Pedantics? Stolen or rescued? One thing is FOR SURE...there was NO Govt policy to strip black kids from functional family homes simply casue they were black. None. Zero. So why compensate?. If you think I must be wrong, and that the Government must obviously have checked the stories of the claimants before handing them cash, consider this: That under the Act under which these payments were given, no claimant has to prove they were taken for racist rather than welfare reasons. It is enough that they were brought up by whites, even if it was to save their lives. From the Stolen Generations Act: An applicant must: 1. be an Aboriginal person within the meaning of the Aboriginal Lands Act 1995 2. have been living on October 16, 2006, and 3. have been admitted or declared as a child of the State, or a ward of the State, under the Infants Welfare Act 1935 or the Child Welfare Act 1960; on or before December 31, 1975, and remained a child of the State, or a ward of the State, for a continuous period of 12 months or more, and not in the care of an Aboriginal family during that period. Their own children can also get payouts. In fact, the raw data alone suggests no policy at all in Tasmania of removing children from their parents just because they were Aboriginal: The child Aboriginal wards existing in various documented years from 1969 to 1995 was in the range 20 to 40 per year. Half or more involved ‘neglect’, other causes were law-breaking, uncontrollable, own protection, and voluntary. As a guide, by 1975, wards were 0.8% of the Aboriginal population. I can understand why some politicians prefer to throw “compensation” at the “stolen generation” rather than fight claims in court. It may save legal costs and it makes them feel “compassionate”. But there is a price to pay. The truth is being trashed, pride in our history destroyed, a victim culture created. And, of course, this “stolen generations” myth actually destroys the lives of children today… 3 stories of the stolenTasmanioan aboriginals who have been compensated. Three of the “stolen” Tasmanian Aborigines - Eddie Thomas, Heather Brown and Annette Peardon [- are] featured in Tasmanian Government ads. These are presumably the three people whose stories most clearly prove that Aboriginal children were stolen by racist officials from their families not because they were in danger, but because they were black. So what do these three say themselves of how and why they were stolen? Here’s Eddie Thomas: Thomas ... was taken from his grandmother when he was six months old. He and his brother and sister had been placed in her care when his mother died after his birth on Cape Barren Island, northeast Tasmania, in 1936. He believed his grandmother was duped into signing a consent form… Mother dead. Father unknown. Grandmother signs a consent form. Hmm. Here’s Heather Brown: Brown, 63, broke down as she recalled the day she and six other children were taken from her family home. “Those people just came through our home and got me - I ran, there were children running everywhere,” she said. “It happened all at once. I was dazed. I didn’t talk for months afterwards.” She still does not know why she was taken from her parents at Wiltshire Junction, northwest Tasmania, or why she was not allowed to see them or her siblings while she grew up in a succession of foster families. Even Brown says she doesn’t know why she was taken. So why assume she was stolen? Here’s Annette Peardon: The story that we’ve learned and from some files, the charge was neglect for most mothers that lost their children, or the children were actually taken from them, and the charge was neglect. I myself was removed from Flinders Island with my brother and my mother, who’s now deceased, was actually in prison for three months hard labour for neglect of children. Peardon says she can’t believe she was neglected, but at least concedes that this - not any racist policy to “breed out the color” - was the reason given for her removal. This, too, is no proof at all of a “stolen generation”. One further detail about Peardon. She says the decision to remove her from her mother was wrong, yet she herself removed her two eldest children: I gave my children to their non-Aboriginal father for their best interests at that time…
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 22:16:30 +0000
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