Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

free to keep in touch with their children and the children sometimes went home forholidays. Realistically, however, there was no likelihood that Indigenous familieswould have the material resources to ensure continuous regular contact.At the time these separations occurred Indigenous families may have expressedmore regret about losing their children in this way than the children felt at theprospect of such an adventure during their adolescent years. The children reflected onthe losses, as well as the gains, that their separation entailed only after leaving ormuch later.One interpretation of these offers is that the families were simply being given thesame opportunity to have their children educated as non-Indigenous families inAustralia, in a country where remoteness and small populations limit the kind ofeducational facilities that can be offered to all children. Another focuses on the powerrelationships between the makers of these offers and the families. Viewed in that waythere was clearly an element of duress. The offers were presented in such a way thatfamilies could not refuse them.Where the offer of education was linked to a threat if the offer were not acceptedthen the ensuing separation was clearly forced. For example, some parents were toldthat if they did not ‘consent’ to their children undertaking study elsewhere, then theirchildren would be removed on the ground of neglect. But generally the tenor andsurrounding circumstances of the offers are not that clear. The approach of the Inquiryhas been to include these removals where they were obviously connected withpressure of some explicit nature but not to assume they all occurred under duress.Undue influenceThe term ‘undue influence’ has a similar meaning to ‘duress’. An ‘influence’which is ‘undue’ is an influence ‘by which [a] person is induced not to act of his ownfree will’ (Concise Oxford Dictionary). At law the term means ‘any improper pressureput on a person to induce him to confer a benefit on the party exercising the pressure’(Mozley and Whiteley 1988 page 483). This definition is not entirely appropriateunless surrendering one’s child is viewed as ‘conferring a benefit’. However, theessence of the legal meaning is relevant: putting improper pressure on the family toinduce the surrender of the children.The relationship between the family and the ‘inducer’ must be one of ‘influence’.This criterion is readily satisfied in the case of the relationship between Indigenouspeople generally and government administrators and in the case of the relationshipbetween closed settlement managers and residents because of the latters’ dependenceon the former for their maintenance. It is also present in the relationship betweenspiritual adviser, be it priest or other missionary, and convert.There must be a question mark over the relinquishment of children to missions inthe circumstances described to us by the Lutheran Church of South Australia.Now, the initial motivation for parents to put their children in the [Koonibba] home or entrusttheir children to the care of the home was fear that the children might soon be taken fromthem, and it’s very evident that this very soon was replaced by a more positive outlook, that itwas as they saw benefits accruing for their children through being entrusted to the care of thehome, that they much more freely and gladly entrusted their children to the care of the home…