Wedgie wrote:Psyber wrote:However, I think our ancestors who created the "stolen" generation were often misguided not malicious, and at the time thought they were rescuing them from neglect and early death. In some cases they may even have been right - I couldn't guess at a percentage. The facts have been obscured as both sides of the argument scrabble to distort reality for political ends.
Hitler was misguided too.
No, Hitler had a deliberate plan of genocide for certain members of the community he chose to make scapegoats of for his own reasons.
I knew some aboriginal youngsters who had been successfully adopted into non-aboriginal families back in that era, and had good relationships with their adoptive parents. One of them was the younger sister of one of my older sister's school friends and I saw her often. A couple I met had later visited their homelands.
Sure there were also those taken out of religious bigotry too, to give them "a good Christian upbringing", and some of those adoptions were disastrous. Some of it may have been stupid in hindsight, but mostly it was not done with evil intent. Some may have died of Rheumatic Fever or Nephritis had they not been removed. Some may have been removed for evil intent - for example, by paedophiles or those acquiring servants - but usually the authorities then were naive rather than condoning of that.
To save the kids of Wadeye etc.
now, we may find some may have to be removed from that environment too, just as they are from neglectful or drunken or drug-abusing parents in our cities. That is not racism, it is legitimate child protection.
Rutter, following up John Bowlby's work on loss and maternal deprivation, pointed out that it is not who or what you lose, but what you have left that counts, but it is true that a transition of care rather than an abrupt dislocation is important. Unfortunately that work was done after all this had already happened.
