Robert Manne, has responded that Bolt's failure to address the wealth of documentary and anecdotal evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations amounts to a clear case of historical denialism. Bolt argues that a key issue of the debate over the existence of a "Stolen Generations" is the identification of particular persons as having been "stolen" and further that it would require that it be substantiated that children had been "stolen" in such numbers as to justify inferring the existence of a policy to do so, as opposed to such cases being aberrations. He and other sceptics of the existence of such a child removal policy would require that the circumstances of the removal of such children be subjected to the standard of scrutiny found in a court of law or a similar investigatory standard, and that it be shown that they were "stolen" and not abandoned, given up or removed for legitimate reasons. Many documents in state archives detail the policies and events that come under the term "Stolen Generation".

In April 2000, controversy stirred when the then Aboriginal Affairs Minister in the conservative Howard Government, John Herron, tabled a report in the Australian Parliament that questioned whether or not there had been a "Stolen Generation", on the semantic distinction that as "only 10% of Aboriginal children" had been removed, they did not constitute an entire "generation". The report received media attention and there were protests. Dr Herron apologised for the "understandable offence taken by some people" as a result of his comments, although he refused to alter the report as it had been tabled.

The term "generation" was first used by historian Peter Reed. Robert Manne has stated that when we refer to the "generation that lost their lives in the First World War", we don't mean 50 per cent or 90 per cent of young people, but use it as a metaphor for a collective experience. Similarly, the Aboriginal community use the term to describe their collective suffering.