Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

adopted by an Indigenous person (Angus and Golley 1995 page 24).The harm which can accrue to Indigenous children in ‘inter-racial’ adoptive familieshas been recognised for almost two decades in Australia.The problems of identity confusion and alienation appear to be related to those situations whichplace the child in limbo. On the one hand the child senses he is not fully accepted by the whitecommunity into which he has been adopted, and on the other hand he is isolated from his ownAboriginal community. What tends to fill the gap then of isolation from his own community arethe often negative stereotypes of Aboriginal people commonly portrayed in the media, literatureand in some instances by the adoptive family. Through constant exposure to this conflict the childinevitably becomes alienated from both cultures (Atkinson 1983 page 165).There is evidence, both from within Australia and from comparable countries, thatinter-racial adoptions are more prone to breaking down than intra-racial adoptions. TheSouth Australian Aboriginal Child Care Agency estimated in the late 1980s that 95% ofAboriginal child/non-Aboriginal parents adoptions broke down and that 65% of thesebreakdowns occurred during adolescence or later teenage years ‘when their adoptiveparents were unable to cope with their problems of alcohol abuse, offending behaviour,drug abuse, depression, self-destructive behaviour, emotional stress and identity crisis’(Butler 1989 page 29). Especially predictive of future breakdown caused by the child’sdistress are parental denial or denigration of the child’s Aboriginality, racial prejudiceincluding harassment and taunts faced by the child at school which is not treatedseriously by the parents and denial of contact between the child and Aboriginal rolemodels (Atkinson 1983).Aboriginal children who are brought up by white families frequently face identity problems whenthey reach adolescence. White parents cannot understand their experiences and may reject thechild or fail to help him resolve questions of identity and conflict between black and whitecultures (Homes for Blacks 1976 page 161).The case of James Savage (birth name Russell Moore) is illustrative.Savage was taken from his young Aboriginal mother shortly after birth [in 1963] … Unknown tohis Aboriginal family, when only four days old, he was placed with the Savages, a whiteAustralian couple, who subsequently adopted him and then moved to California when Savagewas six and to Florida several years later. His adoptive family returned to Australia when Savagewas seventeen, leaving him to fend for himself in the United States. By the time of his murderconviction he already had a considerable adult and juvenile record dating back to his early teens,as well as a drug and alcohol problem.[Family friends testifying at his trial stated] that Savage was disciplined more than his adoptedbrother and sister, that he seemed afraid of his adoptive father, and that he seemed out of place asa black person among whites … [Psychiatric expert evidence was given to the effect that he wassubstantially impaired emotionally and had a personality disorder to which drug and alcoholabuse had contributed] (Cronin 1992 page 15).