Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Discrimination by non-Indigenous people and the refusal of Indigenous people tosurrender their lifestyle and culture were standing in the way. Consequently the definitionof assimilation was amended at the 1965 Native Welfare Conference to include anelement of choice.The policy of assimilation seeks that all persons of Aboriginal descent will choose to attain asimilar manner of living to that of other Australians and live as members of a single community(quoted by Lippmann 1991 on page 29).Following the successful 1967 constitutional referendum the Commonwealthobtained concurrent legislative power on Aboriginal affairs with the States. Since at leastthe 1930s Aboriginal and humanitarian groups had been urging the Commonwealth todisplay leadership on Aboriginal affairs. Although the Commonwealth did not haveconstitutional power until 1967 to legislate in respect of Aboriginal people it could haveinfluenced State policies by making grants of aid conditional on policy change. Howeverthe Commonwealth had been consistently wary of upsetting State sensitivities as well ascommitting itself to extra funding.This position changed after 1967. A federal Office of Aboriginal Affairs wasestablished and made grants to the States for Aboriginal welfare programs.‘Assimilation’ was discarded as the key term of Aboriginal policy in favour of ‘integration’,though precisely what this signified was somewhat unclear … Although these were significantchanges, they continued to operate through the established structures and organizations ofAboriginal policy, rather than in any way directly challenging them (Altman and Sanders 1995page 211).Self-management and self-determinationThe election of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972 on a policy platform ofAboriginal self-determination provided the means for Indigenous groups to receivefunding to challenge the very high rates of removal of Indigenous children. Aboriginallegal services began representing Indigenous children and families in removalapplications, which led to an immediate decline in the number of Indigenous childrenbeing removed. In Victoria the first Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency (AICCA)was started offering alternatives to the removal of Indigenous children.In 1976 a paper delivered at the First Australian Conference on Adoption directedthe attention of social workers to the large numbers of Indigenous children who werebeing placed by non-Indigenous welfare workers with non-Indigenous families. Thepaper drew on the experience of Indigenous services with children who had beenremoved and placed away from the Indigenous community. This practice wasinconsistent with the policy of self-determination and harmful to the Indigenous childrenconcerned.