e 1960s ". A woman told how she was adopted by a white family, without her mother's knowledge, in 1973:
"I was taken off my mum as soon as I was born ... What Welfare wanted to do was adopt all these poor little black babies into nice, caring white families, where they'd get a good upbringing. I had a shit upbringing. Me and [adopted brother who was also Aboriginal] were always treated different to the others ... "
In 1964, Paul was stolen from the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne as a baby, when he and his mother were both ill. His mother was told his removal to a Babies 'Home was a temporary arrangement until she got better. But Paul was first made a ward of the State and then offered for adoption when the courts dispensed with his mother's consent. The adoption placement failed because the family was racist, and Paul was returned to an orphanage, subsequently being fostered until the age of 17. In this family too, he experienced cruelty, abuse and racism - which he didn't understand until he was discharged from State wardship. It was a bombshell. p> "In May 1982 ... the Senior Welfare Officer ... conveyed to me in a matter-of-fact way that I was of 'Aboriginal descent', that I had a Natural mother, father, three brothers and a sister, who were alive ... He placed before me 368 pages of my file, together with letters, photos and birthday cards. [His mother had never given up looking for him.] He informed me that my surname would change back to my Mother's maiden name ... "
The Home at Bomaderry in NSW, notorious for holding Indigenous children, was not closed until 1980.
And according to National Party MP Bob Katter - hardly a sympathiser of the Aboriginal cause - the removal of Aboriginal children, presumably under child welfare legislation, is still going on today in areas of Queensland and other parts of the country. So we are not talking about "ancient history" here, but a pattern of racist oppression which has continued in different forms from settlement right up to today.
In fact, Bringing them home devotes a whole chapter to "Contemporary separations". Though "assimilation" is no longer official government policy, there are still ways to break up Indigenous families and communities. Although Indigenous children and youth aged 10-17 accounted for only 2.7 per cent of the total youth population in 1993, they made up 20 per cent of the numbers in care, with the main reason cited as "neglect". In 1997, Indigenous children were almost six times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be removed from their families and placed in protective care, according to a survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (and in fact this was an underestimation, because NSW was unable to provide details on Aboriginality).
Of perhaps even greater concern is the juvenile justice system and the way it is administered in respect of Aboriginal youth. Indigenous youth (And adults) are routinely arrested for minor "offences" such as drunkenness, offensive language and so on, which when committed by whites lead to at most a caution. The Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody recommendation that these offences be dropped from the criminal code - like most of its other recommendations - was ignored.
A study by researchers from the University of Melbourne's criminology department found that over-representation of Kooris in the Victorian criminal justice system has worsened since the findings of the Royal Commission on Black Deaths in Custody in 1991. Between 1989-90 and 1993-94 the number of Koori "offenders" aged 17 and under jumped by 69 per cent, and the rate of charges against Kooris increased by 17.3 per cent over the same period. Kooris are 14.5 times more likely to be charged with being drunk than non-Aborigines and 10 times more likely to be charged with robbery.
After funding of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Services Association Inc was cut in 1996 (as a result of Federal government cuts to ATSIC), the number of young Victorian Aborigines in custody nearly doubled in less than a year.
In November 1996 Western Australia introduced a "three strikes" law which makes a minimum 12 month jail sentence mandatory for anyone - adult or juvenile - convicted of a third home burglary offence. Under this law, a 12-year old Aboriginal boy was jailed for a year for acting as a look-out. There was outrage in December 1997, when a magistrate jailed two Aboriginal children for (quite understandably) spitting at the racist MP Pauline Hanson. Fortunately, the public outcry led to their release.
In August 1995, a National Police Custody Survey illustrated, according to an analysis done by the Australian Institute of Criminology "the continuing heavy involvement of Indigenous children (compared to non-Indigenous children) in the criminal justice system, in pa...
