> If you think a genocide requires killing, that's fair enough, though it is
> at odds with the Geneva Convention:
>
> http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html#Article%202.5
My problem with that definition is that it is so broad as to render genocide meaningless, i.e. "(b.) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group." That could mean almost anything. (Don't these legalistic liberals know how to be specific?)
> What would you say the Australian policies were, when in the 1930s there
> children were being removed with the explicit intention of eliminating
> Aboriginal culture and identity? There is no question, I think, that this
> was the case. So was that a crime? What sort? The only place people have
> problems seeing this is genocide is Australia and in backwards places like
> the Northern Hemisphere.
In my opinion the "Stolen Generations" was the same kind of crime that was committed against the thousands of British "orphans" sent to settler colonies during the very same period and with the very same intent --- to make them obedient and capitalist-productive workers, in a society with a labour market with a long term, structural dearth of unskilled labour.
cf the British Parliament Select Committee on Health, 1998:
"11. Although the origins of British child migration as a settled and publicly promoted policy can be traced back to the reign of James I, the peak of child migration appears to have occurred at about the turn of the Twentieth Century. It is estimated that between 1868 and 1925, 80,000 British boys and girls were sent unaccompanied to Canada, to work under indentures as agricultural labourers and domestic servants.[6] Although estimates are very unreliable, the DoH cites figures of about 150,000 child migrants from Britain overall, of whom about 100,000 went to Canada, and the remainder to Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and other British dominions or colonies, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[7] The Child Migrants' Trust describes child migrants as "children generally between the ages of three and fourteen; the majority being between seven and ten".[8]
12. Child migrants in Canada were "entrusted to the care of farmers often without sufficient preparation or supervision".[9] By and large the children involved were destined to fill menial occupations and were very cheap or free labour.[10] Canadian witnesses laid great stress on the stigma which attached to being a 'Home Child', and told us that many former child migrants hid this fact even from their wives and children for many years, because of the shame which had been inculcated in them.[11] It has been claimed that 11% per cent of Canada's population is descended from British child migrants.[12] This figure is supported by Home Children Canada,[13] who also claim that 67% of the children sent to Canada were abused.[14] In 1925 a Canadian Order in Council banned child migrants aged under 14.[15] Child migration from Britain to Canada was not resumed after the Second World War.
13. Exact number of child migrants to Australia and New Zealand are not known, but it is thought that during the final period in which the migration policy operated, from 1947 to 1967, between 7,000 and 10,000 children were sent to Australia.[16] These children were placed in large, often isolated, institutions and were often subjected to harsh, sometimes intentionally brutal, regimes of work and discipline, unmodified by any real nurturing or encouragement. The institutions were inadequately supervised, monitored and inspected. During the same period 549 children were sent to New Zealand, mainly to pre-arranged foster homes[17] which often proved impermanent, and were also inadequately monitored." http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhea lth/755/75504.htm
and
"We heard of many examples of questionable practice used to expedite the process of migration. Some of the children involved regard themselves as having been "stolen".[41] "Deception was the name of the game" suggests one former child migrant.[42] The written evidence we have received contains many first-hand accounts of apparent deception. To persuade them to volunteer for migration, glamorous stories of life in Australia were told to children far too young to make rational decisions for themselves on such a momentous matter. The Child Migrants' Trust stated that:
"After being told fanciful tales of travel to the 'Land of Milk and Honey' where children ride to school on horseback and pick up fruit on the side of the road, child migrants were sent to Australia without passports, social histories or even the most basic documentation about their identities."[43] There was a lack of parental consent. A former child migrant from Northern Ireland wrote:
"I was very sad and angry knowing that I was one of the boys who was leaving, I was scared. My mother was never told what was going on."[44] http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhea lth/755/75507.htm
[ I guess many would see those British "orphans" as having the "same culture" as the societies to which they were sent. If so they should talk to the people --- British and Aboriginal --- I have met who underwent that experience. Is being taken from your family and community as a child and being entrusted to people of dubious character any less painful, if you are sent to a culture which speaks the same language? The Select Committee again: ]
"A former child migrant we met in Perth had earlier written to us listing numerous mental, physical and sexual outrages against him, particularly at Bindoon, an institution run by the Christian Brothers in Western Australia. He wrote: "I am reminded of these experiences everyday of my life, however hard I try, I simply cannot forget".[52]
47. Our trip to Australia enabled us to hear about life at these large institutions. We are appalled at the apparent lack of proper monitoring and inspection. On arrival in Australia children became the responsibility of the authorities there as 'wards of the state'. The prime responsibility for the neglect of checking procedures rests with the state governments concerned. But the sending agencies might have been expected to have investigated more thoroughly the conditions in which children were living ...
48. We have reflected very carefully on what it must have been like for young, frightened and vulnerable children in an alien environment, thousands of miles from home. As one former child migrant put it: "no one ran away as you had nowhere to run to".[54] This comment came from an ex-resident of a Fairbridge Farm School, an institution which he described as being "worse than a prison".[55] Fairbridge Farm Schools have been likened to tough boarding schools and a number of former child migrants we met were grateful for their time there. One active Old Fairbridgian described it as being like a "military regime" and declared that it had not done him any harm at all. But this was not everyone's view, and we also heard much criticism of life in Fairbridge institutions.[56]
49. The worst cases of criminal abuse in Australia appear to have occurred in institutions run by agencies of the Catholic Church, in particular the Christian Brothers (especially the 'Boys' Town' at Bindoon, north of Perth, although we heard grim stories about Clontarf, Tardun and Castledare as well) and the Sisters of Mercy (especially the orphanage at Neerkol in Queensland, and also Goodwood Orphanage in South Australia).[57] The Sisters of Mercy were frequently described to us as the "Sisters without mercy", just as the Christian Brothers were often described as the "Christian buggers"." http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhea lth/755/75507.htm
* * *
In fact, in some cases the Aboriginal children concerned in the "Stolen Generations" were also members of Christian, English-speaking, working class families, who happened to have darker skin than their neighbours. So it wasn't even as if their "culture" was destroyed --- it was individual families which were destroyed. As I've said before the biggest damage to both Aboriginal cultures and to Aboriginal populations was done long before the "Stolen Generations". The focus on "culture" actually detracts from far more serious physical and psychological abuse which was committed.
regards,
Grant.