Seeing Aboriginal history in black and white: the contested history of the Stolen Generation

Arielle De Bono

doi:10.5130/nesais.v2i1.1465

Abstract

The forced removal of Indigenous children has been a site of historical debate in Australia since the 1980s. This paper explores these debates and discusses the political nature of Australia’s national history, and the correlation between child removal and the legitimacy of the nation.

Highlights

The forced removal of Indigenous children has been a site of historical debate in Australia since the 1980s
The forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children has been a site of lively debate in academic historical discourse since at least the 1980s, when Peter Read coined the term ‘The Stolen Generations.’ (Read 1981) Policies of child removal and systematic discrimination, assimilation and genocide (Tatz 2001) at large have, been the source of intergenerational trauma, and painful history transmitted through Aboriginal families and communities since colonization
What do these vastly different narratives of Australia’s past tell us? The continued contestation of the history of forced child removal in this country, and of relations between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians at large, reveals the fundamental relationship between how we recount the actions of the past and the legitimacy and identity of contemporary Australia

Summary

Introduction

The forced removal of Indigenous children has been a site of historical debate in Australia since the 1980s. The fact that these oral histories did not become a part of an official historical conversation and record in this country until the late twentieth century points to the ways in which power and race have shaped, and continue to shape the sanctioned Australian narrative, and whose voices it includes.

Results

Conclusion