Part 3 Consequences of Removal
Chapter 11 The Effects
The EffectsWhy
me; why was I taken? It's like a hole in your heart that can never heal. Show
Actually what you see in a lot of us is the shell, and I believe as an Aboriginal person that everything is inside of me to heal me if I know how to use it, if I know how to maintain it, if I know how to bring out and use it. But sometimes the past is just too hard to look at. Evidence to the Inquiry presented many common features of the removal and separation practices. Children could be taken at any age. Many were taken within days of their birth (especially for adoption) and many others in early infancy. In other cases, the limited resources available dictated that the authorities wait until children were closer to school age and less demanding of staff time and skill. Most children were institutionalised more typically with other Indigenous children and with primarily non-Indigenous staff. Where fostering or adoption took place, the family was non-Indigenous in the great majority of cases. Because the objective was to absorb the children into white society, Aboriginality was not positively affirmed. Many children experienced contempt and denigration of their Aboriginality and that of their parents or denial of their Aboriginality. In line with the common objective, many children were told either that their families had rejected them or that their families were dead. Most often family members were unable to keep in touch with the child. This cut the child off from his or her roots and meant the child was at the mercy of institution staff or foster parents. Many were exploited and abused. Few who gave evidence to the Inquiry had been happy and secure. Those few had become closely attached to institution staff or found loving and supportive adoptive families. In this Part we detail the evidence and the research findings relating to the effects of these experiences. The Inquiry was told that the effects damage the children who were forcibly removed, their parents and siblings and their communities. Subsequent generations continue to suffer the effects of parents and grandparents having been forcibly removed, institutionalised, denied contact with their Aboriginality and in some cases traumatised and abused. It is difficult to capture the complexity of the effects for each individual. Each individual will react differently, even to similar traumas. For the majority of witnesses to the Inquiry, the effects have been multiple and profoundly disabling. An evaluation of the following material should take into account the ongoing impacts and their compounding effects causing a cycle of damage from which it is difficult to escape unaided. Psychological and emotional damage renders many people less able to learn social skills and survival skills. Their ability to operate successfully in the world is impaired causing low educational achievement, unemployment and consequent poverty. These in turn cause their own emotional distress leading some to perpetrate violence, self-harm, substance abuse or anti-social behaviour. I've often thought, as old as I am, that it would have been lovely to have known a father and a mother, to know parents even for a little while, just to have had the opportunity of having a mother tuck you into bed and give you a good-night kiss - but it was never to
be. It never goes away. Just `cause we're not walking around on crutches or with bandages or plasters on our legs and arms, doesn't mean we're not hurting. Just `cause you can't see it doesn't mean ... I suspect I'll carry these sorts of wounds `til the day I die. I'd just like it to be not quite as intense, that's all.
The effects of separation from the primary carer
AttachmentThe quality of an individual's future social relationships is profoundly affected by a baby's first experiences (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 34). As early as 1951, John Bowlby identified infant separation from the primary carer and institutionalisation as causally connected to a variety of psychiatric disorders in adulthood ranging from anxiety and depression to psychopathic personality (Bowlby 1951, Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 34). The reason for this seems to be that the primary carer was not replaced by a person with whom the child could form a loving attachment. (This is not to deny that sometimes the infant's primary care-giver poses risks to the child and must be replaced.)
The biological `purpose' of an infant's instinct to form an attachment is `to provide emotional security and social autonomy'. The relationship between an infant and his or her primary carer has been described as `a secure base (a) from which to explore and learn about the world and (b) to which the infant can retreat when "danger" in the form of novelty, fatigue, illness or other distress threatens (Australian Association of Infant Mental Health submission 699 page 2).
The evidence establishes that attachment occurs in infancy and that disruption to the process of attachment at this stage of development is most damaging. Between one-half and two-thirds of children forcibly removed were removed in infancy (before the age of five years). The following table summarises the available information on age of removal among clients surveyed by the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA and among witnesses to the Inquiry. Age at removal<
Skills and learningSeparation can affect a range of skills. Some developmental stages regress only temporarily while others can be permanently depressed. Dr Nick Kowalenko, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, summarised some of the research in evidence to the Inquiry.
Psychotherapist Sue Wasterval and her colleagues from the Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network told the Inquiry that learning difficulties experienced by many Indigenous children at school may be attributable to resistance to being taught (ie to authority figures) and/or to developmental delays of cognition and language (submission 766 page 7).
When the infant's attachment must be transferred to a large number of ever-changing adults on the staff of an institution or because of multiple foster placements, the objective of attachment behaviour is defeated. `It is not the separation as such that causes persistent psychiatric disturbance. Rather, the poor outcomes arise because the separation leads to poorer quality child care, because it sets in motion a train of other adverse experiences, or because the separation itself stems from a pattern of chronic psychosocial adversity' (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 46). While this may explain, in part, the diversity of `outcomes' or long-term effects reported to the Inquiry by people who had experienced separation, the act of separation and its immediate aftermath were frequently traumatic for Indigenous children. Subsequent `carers' rarely responded appropriately to trauma reactions and grief felt for the loss of family. Unresolved trauma and grief has its own severe consequences. There is an association between bereavement in childhood and later psychiatric disorder (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 47). The circumstances and consequences of bereavement render the child vulnerable to stresses, perhaps damaging the child's self-esteem and self-efficacy and often resulting in depression in adolescence and adulthood. The bereavement experienced by many forcibly removed Indigenous children was traumatic and later they were often told they had been rejected or that family members were dead (typically neither was true). They could be punished for expressions of attachment or grief. I remember when my sister come down and visited me and I was reaching out. There was no-one there. I was just reaching out and I could see her standing there and I couldn't tell
her that I'd been raped. And I never told anyone for years and years. And I've had this all inside me for years and years and years. I've been sexually abused, harassed, and then finally raped, y'know, and I've never had anyone to talk to about it ... nobody, no father, no mother, no-one. We had no-one to guide us. I felt so isolated, alienated. And I just had no-one. That's why I hit the booze. None of that family bonding, nurturing - nothing. We had nothing. Disrupted parenting in infancy or early childhood renders the person less secure and more vulnerable to adolescent and adult psychological and emotional disturbances. International expert on trauma, Professor Beverley Raphael, advised the Inquiry that due to the trauma they had experienced many separated children would be likely to have difficulties in relationships because their feelings would be numbed (evidence 658). A number of witnesses spoke of this effect on them and of their inability to trust others. There's still a lot of unresolved issues within me. One of the biggest ones is I cannot really love anyone no more. I'm sick of being hurt. Every time I used to get close to anyone they were just taken away from me. The other fact is, if I did meet someone, I don't want to have children, cos I'm frightened the welfare system would come back and take my children. Confidential evidence 528, New South Wales: man removed at 8 years in the 1970s; suffered sexual abuse in both the orphanage and foster homes organised by the church. It's wrecking our relationship and the thing is that I just don't trust anybody half the time in my life because I don't know whether they're going to be there one minute or gone the
next. I've always been sorta on the outerside of things. I've always had my guard up, always been suspicious and things like that, I guess. The consequences can be extremely severe. Bowlby concluded that `childhood loss of mother is likely to lead a person to become excessively prone to develop psychiatric symptoms and to do so especially when current personal relationships go wrong' (1988 page 174). The youngest member of our family, Jill, was perhaps more traumatised through all this process because she grew up from the age of 9 months being institutionalised the whole time. She actually had some major trauma illnesses and trauma manifestations of institutional life evident in her life and yet nobody knew the root of it, or the
cause of it, let alone knew the remedy to it. [The cottage mother] used a lot of mental cruelty on Jill - I mean, through cutting all of her hair off at one time to exert authority and to bring submission and fear into you ... making the kids look ugly and dress like boys. She did that to the younger children - well Jill in particular because she was younger and more impressionable. Jill died because of those policies in law. She committed suicide. She was 34 and death was the better thing.
The effects of institutionalisation
We had been brought up on the surrogate mother of the institution and that whole lifestyle, which did not prepare us at all for any type of family life or life whereby in the future we would be surviving or fending for ourselves; and then the survival skills that we needed in order to survive in the mainstream
community, because those survival skills are certainly not skills that you learn in a major institution. And the whole family value system wasn't there and then the practice that comes with that wasn't there and put in place. The use of institutions for Indigenous children varied somewhat across Australia. Yet even where foster care was preferred, Indigenous children often spent time in institutions before being fostered. In Western Australia 85% of the 438 clients surveyed by the Aborignal Legal Service had spent at least part of their childhood in a mission following removal. Seventy-five (15.5%) had spent time in a government institution. Only 2.8% had been in foster care and only 3.5% had been adopted (submission 127 pages 46-49). The following table details the placement experiences of witnesses to the Inquiry for whom the information could be retrieved. Institutional and other placements Inquiry witnesses
Child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Brent Waters, has interviewed a number of Koori adults who were removed and institutionalised as children in New South Wales in the 1940s.
The 1940s were `the days of the hygiene movement' when the focus was on `discipline and hygiene': `whether you were clean, whether you had clean habits and whether you adhered to the program'. There was no interest in `noticing individuality, individual feelings and individual needs among children'. If an infant's expressions of his or her feelings are not responded to by carers, the child will not experience validation of those feelings as they develop. The result will be suppression of feelings and the child loses `the desire to feel and to communicate feelings and expressions to other people' (Dr Brent Waters evidence 532). The effects of institutionalisation can be noticed immediately.
Akhurst reviewed the English literature on the effects of `long stay' care in 1972. Major findings included,
The effects of institutionalisation have been found to persist into adolescence.
Dr Ian Anderson of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service pointed out that all adolescents indulge in risk-taking but that institutionalised children will do so `to a much greater extent ... because they have not been able to develop a sense of self-worth' (evidence 261). The truth of this, he suggested, is borne out in the death rates of young Aboriginal men. The effects of forcible removal and institutionalisation persist into adulthood, appearing indeed to be life long.
My feelings throughout life, of hurt, pain and neglection began as far back as I can remember ... I was taken from my family ... along with my biological brother, he also was with me through everything, if it wasn't for him, I probably would
not been alive today to be able to write about my past. Rutter and his colleagues researched the adult experiences of girls who had been institutionalised in childhood in London and found that,
The women who functioned well in spite of their disadvantageous upbringing were most likely those who enjoyed the `emotional support of a nondeviant spouse with whom [they] had a close, confiding, harmonious relationship'. Unfortunately, however, few of the women reared in institutions were able to find such a relationship. The women who functioned worst were those who had experienced `marked disruptions in parenting during the first 2 years of life' and `the outcome was particularly bad for girls who spent almost all of their childhood years in an institution' (Rutter et al 1990 pages 137-138). Michael Constable noted the experiences of Victorian Koori women who had been institutionalised as girls.
For boys in particular a common response is delinquency. Dr Elizabeth Sommerlad surveyed Aboriginal Legal Services during the 1970s.
She concluded that feelings of alienation from `white' culture and lack of identity with Aboriginal culture underlie the high incidence of criminal offending among this group (1976 page 161).
The Australian Law Reform Commission drew on Dr Sommerlad's work in a 1982 research paper for its Aboriginal customary law reference.
Three years earlier another researcher noted that,
A number of witnesses to the Inquiry had experienced periods of detention throughout their lives. And every time you come back in it doesn't bother you because you're
used to it and you see the same faces. It's like you never left, you know, in the end. I reckon all my troubles started when I was living in them homes. That's when I first started stealing because you wasn't allowed to have anything and if I wanted something the only way I could get it is get it off someone else, get me
brother or sister to buy it or just take it. We were sort of denied everything we wanted, just got what we was given and just be satisfied with that. I felt second-rate. I didn't feel like I got the love I was supposed to get; like a kid's supposed to get at that age, because they're more vulnerable at that age. They just follow people that seem to look more after them. That's why I got in with the wrong crowd, I suppose. They seemed to care more. They grew up to mix up with other troubled children in Tardon and didn't know how to mix with us their mother and family, they only knew how to mix with other boys that they grew up with and these boys were into stealing, so my sons went with them, they couldn't do without the crowd that they grew up with. I couldn't tell them anything at this stage cause they felt that coloured people were nothing and that is when they went on the wrong road. One of my sons was put into jail for four years and the other one died before he could reach the age of 21 years. It hasn't done my sons any good, the Welfare making them wards of the State and taking them away from me, they would have been better off with
me their mother. Helen Siggers, a former nursing sister who is now Director of the Aboriginal education centre at Monash University in Victoria, was in a position to compare Aboriginal bridging course students who had been removed with those who had not (evidence 140). She had dealt with 80 students, ten of whom had been removed as children. She observed that those not removed were `together as people', `knew about their culture', had `strong self-esteem' and `positive [intimate] relationships [of some duration]'. On the other hand, those who had been removed had experienced `years of self-destructive behaviour', an `intensity of addictions', `cardiac problems, diabetes and psychological problems', `gaol sentences' and a tendency to move `from one partner to another'. With respect to their progress in the bridging program, those not removed `accelerated in their learning' whereas those removed `were held back because they were still dealing with all the emotional stuff'. Those who were not removed were more likely to complete their planned university degrees. Michael Constable, a community health nurse in Ballarat, also observed a `higher relationship turnover'. He told the Inquiry that he observed the stolen generations, on reaching adulthood, to be `chronically depressed' (evidence 263). The effects of abuses and denigration
In institutions and in foster care and adoptive families, the forcibly removed children's Aboriginality was typically either hidden and denied or denigrated. Their labour was often exploited. They were exposed to substandard living conditions and a poor and truncated education. They were vulnerable to brutality and abuse. Many experienced repeated sexual abuse. The social environment for all Indigenous Australians and the physical environment for many remain unacceptable. It is pervaded by racial intolerance and a failure to deliver adequate or appropriate basic services from housing and infrastructure to education and hospital care. Ill-health, poverty and unemployment are worse than third world levels. The 1991 NSW Aboriginal Mental Health Report (Swan and Fagan 1991) identified the factors increasing the vulnerability of the Aboriginal community to mental ill-health.
This makes it almost impossible to pinpoint family separations as the sole cause of some of the emotional issues by which Indigenous people are now troubled (Professor Ernest Hunter evidence 61, Michael Constable evidence 263). However, childhood removal is a very significant cause both in its distinctive horror and in its capacity to break down resilience and render its victims perpetually vulnerable. Evidence to the Inquiry establishes clearly that the childhood experience of forcible removal and institutionalisation or multiple fostering makes those people much more likely to suffer emotional distress than others in the Indigenous community. The psychiatric report concerning one witness to the Inquiry illustrates the persistence of vulnerability.
Sexual AbuseMany children experienced brutality and abuse in children's homes and foster placements. In the WA Aboriginal Legal Service sample of 483 people who had been forcibly removed, almost two-thirds (62.1%) reported having been physically abused (submission 127 page 50). Children were more likely to have been physically abused on missions (62.8% of those placed on missions) than in foster care (33.8%) or government institutions (30.7%) (submission 127 page 53). Witnesses to the Inquiry were not specifically asked whether they had experienced physical abuse. Nevertheless, 28% reported that they had suffered physical brutality much more severe, in the Inquiry's estimation, than the typically severe punishments of the day. Stories of sexual exploitation and abuse were common in evidence to the Inquiry. Nationally at least one in every six (17.5%) witnesses to the Inquiry reported such victimisation. A similar proportion (13.3%) reported sexual abuse to the WA Aboriginal Legal Service: 14.5% of those fostered and 10.9% of those placed on missions (submission 127 pages 51-53). These vulnerable children had no-one to turn to for protection or comfort. They were rarely believed if they disclosed the abuse. There are many well recognised psychological impacts of childhood sexual abuse (Finkelhor and Brown 1986). They include confusion about sexual identity and sexual norms, confusion of sex with love and aversion to sex or intimacy. When the child is blamed or is not believed, others can be added including guilt, shame, lowered self-esteem and a sense of being different from others. Wolfe (1990) concluded that the impacts amount to a variant of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They reported effects including sleep disturbance, irritability and concentration difficulties (associated with hyper arousal), fears, anxiety, depression and guilt (page 216). Repeated victimisation compounds these effects.
Post-trauma effects can be mitigated for children with a strong self-concept and strong social supports. Few of the witnesses to the Inquiry who reported sexual abuse in childhood were so fortunate. The common psychological impacts have often manifested in isolation, drug or alcohol abuse, criminal involvement, self-mutilation and/or suicide.
Oliver (1993, reported by Raphael et al 1996 on page 13) `found that approximately one-third of child victims of abuse grow up to have significant difficulties parenting, or become abusive of their own children. One-third do not have these outcomes but the other third remain vulnerable, and, in the face of social stress there was an increased likelihood of them becoming abusive'. Other traumaSeparation and institutionalisation can amount to traumas. Almost invariably they were traumatically carried out with force, lies, regimentation and an absence of comfort and affection. All too often they also involved brutality and abuse. Trauma compounded trauma. No counselling was ever provided. These traumas `have impacted particularly in creating high levels of depression and complex PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]'. PTSD `has a lot of somatic symptoms, impact on personality, on impulse control, and often leads to ongoing patterns of abuse' (Professor Beverley Raphael evidence 658). A representative from the Western Australian Health Department recognised the impacts of the removal policies.
Trauma experienced in childhood becomes embedded in the personality and physical development of the child. Its effects, while diverse, may properly be described as `chronic'. These children are more likely to `choose' trauma-prone living situations in adulthood and are particularly vulnerable to the ill-effects of later stressors. Dr Jane McKendrick and her colleagues in Victoria in the mid-1980s surveyed an Aboriginal general medical practice population by interviewing participants twice over a three-year period. One-third of the participants had been separated from their Aboriginal families and communities during childhood. Most of the separations had occurred before the child had reached 10 years of age and lasted until adulthood. Most of the separations were believed by the children to have been on `welfare' grounds (and not because parents were deceased or had voluntarily relinquished them). These separated people were twice as likely to suffer psychological distress in adulthood than the remainder of the participants: 90% of participants who had been separated were psychologically distressed for most of the three years of the study, compared with 45% of the participants who had been brought up within their Aboriginal families. Depression accounted for nearly 90% of diagnoses. Factors offering protection against the development of depression and other distress included a strong Aboriginal identity, frequent contact with ones Aboriginal extended family and knowledge of Aboriginal culture. Overall, two-thirds of the Aboriginal participants were found to be significantly psychologically distressed throughout the three years of the study. The contrast with non-Indigenous general practice populations is telling. `The rates of psychological distress in non Aboriginal general practice samples vary from 15 to 30 per cent. However, in contrast to the situation in this Aboriginal group, most of these disorders amongst the general population are short lived, resolving within one to six months' (Dr Jane McKendrick, Victorian Aboriginal Mental Health Network, submission 310 pages 19 and 23). I still to this day go through stages of
depression. Not that I've ever taken anything for it - except alcohol. I didn't drink for a long time. But when I drink a lot it comes back to me. I end up kind of cracking up. The Inquiry was told of two South Australian studies which also linked psychiatric disorders and the removal policies.
The Sydney Aboriginal Mental Health Unit advised the Inquiry of its experience with patients presenting with emotional distress.
The Unit identified the risk of `major depressive disorder and use of alcohol and other drugs to ease feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, marginalisation, discrimination and dispossession, leading to breakdown in relationships, domestic violence and abuse' among its clients. The forcible removal policies are seen as the principal cause of these `presenting issues' (submission 650). I
now understand why I find it so very very hard to leave my home, to find a job, to be a part of what is out there. I have panic attacks when I have to go anywhere I don't know well and feel safe. Fear consumes me at times and I have to plan my life carefully so that I can lead as `normal' an existence as possible. I blame welfare for this. What I needed to do was to be with my family and my mother, but that opportunity was denied me. One consequence of chronic depression is very poor physical health. Dr Ian Anderson and Professor Beverley Raphael both expanded on this point in evidence.
Victims of traumatic separation are less likely to follow a treatment regime properly.
Alcohol is the `treatment of choice' for many with acute depression.
Judith Hermann has pointed to evidence that a chemical reaction occurs in the brain at the time of a traumatic event. This helps the victim to survive the event psychologically intact by permitting a degree of dissociation from it. However `traumatized people who cannot spontaneously dissociate may attempt to produce similar numbing effects by using alcohol or narcotics'. Thus `traumatized people run a high risk of compounding their difficulties by developing dependence on alcohol or other drugs' (1992 page 44). I drank a lot when I was younger, y'know. I still do I guess. I don't drink as much now, but I still do and there's never been anything ... any pleasure in it. I guess I don't know whether it's a hangover from seeing the old man do it ... whether it's because of that or whether it's because of other issues which I just wouldn't, couldn't confront ... I'd have nights where I'd sit down and think about things. There was no answers. I tried to look forward. As I say, every time I'd look back as in trying to find out exactly who I was and what my history was, I'd have real bad attacks of Vic. Bitter. The following table summarises the findings of the WA Aboriginal Legal Service survey of 483 clients who had been forcibly removed. Caution should be used in interpreting these findings because of the high proportion of participants who did not respond to these questions. After-effects of forcible removal
RacismInstitutionalised Indigenous children faced a hazard over and above that experienced by institutionalised non-Indigenous children. This was the continual denigration of their own Aboriginality and that of their families. I didn't know any Aboriginal people at all - none at all. I was placed in
a white family and I was just - I was white. I never knew, I never accepted myself to being a black person until - I don't know - I don't know if you ever really do accept yourself as being ... How can you be proud of being Aboriginal after all the humiliation and the anger and the hatred you have? It's unbelievable how much you can hold inside. The assimilation policy seemed to demand that the children reject their families. The tactics used to ensure this ranged from continual denigration of Aboriginal people and values to lies about the attitudes of families to the children themselves. Many children were told their parents were dead. Dr Peter Read told the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody that,
The complete separation of the children from any connection, communication or knowledge about their Indigenous heritage has had profound effects on their experience of Aboriginality and their participation in the Aboriginal community as adults. It was forbidden for us to talk in our own language. If we had been able we would have retained it ... we weren't allowed to talk about anything that belonged to our tribal life. The effects of separation from the Indigenous community
I went through an identity crisis. And our
identity is where we come from and who we are. And I think, instead of compensation being in the form of large sums of money, I personally would like to see it go into some form of land acquisition for the people who were taken away, if they so wish, to have a place that they can call their own and that they can give to their children. My wife and I are trying to break this cycle, trying our hardest to break this cycle of shattered families. We're going to make sure that we stick together and
bring our children up so they know who they are, what they are and where they came from. Cultural knowledgeOne principal effect of the forcible removal policies was the destruction of cultural links. This was of course their declared aim. The children were to be prevented from acquiring the habits and customs of the Aborigines (South Australia's Protector of Aborigines in 1909); the young people will merge into the present civilisation and become worthy citizens (NSW Colonial Secretary in 1915). Culture, language, land and identity were to be stripped from the children in the hope that the traditional law and culture would die by losing their claim on them and sustenance of them. The culture that we should have had has been taken away. No, it's not that I
don't like the people or whatever, it's just that I'd never really mixed with them to understand what it is to be part of the tribal system, which is the big thing ...
The response of some people `brought up to be white' is to deny their heritage. In turn their descendants are disinherited.
Others work to renew their cultural links. When we left Port Augusta, when they took us away, we could only talk Aboriginal. We only knew one language and when we went down there, well we had to communicate somehow. Anyway, when I come back I couldn't even speak my own language. And that really buggered my identity up. It took me 40 odd years before I became a man in my own people's eyes, through Aboriginal law. Whereas I should've went through that when I was about 12 years of
age. I had to relearn lots of things. I had to relearn humour, ways of sitting, ways of being which were another way totally to what I was actually brought up with. It was like having to re-do me, I suppose. The thing that people were denied in being removed from family was that they were denied being read as Aboriginal
people, they were denied being educated in an Aboriginal way. Indigenous identityMany witnesses spoke of their strong sense of not belonging either in the Indigenous community or in the non-Indigenous community. You spend your whole life wondering where you fit. You're not
white enough to be white and your skin isn't black enough to be black either, and it really does come down to that. I felt like a stranger in Ernabella, a stranger in my father's people. We had no identity with the land, no identity with a certain people. I've decided in the last 10, 11 years to, y'know, I went through the law. I've been learning culture and learning everything that goes with it because I felt, growing up,
that I wasn't really a blackfella. You hear whitefellas tell you you're a blackfella. But blackfellas tell you you're a whitefella. So you're caught in a half-caste world. The policies of separation were often administered in such a way as would directly cause feelings of alienation. I was taken there because I was `half-caste'. I started thinking, `Why do I deserve to be treated like this?' But as the years went by, I sort of accepted all that. We were treated differently to white and black people. We weren't allowed to go down to see our Aboriginal people, or go into the houses where the white people were. We just had to live around the outside of the house. They made us feel like we weren't allowed to do anything: no freedom of movement, even to think for yourself. They had to tell you what to do, and how to think. We were locked up in the dormitories, and had to go and ask for anything. We had to go and ask if we could go and see our people. We were more or less like slaves, I think. We didn't think that was wrong. We just thought it was our duty. We did what we were told. Years later, when we were grown up, our own boss - by this time we were married and having our children - we were having families and still couldn't go up and ask the managers if we could get married. They had to tell you who you had to marry. We didn't know what was their plans for us. We just lived and did what we were told. I was almost ashamed to be half-caste sometimes. I had no confidence in myself, or how to make up my mind what to do ... When I was growing up I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. But you couldn't say that because you had to go to school and go out and work in the house, do domestic duties. That's what they said. We lost much of our
culture, our language and traditional knowledge, our kinship and our land. This loss of identity has ramifications for individuals' well-being and in turn for the well-being of their families.
Anna's story illustrates the inter-generational transfer of the effects of forcible removal. Anna's Koori grandmother was forcibly removed from her family and her mother abandoned her when she was six years old. In time Anna moved in with her uncle and his family and only then, at the age of 16, did she realise her Koori heritage. She sought to identify herself as Koori but her uncle opposed this. She was forced to leave home, joining the airforce after concealing her true age. Anna continues to experience problems relating to her Indigenous identity (confidential evidence 217, Victoria). Native title
Separation from their families has dramatically affected people's land entitlements as summarised for the Inquiry by the legal firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth (submission 704). In all jurisdictions the ability to bring a native title claim will generally be extinguished by forced removal. The Full Court of the Federal Court considered an analogous situation in the case of Kanak in 1995 and concluded that,
Establishing `biological descent' is the first hurdle for separated people seeking to re-establish their relationship with `their' land. The person must be able to trace his or her family and the family's community of origin must be known. Although a separated person is unlikely to be able to sustain a native title claim independently (and native title claims are collective claims in any event), a person who has been accepted back into his or her community of origin may participate in a claim brought by that community.
Including a person who has yet to be fully reintegrated into the traditional laws relating to the land in a claimant group may jeopardise the land claim under some legislation, for example the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth), although the Inquiry received no evidence that this has occurred. However, once a claim is successful (for example under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth)), or once traditional lands have been granted (for example under the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act 1981 (SA)), it is entirely up to the traditional owners to decide whether they will accept a person taken away in childhood and permit him or her to share in the enjoyment of the land. Where collective land ownership is vested in an association, the rules of the association usually provide for the acceptance of new members (for example Aboriginal Land Grant (Jervis Bay Territory) Act 1986 (Cth); Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW)). Under some legislation a requirement of a period of uninterrupted residence is imposed before the person can become a member of the land-owning group (for example with respect to Framlingham Forest, Victoria, under the Aboriginal Land (Lake Condah and Framlingham Forest) Act 1987 (Cth)). We can't even claim for that, because we're not living on it. But that's not our fault. The Government took us off our land, so how can we get land rights when this is what the Government has done to us? I have no legal claim to come back here. I can't speak on the board of management, I'm not a living member out here on this mission. What right have I got to speak out here? And this is the way that a lot of the Aboriginals living on this mission see me - as a blow-in, a blow-through. Yet I've got family that are buried out
here on the mission ... and I have no rights. As an Aboriginal I don't have any rights out here. Although they may not be able to make land claims based on a traditional connection to the land, some separated people may succeed by proving an `historical association' instead. Queensland (Aboriginal Land Act 1991 section 54 and Torres Strait Islander Land Act 1991 section 51), New South Wales (Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983) and the Northern Territory (Pastoral Land Act 1992 with respect to pastoral excisions for community residential areas) all recognise this as a basis for claim. Thus, a group dispersed from their traditional lands and detained on a mission station may be able to reclaim the mission land on the basis of historical association. Queensland also permits claims based on a group's need for `economic or cultural viability' (Aboriginal Land Act 1991 section 55, Torres Strait Islander Land Act 1991 section 52). The group's land claim may succeed if it shows the land would assist in restoring, maintaining or enhancing the capacity for self-development and the self-reliance and cultural integrity of the group. A number of governments have established funds to permit the acquisition of land for Aboriginal groups or communities, regardless of their traditional or historic ties. The primary basis for these land purchases will be cultural or economic need. Such land would also usually be held collectively. The principal fund is the Commonwealth's Indigenous Land Fund established in 1995 for the purchase of land for Indigenous corporations. The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 also established a fund from which land could be purchased for economic or other purposes.
I often used to ask my foster mother who she was, this old lady who would come to the gate, and the answer I always got was, `She is some silly old black woman'. I was there for 16 years and I was brainwashed every day of the week. You never go near Blacks. Your people don't want you anyway. They're just dirty. They don't want
anything to do with you ... We were playing in the schoolyard and this old black man came to the fence. I could hear him singing out to me and my sister. I said to [my sister], `Don't go. There's a black man'. And we took off. It was two years ago I found out that was my grandfather. He came looking for us. I don't know when I ever stopped being frightened of Aboriginal people. I don't know when I even realised I was Aboriginal. It's been a long hard fight for me. The effects on family and communityThe trauma of forcible separation affected the parents and other relatives left behind as well as the children taken. Few of the parents have survived to tell their own stories. Many of those who have feel such guilt and despair that they were unable to come forward. Link-Up (NSW) advised the Inquiry that,
The evidence clearly establishes that families and whole communities suffered grievously upon the forcible removal of their children. The interesting thing was that he was such a great provider ... He was a great provider and had a great name and a great reputation. Now, when this intrusion occurred it had a devastating impact upon him and upon all those values that he believed in and that he put in place in his life which included us, and so therefore I think the effect upon Dad was so devastating. And when that destruction occurred, which was the destruction of his own personal private family which included us, it had a very strong devastating effect upon him, so much so that he never ever recovered from the trauma that had occurred ... Progressively the shattering effect continued in my father's life to the point that he couldn't see the sense in reuniting the family again. He had lost all confidence as a parent and
as an adult in having the ability to be able to reunite our family. Mum was kidnapped. My grandfather was away working at the time, and he came home and found that his kids had been taken away, and he didn't know nothing about it. Four years later he died of a broken heart. He had a breakdown and
was sent to Kew [Psychiatric] Hospital. He was buried in a pauper's grave and on his death certificate he died of malnutrition, ulcers and plus he had bedsores. He was 51. I remember my Aunty, it was her daughter that got taken. She used to carry these letters around with her. They were reference letters from the white fellas in town ... Those letters said she was a good,
respectable women ... She judged herself and she felt the community judged her for letting the welfare get her child ... She carried those letters with her, folded up, as proof, until the day she died. Professor Beverley Raphael told the Inquiry,
My parents were continually trying to get us back.
Eventually they gave up and started drinking. They separated. My father ended up in jail. He died before my mother. On her death bed she called his name and all us kids. She died with a broken heart. The Inquiry is not aware of any research on the effects of forcible removal of a child or children on the parents and other family members. However there is research on the effects of the death of a child and some research on the effects of relinquishing a child for adoption. Speaking at the Third Australian Conference on Adoption in 1982 Margaret van Keppel and Robin Winkler summarised some of this research.
These findings about bereaved and relinquishing parents can be extended approximately to the experience of Indigenous parents whose children were forcibly removed. They have the lowest likelihood of recovering from the trauma of that event. While social supports would usually have been available within the Indigenous community, beyond that there were none. Indigenous families continued to experience profound disadvantages (`other life-stressors ') including exclusion and control, racism and poverty which would have acted as severe stresses compounding their grief and trauma. They could generally find no meaning in the forcible removal. A Western Australian mother of two boys was working as a nurse and well able to fit her sons out for school. Yet they were made wards of the State in the late 1950s. It
has left me sick, also my son sick too, never to be the same people again that we were before, being separated from one another, it has made our lives to be nothing on this earth. My sons and myself went through a lot of pain and heartbreak. It's a thing that I'll never forget until I die, it will always be in my mind that the Welfare has ruined my thinking and my life. I felt so miserable and sad and very unhappy, that I took to drinking after they took my sons. I thought there
was nothing left for me. I'm not under the influence of alcohol anymore, you know. Because then you used to sort of deal with it more or less in drink and I thought I could solve my problems in a bottle, you know. That's the only way I could deal with my feelings for my kids not living here ... My kids are with me today, but I've lost a lot. I've lost that motherhood with
my kids, you know. Because `mixed race' children were particularly targeted for forcible removal, non-Indigenous parents and families also lost children.
Parenting roles, nurturing and socialising responsibilities are widely shared in Indigenous societies: `relatives beyond that of the immediate family have nurturing responsibilities and emotional ties with children as they grow up' (Dr Ian Anderson evidence 263). When the children were taken, many people in addition to the biological parents were bereft of their role and purpose in connection with those children.
The loss of so many of their children has affected the efficacy and morale of many Indigenous communities. Evidence to the Inquiry referred particularly to the way in which the child-rearing function of whole communities was undermined and denied, particularly where all children were required to live in mission dormitories. Psychiatrist Professor Ernest Hunter documented how removal on missions in the Kimberley region of Western Australia undermined the confidence of families and diluted their ability to rear their children.
Hunter documented how Kimberley Aboriginal parents responded when the government station managers and missionaries relinquished their control over the children with the growth of self-management progressively from the mid-1970s.
The anticipated reassertion of parental control did not occur. The adults had experienced discipline as children but not nurturing. It had been a model of discipline reliant on physical chastisement, something unacceptable in traditional child-rearing. With their own methods denigrated and largely lost to them and European methods unacceptable, there seems to have been a discipline vacuum. That's also impacted on my own life with my kids. I have three children. And it's not as though I don't love my kids. It's just that I expected them to be as strong and independent and to fight for their own self like I had to do. And people misinterpret that as
though I don't care about my kids. But that's not true. I do love my kids. But it's not as though the Church provided good role models, either, for a proper family relationship. Hunter and other researchers noted how Europeans devalued the paternal role in particular, in common with most other aspects of the traditional male role. Indigenous men generally lost their purpose in relation to their families and communities. Often their individual responses to that loss took them away from their families: on drinking binges, in hospital following accidents or assaults, in the gaol or lock-up, or prematurely dead.
Forcible removal affected community life in another way, too. To escape `the welfare' and avoid their children being taken some families exiled themselves from their communities and sometimes hid their Aboriginal identity.
This almost as effectively removed children from community ties and culture; `social removal and nil contact with Aboriginal people was also achieved by the very real fear of removal and the severance of family ties' (quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 part III on page 67). I didn't
know anything about my Aboriginality until I was 46 years of age - 12 years after my father died. I felt very offended and hurt that this knowledge was denied me, for whatever reason. For without this knowledge I was not able to put the pathway of my own life into its correct place. When I did find out, for the first time in my life I understood why I had always felt different when I was a young man. My grandfather wanted us to deny our Aboriginality so that we wouldn't be taken away. He used to say that none of his kids would live on a mission. We weren't allowed to say that we were Aboriginal, and we weren't allowed to mix with the Aboriginal people in the country town where we lived ... I didn't find out until Mum passed on that I was related to nearly everyone on the south coast. I
even found out that the woman who lived across the street when were growing up was my Aunty. But all those years growing up I hadn't known. When a child was forcibly removed that child's entire community lost, often permanently, its chance to perpetuate itself in that child. The Inquiry has concluded that this was a primary objective of forcible removals and is the reason they amount to genocide.
There have been similar conclusions in the comparable context of forcible removal to educational institutions of Native American children.
A Congressional Inquiry in 1978 found that the removal of Indian children had a severe effect on Indian tribes, threatening their existence as identifiable cultural entities (US Congress 1978). `Culture' has been defined as `a set of values and ideas which contains the distinctive way of life of a group of people and which tends to persist through time and is transmitted from generation to generation' (Telling Our Story 1995 page 52).
Every culture is continually changing and adapting to new conditions. Cultural stress such as the massive disruption caused by massacres, introduced diseases, dispossession and forcible removal of children robbed Indigenous societies of almost every opportunity to control the nature of their adaptations. The impacts of forcible removal are renewed when societies must deal with the desire of removed children to return and reclaim their inheritance. The Jawoyn Association in the Northern Territory explained to the Inquiry,
The Jawoyn Association has found a way to resolve two competing interests.
The resolution chosen by the Jawoyn will not necessarily appeal to other communities and associations dealing with this issue. The Central Land Council advised the Inquiry,
What is clear from the Jawoyn experience is the imperative that each community exercising its right of self-determination must be empowered to resolve the matter for itself.
If you grow up with no love ... I thought sex was love. That's why I probably had
all those kids, `cause I was trying to get all this love, y'know. `Cause I never got it when I was in the Home. We wasn't told anything about the facts of life. When we left the Home they didn't tell us anything about sex and that. All us girls, when we all come out the Home, we were all just, bang, pregnant straight
away. Inter-generational effects
There's things in my life that I haven't dealt with and I've passed them on to my children. Gone to pieces. Anxiety attacks. I've passed this on to my kids. I know for a fact if you go and knock at their door they run and hide. I look at my son today who had to be taken away because he was going to commit suicide because he can't handle it; he just can't take any more of the anxiety attacks that he and Karen have. I have passed that on to my kids because I haven't dealt with it. How do you deal
with it? How do you sit down and go through all those years of abuse? Somehow I'm passing down negativity to my kids. The impacts of the removal policies continue to resound through the generations of Indigenous families. The overwhelming evidence is that the impact does not stop with the children removed. It is inherited by their own children in complex and sometimes heightened ways. ParentingMost forcibly removed children were denied the experience of being parented or at least cared for by a person to whom they were attached. This is the very experience people rely on to become effective and successful parents themselves. Experts told the Inquiry that this was the most significant of all the major consequences of the removal policies.
The damage was recognised by a senior State welfare official in evidence to the Inquiry.
Many parents from the stolen generations are very good parents. Dr Ian Anderson noted that `some individuals have been very lucky in the way in which they've been able to reconstruct their sense of self-worth and their sense of commitment to their children' (evidence 263). Michael Constable noted that `despite all the odds and despite the pain, so many people function. They manage to keep families together' (evidence 261). I feel I have been totally denied of a childhood, but I could never repeat the cycle that happens to so many Aboriginal children that have been removed. It happened to my eldest brother: he had his five children removed. My other brother suffers from alcoholism ... Even though I drink, it's probably once or twice a year. I believe I got it out of my system when I had my first child. Even though I continued to drink when I had my first child, the drinking binges started easing up [to the point] where I didn't need to
be drunk every weekend, cause my little boy needed me to be sober. Shaun and his mother, Clare, are among the fortunate. Although her parents died when she was young, Clare was raised until the age of 13 by her mother's sister and her husband. She was then removed to a children's home with her younger sister. Clare was determined that her own two sons would not be taken from her and at one stage, when they were quite young, she decided to board them with different relatives to ensure that her own status as a sole parent would not lead to their removal. In this period Clare commuted on weekends alternately to the two homes from her place of work. Shaun told the Inquiry that, I probably would've been still trying to find my way in life, but the foresight was there from our elders [mother and aunts], teaching some respect and some form or way of getting through life without having to
worry. Many Indigenous parents experience anxiety in rearing their children. In adulthood the forcibly removed children carry with them the fear that their own children will be taken from them in turn. This was said to be one reason Indigenous people `don't tap into mainstream services, because there's that fear that the children could be taken away' (Joyce Smith evidence 135). I now understand the way I am and why
my life is so full of troubles and fears. I find it hard to take my children to hospital for the fear of being misunderstood and those in authority might take my children away as I was. Now I understand why Mum is the way she is, why she's been strict on us, why she never used to take us to the doctors when we used to hurt ourselves, because the first thing they would have
looked at was her skin and said, `Well, you're obviously not looking after them properly'. So now I know why all those times we never used to go to the doctors and go to the hospital ... because Dad worked all his life and Mum stayed home and looked after us kids, so she was very hesitant to take us kids to doctors. Professor Ernest Hunter found among his patients a group of parents who `feel extremely uncertain and almost paranoid about looking after their kids and concerned for their kids' welfare' (evidence 61). The fears of the parents can translate into a lack of discipline for their children. A lot of people think I'm very, very easy on my children. I don't smack them because I really used to get belted. A lot of people think a smack's not going to hurt them but I just remember it as a child, you know. They've got a lot of spirit in them and I won't knock it out of them. I just won't knock anything out
of them that's in them already like I had it all knocked out of me.
That's another thing that we find hard is giving our children love. Because we never had it. So we don't know how to tell our kids that we love them. All we do is protect them. I can't even cuddle my kids `cause I never ever got cuddled. The only time was when I was getting raped
and that's not what you'd call a cuddle, is it? I have a problem with smacking kids. I won't smack them. I won't control them. I'm just scared of everything about myself. I just don't know how to be a proper parent sometimes. I can never say no, because I think they're going to hate me. I remember hating [foster mother] so I never want the kids
to hate me. I try to be perfect. Behavioural problemsA high proportion of the `stolen generations' have `problem children' of their own (Michael Constable evidence 261). Dr Max Kamien's 1972 study in Bourke, NSW, found that one-third of the Aboriginal adults he interviewed had been separated in childhood for more than five years. One-quarter of the Aboriginal boys aged between 5 and 14 and one-third of the girls had `substantial behavioural problems' (cited by Hunter 1995 page 378). Kamien commented that nearly all the Bourke children experienced `inconsistency, unpredictability, and a conflict of values with the dominant white society' (cited by Hunter quoting The Dark People of Bourke page 168). However, the study was not conducted in such a way that it could confirm a causal link between a parental history of separation and their children's `behavioural problems'. Dr Jo Topp, a Victorian General Practitioner, was able to compare parenting among Koories in Victoria with parenting in remote communities in Central Australia where `most people had not been directly affected by removal policies'.
Linda Briskman confirmed that `children coming to the attention of Aboriginal child care agencies frequently had parents who had been removed as children' (evidence 134). Professor Ernest Hunter, in his practice as a psychiatrist, has found that many adolescent patients of the second generation present `with pictures that look like personality disorders: girls with patterns of substance abuse, promiscuity, self-harm' (evidence 61). Because of their behavioural problems there is a significantly increased risk that these second generation children will in turn be removed from their families or will have their children removed.
I'm a rotten mother. My own husband even put my kids in the Home and I fought to get them back. And then I was in a relationship after that, and he even put my kids in the Home. I think I've tried to do the best I could but that wasn't good enough. Why? Because I didn't have a role model for a start. The Aboriginal Legal Service of WA surveyed 483 clients who had been forcibly removed. More than one-third of those clients reported that their children had been taken away in turn (submission 127 page 44). ViolenceProfessor Ernest Hunter has noted the very high rates of self-harm including suicide and domestic violence among young men in many Indigenous communities (1996). His research has led him to identify the root cause as the inappropriate construction of male identity in Indigenous families due to the fact that male role models were either absent or had been undermined (page 10). Professor Hunter looked beyond the contemporary Indigenous family to explain the reasons for the absence of effective male role models.
Maggie Brady's findings on petrol sniffing strongly support Professor Hunter's conclusion that self-destructive behaviour among young Indigenous men is a consequence of the undermining of family roles and, in particular, of male role models. Brady found that petrol sniffing was rare in communities which had not experienced missionary or government intrusion into family life. These communities had been engaged in the pastoral industry. Pastoralists not only did not intrude into Indigenous families, at least not nearly to the extent experienced on missions and government stations, but they valued Indigenous families living on their traditional lands. The reasons may have been self-interested - the adult workers knew the country intimately and the children were a convenient current and future workforce - but the consequences include stronger Indigenous families and communities (Brady 1992 pages 183-190). Unresolved grief and traumaWays of relating and ways of nurturing are passed from generation to generation.
The Inquiry received evidence that unresolved grief and trauma are also inherited by subsequent generations. Parents `convey anxiety and distress' to their children (Professor Beverley Raphael evidence 658). I've come to realise that because of Dad being taken away, grief and all that's been carried down to us. We're not organised. We don't know where we're
heading. I have six children. My kids have been through what I went through. They've been placed. The psychological effects that it had on me as a young child also affected me as a mother with my children. I've put my children in Bomaderry Children's Home when they were little. History repeating itself. Depression and mental illnessThe Inquiry has documented the high rates of depression among people who experienced forcible removal in childhood. The children of these parents are also known to be at risk. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Inquiry into Mental Illness reported that,
That Inquiry found that the children of parents with mental illness are at greater risk of being taken into care and this is done more swiftly and with less consideration of the alternatives (page 494).
When a person adopts the roles and values of parents or society without questioning?When a person adopts parents' or society's roles and values without questioning and exploring a personal identity, it is referred to as identity: a. moratorium.
When there is premature identity formation without questioning or analysis this is referred to as?foreclosure (p. 348) Erikson's term for premature identity formation, which occurs when an adolescent adopts parents' or society's roles and values wholesale, without questioning or analysis. moratorium (p. 349)
Which identity status is characterized by a lack of commitment to goals or values?Identity-Diffusion status is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options, nor made a commitment to an identity. The individual does not have firm commitments regarding the issues in question and is not making progress toward them.
What is identity diffusion in psychology?1. lack of stability or focus in the view of the self or in any of the elements of an individual's identity. It is common especially in borderline personality disorder.
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