Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

2 National OverviewIn this Part we outline the laws, practices and policies of forcible removal ofIndigenous children in each State and Territory. This chapter briefly outlines the nationalbackground and thinking behind those laws, practices and policies.The questions this history raises for us to contemplate today, at the very least, are whatimplications it has for relations between Aboriginal and white Australians, and what traces of thatsystematic attempt at social and biological engineering remain in current child welfare practicesand institutions (van Krieken 1991 page 144).Throughout this Part it is necessary in the interests of accuracy to quote the languageof the times. Much of this language was and is offensive to Indigenous people. The terms‘full descent’ and ‘mixed descent’ were not used. Instead categories of ‘full blood’, ‘halfcaste’, ‘quadroon’ and ‘octoroon’ were applied. However, we use the terms ‘full descent’and ‘mixed descent’ to convey the policy and practice distinctions made at the timebetween what were perceived as quite different groups. The term ‘Indigenous’ was notused at the time either. We use that generic term throughout this report to include allAboriginal groups and Torres Strait Islanders.ColonisationIndigenous children have been forcibly separated from their families andcommunities since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia.Violent battles over rights to land, food and water sources characterised racerelations in the nineteenth century. Throughout this conflict Indigenous children werekidnapped and exploited for their labour. Indigenous children were still being ‘run down’by Europeans in the northern areas of Australia in the early twentieth century.… the greatest advantage of young Aboriginal servants was that they came cheap and were neverpaid beyond the provision of variable quantities of food and clothing. As a result any Europeanon or near the frontier, quite regardless of their own circumstances, could acquire and maintain apersonal servant (Reynolds 1990 page 169).Governments and missionaries also targeted Indigenous children for removal fromtheir families. Their motives were to ‘inculcate European values and work habits inchildren, who would then be employed in service to the colonial settlers’ (Ramsland 1986quoted by Mason 1993 on page 31). In 1814 Governor Macquarie funded the first schoolfor Aboriginal children. Its novelty was an initial attraction for Indigenous families butwithin a few years it evoked a hostile response when it became apparent that its purposewas to distance the children from their families and communities.Although colonial governments in the nineteenth century professed abhorrence atthe brutality of expansionist European settlers, they were unwilling or unable to stop theiractivities. When news of the massacres and atrocities reached the British Government it