Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Stolen generations (Australia)'

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- La Trobe University, 2006.
Research. "A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, La Trobe Law, Faculty of Law and Management, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria". Includes bibliographical references (leaves 318-338). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This thesis focuses on processes of Aboriginal community-making in Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney, Australia. It addresses the ways in which the Australian state governs Aboriginal people by developing 'projects of legibility' (and illegibility) concerning Aboriginal community sociality. To address Redfern Aboriginal community-making requires focusing on the ambiguities arising from the contemporary policy of 'Aboriginal self-determination' and adopting an ethnohistorical approach to Aboriginal community-making that has arisen under this policy rubric. By ethnohistorical I refer to the engagement of Aboriginal people in Redfern in Aboriginal community-making policy practices and not a historiography of these policies. Attention will be paid to past and present negotiations concerning the (re)development of the Redfern Aboriginal community and their intersections in the state-led redevelopment process Aboriginal community- makers were engaged in during the course of my research in 2005-2007. These negotiations centre on attempts made to reproduce certain forms of sociality that both reveal and obscure Aboriginal social relations when inscribed in the category 'Aboriginal community'. This analysis is meant to contribute to the limited anthropological research that exists on urban Aboriginal experiences generally and research conducted on Aboriginal experiences in southeastern Australia. It addresses the complex social field of Aboriginal community-making practices that exist in Australia where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians are located within the bureaucratic structures of the state, institutional networks, as well as non-government community organisations. This research contributes to understanding 'the institutional construction of indigeneity' (Weiner 2006: 19) and how this informs the (re)development of urban Aboriginal communities.

In August 2000, Justice O�Loughlin of the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision in Cubillo v Commonwealth in which Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner took action against the Commonwealth Government, arguing that it was vicariously liable for their removal from their families and communities as children and subsequent detentions in the Northern Territory during the 1940s and 1950s. The case is the landmark decision in relation to legal action taken by members of the Stolen Generations. Using the decision in Cubillo as a key site of contestation, my thesis provides a critique of legal positivism as the dominant jurisprudential discourse operating within the Anglo-Australian legal system. I argue that the function of legal positivism as the principal paradigm and source of authority for the decision serves to ensure that the debate concerning reconciliation in Australia operates rhetorically to maintain whiteness at the centre of political and discursive power. Specifically concerned with the performative function of legal discourse, the thesis is an interrogation of the interface of law and language, of rhetoric, and the semiotics of legal discourse. The dominant theory of evidence law is a rationalist and empiricist epistemology in which oral testimony and documentary evidence are regarded as mediating the relationship between proof and truth. I argue that by attributing primacy to principles of rationality, objectivity and narrative coherence, and by privileging that which is visually represented, the decision serves an ideological purpose which diminishes the significance of race in the construction of knowledge. Legal positivism identifies the knowing subject and the object of knowledge as discrete entities. However, I argue that in Cubillo, Justice O�Loughlin inscribes himself into the text of the judgment and in doing so, reveals the way in which textual and corporeal specificities undermine the pretence of objective judgment and therefore the source of judicial authority.

European expansion caused dramatic dislocation for Aboriginal populations in the landmass that became the state of Queensland. On the frontiers, violence, abductions and forced relocations occurred on a largely informal basis condoned by colonial governments. The introduction of protective legislation in the late nineteenth century created a formal state-directed legal and administrative framework for the forcible removal and institutionalisation of Aboriginal people. This became the cornerstone for policy direction in Queensland and remained so into the mid-twentieth century. This thesis traces the development of policies and practices of removal in Queensland from their beginnings in the nineteenth century through to their dismantling in the mid-twentieth century. There has been much historical research into frontier violence and processes of dispossession in Queensland. The focus of this study is the systematic analysis of archival data relating to the forced removals of the twentieth century. The study has its genesis in an Australian Research Council Strategic Partnership with Industry — Research and Training Scheme (SPIRT) grant. This grant enabled the construction of a Removals Database, which provides a powerful tool with which to interrogate available records pertaining to removals of Aboriginal people in Queensland. Removals were a crucial element in the gathering and exploitation of Aboriginal labourers during the twentieth century. They also constituted a major form of control for the departments responsible for Aboriginal affairs within the Queensland administration. Tensions between a policy of complete segregation and the demand for Aboriginal labour in the wider community existed throughout the period of study. While segregation was implemented to an extent in relation to targeted sections of the Aboriginal population, such as “half-caste” females, employer insistence on access to reliable, cheap Aboriginal labour invariably took precedence. Detailed analysis of recorded reasons for removals demonstrates that they are unreliable in explaining why individuals were actually removed. They show a changing focus over time. Fluctuations in numbers of removals for different years reflect reasons not officially acknowledged in the records, such as the need to populate newly created reserves and establish institutional communities. They tell us little about the situation of Aboriginal people, but much about the racial thinking of the time. This study contributes to our knowledge base about the implementation and extent of Aboriginal child separation in Queensland. A comprehensive estimate of the number of separations concludes that one in six Aboriginal children in Queensland were separated from their natural families as a result of past policies. Local Aboriginal Protectors (usually police officers) played a major role in the way that the policy of removals was implemented. Local factors often determined the extent of removals as much as policy direction in the centralised Office of the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Removals took place across vast distances, and the Chief Protector was often totally reliant on local protectors for information and advice. This meant that employers and local protectors could have a major impact on the rate of removals in a given location. Responses of both Protectors and Aboriginal people to the policy of removals were not always compliant. Some Protectors worked to ensure that local Aboriginal people could remain in their own community and geographical location. Aboriginal people demonstrated a degree of resistance to the policy and there are a numerous recorded examples of extraordinary human endurance where they travelled large distances in difficult circumstances to return to their original locations and communities. The policy of removals impacted on virtually every Aboriginal family in the state of Queensland and the effects of the dislocations continue to be experienced to this day.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Arts, Media and Culture
Full Text

"Sorry" is a play in two acts, exploring how collective memory of the past, including traumatic memory of being taken from one's family, affects the present in complex and surprising ways. The Stolen Generations' episode of Australian history, when mixed heritage Aboriginal Australians were taken from their families as a result of governmental policy, casts its shadow over four generations of Almadi Paice Aboriginal-Afghan-Anglo mixed heritage family members. Against a thematic backdrop of shame, apology and (hoped for) forgiveness, the 'living' family members struggle for empowerment and agency against the forces of government bureaucracy, the Law and their own emotional demons. "Shame and Apology in the Nation-State: Reflections and Remembrance" is an exegesis which explores theoretical concepts related to collective memory, shame, performative apology and forgiveness, interlinked with Jan Patočka's notion of individual responsibility towards action. Using reciprocal interview material with a number of Aboriginal-Afghan-Anglo mixed heritage participants, who have either had direct experience of being "stolen" or who are related to "stolen" family members, this exegesis explores alternative modes of remembering their past and present in creative art works. In addition, I theorise that in our contemporary "age of apology" political apology to particular wronged groups of national communities may be problematic not only for their ubiquity and their tendency to alibi but because they do not address other important issues such as reparation and guarantees against repetition; nor do they deny the sovereignty of the nation-state apparatus to ‘do’ apology in a manner and at a time of its own choosing. The exegesis explores the importance of national commemoration, such as ANZAC Day, in promoting national collective memory, and theorises that a collective annual commemoration on behalf of the nation’s "stolen" people would be a much more compelling reconciliatory act than a single apology by a particular prime minister. My short story, "We’re Ready", which immediately follows the exegesis is my creative attempt to demonstrate the towards action and towards national reconciliation gestured by annual commemorative performance.

On February 13th 2008, newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stood before the House of Representatives to move that Parliament apologise to the '‘stolen generations'’, the colloquial term for Aboriginal people from all parts of the country who as children had been forcibly removed from their homes and families and placed in state-run institutions or missions. Rudd'’s motion was one of his earliest acts as Prime Minister and earned widespread support. His predecessor John Howard had vigorously opposed a government apology on the grounds that current generations were not responsible for the policies of the past, and so carried no burden of guilt that warranted an apology...
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Centre for Public Cultures and Ideas
Full Text

In Australia, over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in child protection systems is increasing. The legacy of the stolen generation has led to grief, sadness and loss of identity for many people, and major disparities in health, education, employment and housing means that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families are more susceptible to child welfare interventions in the present and future. This makes it imperative that responses for these families are more effective, in order to achieve socially just outcomes. As well, Australia’s growing multicultural society has increased demand for services provided to people from diverse cultural backgrounds to recognise the impact and importance of culture and to respond effectively. Cultural competency, which focuses on developing knowledge, skills and values for cross cultural practice, has gained momentum. It aims to enhance the ability of workers to provide culturally relevant and effective responses to people from different cultural backgrounds. However, ensuring that practices in the human services are culturally appropriate, culturally safe, salient, and effective, has proved elusive.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Human Services and Social Work
Griffith Health
Full Text

Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2004.
Thesis submitted by Sally Marie Babidge, BA (Hons) UWA June 2004, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, James Cook University. Bibliography: leaves 283-303.

When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission tabled Bringing them home, its report into the separation of indigenous children from their families, it was criticised for failing to consider Indigenous child welfare within the context of contemporary standards. Non-Indigenous people who had experienced out-of-home care also questioned why their stories were not recognised. This thesis addresses those concerns, examining the origins and history of the welfare systems of NSW and Tasmania between 1880 and 1940. Tasmania, which had no specific policies on race or Indigenous children, provides fruitful ground for comparison with NSW, which had separate welfare systems for children defined as Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This thesis draws on the records of these systems to examine the gaps between ideology and policy and practice. The development of welfare systems was uneven, but there are clear trends. In the years 1880 to 1940 non-Indigenous welfare systems placed their faith in boarding-out (fostering) as the most humane method of caring for neglected and destitute children, although institutions and juvenile apprenticeship were never supplanted by fostering. Concepts of child welfare shifted from charity to welfare; that is, from simple removal to social interventions that would assist children's reform. These included education, and techniques to enlist the support of the child's family in its reform. The numbers of non-Indigenous children taken into care were reduced by economic and environmental measures, such as payments to single mothers. The NSW Aborigines Protection Board dismissed boarding-out as an option for Indigenous children and applied older methods, of institutionalisation and apprenticeship, to children it removed from reserves. As non-Indigenous welfare systems in both states were refined, the Protection Board clung to its original methods. It focussed on older children, whilst allowing reserves to deteriorate, and reducing the rights of Aboriginal people. This cannot simply be explained by race, for Tasmania did not adopt the same response. This study shows that the policies of the Aborigines Protection Board were not consonant with wider standards in child welfare of the time. However, the common thread between Indigenous and non-Indigenous child removal was the longing of children and their families for each other.

The 1938-1940 Report of the Aborigines Protection Board, and the hearings and minutes of evidence that led up to it, discussed a dual track policy for the state approach to Aboriginal people.1 First, to “preserve” “full blood” Aboriginal people by relocating and isolating the residents of a number of reserves onto a single “giant reserve,” under the supervision of one white man. Second, was “assimilation of the [non-reserve] aborigines into the general community.”2 The giant reserve was never created, but there were mergers between reserves which entailed the forcible relocation of entire Aboriginal communities from one location to another. Commenting on these relocations in 2005, co-founder of Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service and one-time resident of Angledool Reserve, George Rose, wrote: The moving of Angledool – it was deeper than what people thought. It was the first step to destroying our Aboriginal culture… even I could see that, as a 13 year old. I could see that by combining the three tribes they were destroying the cultures.3 So, thirteen-year-old George Rose recognized that the mergers were an existential threat to Aboriginal cultures: that “preservation” brought destruction. And the Aborigines Protection Board recognized that there was something to preserve in Aboriginal culture, but failed to understand what and how. What did George Rose recognize? What is a culture? What was wrong with the colonial “preservation” policy and why did it destroy that which it nominally sought to protect? What, in short, sustains colonialism? There is a significant body of excellent anthropological, sociological, and historical scholarship on this topic, but less in the way of philosophical discourse. From a philosophical perspective, we can begin to identify and unpack what is at the core of these questions. From a philosophical perspective, they become questions of the what it means to be human in relation to other humans, and to be humans-in-relation in a colonial context. We can ask what it means to be differently, and what the possibilities of relation with others are. George Rose was a Yawaalaraay man, born on a reserve. He and his mother, Linda Fernando, were both forcibly removed from their families during their youth and sent to boarding houses.4 They, among many others, were subjected to a colonial attempt at erasing their identity, their difference from the colonial concept of being a modern human. George Rose’s life of activism can be read as a response to this colonial imposition, an attempt to make others recognize what he recognized at thirteen. Using a philosophical lens, we can ask the question at the heart of this thesis: what is the relation between recognition and colonialism?

Running title: Dispossession, Social Suffering, and Survival. --- Abstract: Aboriginal people in Australia continue to fare worse across the broad range of social, economic, and health indicators. One response to fostering Aboriginal empowerment has been through community arts and cultural development–a creative and participatory methodology for working in and with communities. The current research examined the stories shared by Aboriginal Elders as part of the Bush Babies project, and in conversational interviews with four Aboriginal Elders who participated in the project. Aboriginal storytelling through the project and in the context of the research was conceptualised as a site to examine and challenge power as part of a transformative psychosocial praxis (Sonn, Stevens, & Duncan, 2013). Informed by contextualist constructionist epistemology and critical theory, the current research adopted narrative inquiry to examine the stories shared by Aboriginal Elders in explaining the past, present, and possibilities for the future and in constructing what it means to be Aboriginal/Noongar in the present. Rappaport’s (2000) model for conceptualising personal stories, community narratives, and dominant cultural narratives, and writing on counter-stories/storytelling informed analysis of the stories. Three broad community narratives were identified in the Bush Baby storytelling. Drawing from both historical memory and the living memory of the Elders, the stories highlighted the circuits of dispossession in the lives of Aboriginal people. Elders not only narrated historical forms of violence and injustice, but also the continuity of structural and cultural forms of violence, and the ongoing disregard for Aboriginal people. The Elders’ stories also showed the destructive and cumulative psychosocial impacts of social suffering for individual subjectivities, communities, and across generations. Importantly however, the stories also pointed to the various ways Noongar/Aboriginal people have resisted oppression and the resources that have been central to cultural continuity and survival. Told from positions of alterity, the Elders’ stories provide insights into the oppression, resistance and change. Through these stories, we are called upon to bear witness to social injustices, past and present, but also to the stories of strength and survival, which counter the common depictions of dysfunction and despair, and play an important role in affirming identity and ensuring cultural continuity. These stories are thus important both with and beyond Aboriginal communities. Community psychologists can play an important role in supporting Aboriginal communities to tell their stories. Yet working at the cultural interface requires ongoing vigilance.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
This thesis is the examination of stories of women taken from their families of origin as part of an assimilation process carried out in Australia. What is unique about the women’s stories in this thesis is the identification of a process of disturbance deliberately enacted upon them with the goal of shifting their identity away from what it would have been if they had been able to stay within their family of origin. It is the main premise in this thesis that there was a deliberate process of disturbing the body, minds or psyche as well as the lived culture of these women. Hence, through body, mind as well as cultural dysphoria, Stolen Generations are challenged to construct an identity.

Robert Kegan says that sacred leadership is a particular order of consciousness that applies to people who have navigated their emotional stages of development to become individuals who go beyond the ego to become ‘sacred’ in their thinking and being. They are leaders who motivate and inspire others to follow them. In Aboriginal communities in Australia, Elders have always been considered leaders because of similar qualities to those espoused by Kegan and other western sacred and visionary leadership theorists. Indigenous researchers and writers in the field express the wisdom of our Elders as leaders in our language that espouses similar theories of sacredness. This thesis examines Elders as sacred leaders through the process of their development in Aboriginal culture, education and experiences and analyses that through the western and Indigenous leadership theoretical lens. The research was undertaken utilising Robert Kegan’s theories of western leadership, in particular, his work on higher levels of thinking in transformational leadership from an educational psychology perspective and Erik Erickson’s Stages of Human Development in addition examining the research of Indigenous leadership researchers and writers internationally and nationally. In addition, to explain the transformative processes of achieving higher levels of thinking when one’s development is arrested through colonisation, violence, abuse, dependency and acculturation, the thesis seeks to find what practices or events in cultural development supported an individuals’ movement through the levels of thinking to sacred leadership based in these theories. The thesis examines whether these western theories have any application, correlation or parallels in Aboriginal culture. Utilising an Indigenous research methodology, four Aboriginal storytellers on their Roads to Eldership describe their life’s journeys which are then analysed to ascertain their development stages, levels of thinking, and their values and motivations as leaders and Elders. The aim is to ascertain whether these storytellers have achieved higher levels of thinking on their road to Eldership, through navigating their stages of development, and overcoming any arrested development experiences, challenges, adversities and their transformational actions. Furthermore, the thesis shows how Tjukurpa Pulka - following the Law in action, and the inclusion of cultural and ceremonial life - contributes to healing arrested development and enables development to Eldership and the choice to move onto become visionary and sacred leaders. On the basis of my findings, the stories told, point to a contemporary practice of an ancient form of leadership development that mirrors the qualities and traits of higher levels of thinking. It shows how sacred leadership levels can be achieved through participation in cultural life, living in the Tjukurpa – the Law and spiritual business – and engaging in ceremonies, service to community, visioning and healing recovery processes. This study is important to show that Aboriginal culture has had a generational process of educating children and young adults with the vision of creating Elders as leaders who can serve their communities and it crosses clan groups because of the impacts of separation through colonisation. The research has a contribution to make to the maintenance of Aboriginal cultural knowledge specifically and to understanding the oral teachings and learnings of an ancient culture, as well as showing how this information can be applied to leadership development and theory in the present modern world.