AULIA MAGHFIAH RAMADHANI

200512502039
ASSIGNMENT 6: AUSTRALIAN STUDIES | STOLEN GENERATION|
After watched the video I can conclude that Bringing them home: Seperation of Aboriginal
and Torres Straits Islander children from their families is a tragic history. This experience has
haunted them across several generations, has resulted in incalculable trauma, depression and
major mental health problems for Aboriginal people. First Nations people who were removed
were left with lifelong trauma and were never treated as equal to non-
Indigenous Australians.. The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families
was part of the policy of Assimilation, which was based on the misguided assumption that the
lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society. It
proposed that First Nations people should be allowed to ‘die out’ through a process of natural
elimination, or, where possible, assimilated into the white community. Policies focused on
assimilating children as they were considered more adaptable to white society than adults.
Children of First Nations and white parentage were particularly vulnerable to removal
because authorities thought these children could be assimilated more easily into the white
community due to their lighter skin colour.
They stole people human rights and freedom aboriginal rights and they don't get justice for
what happened. Grief and loss are the predominant themes of this report. Tenacity and
survival are also acknowledged. It is no ordinary report. The suffering and the courage of
those who have told their stories inspire sensitivity and respect. The histories they trace are
complex and pervasive. Most significantly the actions of the past resonate in the present and
will continue to do so in the future. The laws, policies and practices which separated
Indigenous children from their families have contributed directly to the alienation of
Indigenous societies today. For individuals, their removal as children and the abuse they
experienced at the hands of the authorities or their delegates have permanently scarred their
lives.
It is perhaps not surprising that so many non-Indigenous Australians have trouble seeing the
practices of removal as 'genocide'. The idea of genocide, at least in the popular imagination,
remains fixed on gas chambers and mass executions. But the drafters of the Genocide
Convention understood that the destruction of a culture and a people need not be so crude.
There are more insidious forms of genocide, like forced removals. Practice and interpretation
of the Genocide Convention since its drafting confirm this. Whether Anglo-Australians like it
or not, Bringing them Home correctly names the practice of forced removal for what it is: a
practice of genocide.