Talk:Cape Barren Island (Tasmania)

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[edit] PLEASE NOTE

This is a talk page specifically about relating to an island. If you have a need to write lengthy polemic, wikipedia entries are not for you. Try somewhere else! Places that you should be directing your problem/opinion should be the talk page of: Stolen Generation or similar pages.

If you have difficulty understanding what Wikipedia is, please take time to read the introduction for new editors to see that what you have written below is inappropriate at least for (a) what a talk page is (b) NPOV, (c) References (d) signing entries -= along with a number of obvious misunderstandings about wikipedia.SatuSuro 01:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unsigned note on Article Page and Talk Page as follows

- 10:41, 3 August 2006 Kermac (Talk | contribs) (Reference to "Stolen Generations" queried)
-00:02, 16 August 2006 203.166.254.32 (Talk) (Another response inserted and unsigned)

The article on Cape Barren Island states:

"During the Stolen Generation policy of the Australian Federal Government, children of the islanders were taken away from their parents in order that their 'blackness' be taught out of them".

I believe this is incorrect. The Australian Federal Government never had a "Stolen Generation" policy, and to claim that it did is to ignore the facts. First, aboriginal communities and issues have always been administered primarily by state and territory governments (eg the Government of Tasmania), not the federal government.

Second, while in recent years the federal government has taken over certain aspects of this administration and an overall coordination role, it has never had any responsibility for the removal of children from parents, aboriginal or non-aboriginal. This was always, and remains, a responsibility of state and territory governments.

Third, the term "stolen generations" arose from an enquiry by the late High Court judge and human rights campaigner Sir Ronald Wilson and the subsequent report titled "Bringing Them Home" (released in 1997). The report almost immediately became popularly known in certain sectors of the Australian community as "The Stolen Generations Report", although many believe the report is poorly-researched, inaccurate and misleading, and the popular name polemical. In particular, while the report encouraged a large number of persons of aboriginal descent to seek compensation from governments for the effects of forcible removal from their parents, not a single litigant has succeeded in proving that their removal (where indeed they were able to establish they had been removed at all) was for reasons other than the best intentions of the relevant authorities, however those intentions may be interpreted 50 or 80 years later.

-- I believe that many find the report well-researched and accurate. It is ill-thought to write that a High Court judge could write such a poor document unless the reader had already taken the position to dismiss what is contained in the pages because of the criticism. The process in writing the report was long, took time with many researchers going around Australia to interview members of the stolen generation. I find the above paragraph rather dismissive. Nevertheless, the black history of Australia is a difficult one as for the most part, has been unwritten and because of this, difficult for people to accept that what happened, happened.

And finally, I do not believe it has ever been established - by Wilson or anybody else - that reasons for removing children included "in order that their 'blackness' be taught out of them". Rather the unfortunate children at the centre of this enquiry had been abandoned or were not receiving sufficient care to sustain life and health; or they had been rejected by their community (usually on the grounds that they were of mixed blood) and were in physical, mental or moral danger; or they were given up by one or both parents so they might receive an education, or perhaps to improve their chances in life. However, there may well have been individuals within governments, as well as individual government officers, who at different times down the early years of the 20th Century espoused this as a reason for removing children from parents.

-- The CBI residents are mixed-race. This was known by all levels of government by the mid-1950s. Since CBI is such a small community and with several generations of whalers-aboriginal blood, the Stolen Generation policy was devastating to that community. A mere search on CBI amongst Hansard records reveals that. The Tasmanian aborigines have always been different from the mainland ones. You need to make that distinction because the above paragraph is not relevant to CBI residents. They were, for the most part, rejected and racially abused by the white community when some of them had to fly to mainland Tasmania to further their education leading to one of the islanders to criticise recent outers as "Tasmanian Aborigines" because they represented the people who gave him a difficult time (Source: ABC News 2005 - after the handover).

Unfortunately, the very phrase "Stolen Generations" generates enormous division in the mainstream Australian community, and has now so polarised the population (mainly across party political lines) that while those of a leftist persuasion tend to use the phrase habitually and accept its implications as an indicator of absolute truth, those of a more conservative bent often reject it out of hand. It has, regrettably, become a party political slogan which is far from being accepted into the general vernacular.

-- As it what happens when truth is politicised. I don't believe Abbott, Costello and Turnbull take the same stance as Howard on the Stolen Generation so I doubt very much you represent the general in the general vernacular. Good attempt though.

As a codicil to the above, it should be noted that state and territory governments (NOT federal) continue to remove children of all ethnicities from parents – usually not on any voluntary basis – where they believe the child may not be safe or properly cared for (by whatever standard). However, it is an unfortunate legacy of the controversy surrounding the removal of aboriginal children during the so-called “Stolen Generation” years that many children in aboriginal communities who may be “at risk” (howsoever defined) are now left in their communities whatever the danger to them.

This form of discussion does not belong on the article page - it belongs here on the talk page, please do not place unsigned comment on an article page it is not required SatuSuro 15:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)