Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

include recognising an Indigenous child, knowledge of local Indigenous culture andfamily relationships, ability to involve relevant Indigenous agencies from the start of theprocess and through all stages, sensitivity to the impact of the history of forcibleremovals on Indigenous people’s contacts with welfare officers, and a commitment to theprinciple of self-determination. Judges dealing with Indigenous adoptions, like judges inother situations involving Indigenous people, require training in Indigenous culture,values and relationships as well as Indigenous history, especially the history and impactsof forcible child removal, if they are to perform their roles adequately.ConclusionAdoption is contrary to Aboriginal custom and inter-racial adoption is known to becontrary to the best interests of Aboriginal children in the great majority of cases. Thetable above shows that adoption of Indigenous children has been reduced to or almost tonil in jurisdictions where the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle is entrenched inlegislation and welfare departments and adoption agencies are required to work withAboriginal and Islander child care agencies when placing Indigenous children. Where thePrinciple finds its only recognition in departmental policy, adoption of Indigenouschildren continues.GrahamI was adopted as a baby by a white European couple. They were married at the time.They couldn’t have children and they’d seen the ads about adoption and were keen toadopt children.There were seven of us altogether. They adopted four people and had two of their own.The first adopted person was Alex. He was white. The next one down from that isMurray who was American Indian. Next down from that was me, Graham. The nextperson down from that was Ivan and they were the five who were adopted into this whitefamily. The next two after that were their own.My adopted mother loved children and that’s why she wanted to do this so-called dogooderstuff and adopt all these children. After that, from what I can gather is she did thedirty on my adopted white father and they broke up. He walked out and started his ownlife, and she was left with seven children. Alex was 10 years older than me and he hadto take on many of the roles.Then from there on in, one by one we were kicked out at the ages of 13. It wasn’t herown family members [the two youngest] that were kicked out. It was the five that wereadopted. I must say Alex never got kicked out, although he suffered. He had to look afterus and he couldn’t go out and do what a teenager did and go roller skating or … So he