The Australian Government and Problems of the Aboriginal People

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The use of child welfare policies
Specific child laws
Conclusion
References

Introduction

“The Aboriginal problem,” that is the phrase the white Australian government used to describe the Aboriginal people. The government considered the Aboriginal people as a group of people who could not, or had chosen not to live as they were required by the white people (Read 1981). The Australian government therefore used all mechanisms to ensure that it deterred the persistence of the Aborigines by using various forms of disguise to justify its actions.

This paper evaluates the mechanisms used by the Australian government to ensure that it removed Aboriginal children from their families to ensure that they were assimilated into the mainstream white society. A significant point is that the government used various policies that barred parents from residing with their children on the pretext that that it would offer them better incentives, a perspective that was not well taken by the Aboriginal people.

The use of child welfare policies

According to Nobles (2008), the state authorities used child welfare policies as instruments of assimilating children into the dominant white society. Thus, the indigenous children were put in residential schools in which they were to be “educated” by school administrators. The fact that the children stayed away from their parents means that their links with their families would be cut gradually (Nobles 2008).The government even removed the children from their parents forcibly, promising to offer better care than that offered by the parents. To justify this, the government used child welfare policies by charging Aboriginal parents for parental negligence if they refused to comply with the requirement to have their children taken by the authorities (Nobles 2008).

The Australian child welfare policy of the twentieth century ensured that all children were brought up based on the stipulations of the government (Read 1981). Thus, it was illegal, for instance, to raise children with indigenous values (Read 1981). Parents were therefore required to ensure that their children fitted into the society by staying away from their native families. The government also required Aboriginal children to live with whites where they would work as servants (Gellately & Kiernan 2003). The government also promised that it would help improve the living standards of the indigenous children.

Specific child laws

One of the powers used by the Australian government to facilitate removal of children from their parents was Aborigines Protection Act of 1909. The government had built a girls’ dormitory at the Warangesda Aboriginal Station and allowed to parents who send their daughters to stay in the dormitories to also live at the station (Read 1981). The justification here was that the girls would be taught how to became domestic servants and therefore be able to earn their own money. Yet in essence, it was just a ploy to ensure that the girls stayed away from their parents.

The Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act to threaten those parents who did not allow their daughters to live in the dormitories, but those who consented were given free rail passes (Anderson & Grossman 2003). In this context therefore, the government used its set of biased policies to ensure that Aboriginal children were removed from their parents. After all, the parents had no right to complain since the actions by the government were “within the law.”

The white government also ensured that white Australians got cheap labour from the services of the Aboriginal children. This was done by ordering boys in Aboriginal families to look for work. The move was justified by the governments’ perspective that by working, the boys would help improve their living status as well as that of their parents. However, given that the boys were uneducated, the only jobs they would do were found in whites’ farms and homes, thus the need to stay away from home.

In spite of the fact that the 1909 legislation allowed the removal of children from their homes without their parents’ consent only if a magistrate proved that they were indeed “neglected”, the authorities still got permission to drive the boys out of their homes (Read, 1981). The government interpreted the term “neglected children” to mean “children who had no perceptible means of support or a fixed place to live” (Read 1981) – which was the condition of most Aboriginal children. Their parents were therefore considered to be neglecting them, and the government was therefore “keen to help them.” Under this provision, parents had no option but to let their children (particularly boys) look for work.

Although there was a policy to protect the Aboriginal people in the name of the Aborigine Protection Act, the government the through the Aborigine Welfare Board sought amend the acts which seemed to give the Aborigines too much protection. Through a 1915 amendment, the government was able to justify its authority over Aboriginal children since it could take the m way without their parent’s consent. The recommended that parents had to prove that their children had a right to live with them, not the other way as would be expected. This meant that no court proceedings were necessary to allow removal of children.

On their part, the Australian White community justified the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents on the pretext of “civilizing them” (Vickers & Kwadwo 2002). The children were trained for menial jobs in farms and other ventures managed by the whites. Along this line, there was always a promise that the children would go back home once they reached an age at which they would fend for themselves (Vickers & Kwadwo 2002). But the fact that the children’s parents were rounded up and taken to Aborigine camps meant the young people would never go back to their ancestral homes and instead had to assimilate into the dominant White society.

Conclusion

The government of Australia used a multiplicity of ideas to remove Aboriginal children from their families without appearing culpable. Among these were the amendments of laws that pertained to children’s rights such as the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act, which made it possible to sue Aboriginal parents if they did not comply with government’s laws. The government’s actions were therefore justified as being within the law. On the other hand, the white society justified the removal of Aboriginal children from their families given that they were willing to live with them as servants and “civilize them.”

References

Anderson, I & Grossman, M 2003, Blacklines: Contemporary critical writing by indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne

Gellately, R & Kiernan, B 2003, The specter of genocide: mass murder in historical perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Nobles, M 2008, The politics of official apologies, Cambridge University Press Cambridge

Read, P 1981, The stolen generations: The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969. Web.

Vickers, J & Kwadwo EOP 2002, The politics of race. New York: Dundurn Press Ltd.

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The Australian Government and Problems of the Aboriginal People

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