"Singing Trauma Trails": Songs of the Stolen Generations in Indigenous Australia

Abstract

In 1997 the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families found that Indigenous children have been forcibly removed from their families and communities throughout the history of colonization in Australia (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997). Known as the “Stolen Generations,” it is estimated that a third of the Indigenous population are affected. Despite the wide reaching effects of this government policy, very few music researchers have considered how these individual and collective experiences of trauma are realized and expressed musically by Indigenous Australian peoples. From Indigenous Australian academic Judy Atkinson’s perspective, experiences of colonial violence are traumatic and that trauma, if unhealed, may compound “becoming cumulative in its impacts on individuals, families, and indeed whole communities and societies” (2002, 24). Atkinson suggests that the trauma trails of the Stolen Generations “run across country and generations from original locations of violence as people moved away from the places of pain. These trauma trails carried fragmented, fractured people and families” (2002, 88).Migrating Atkinson’s (2002) exploration of transgenerational trauma in Indigenous Australia to song performance, this article examines the trauma caused by government policies, underlying philosophies and justifications which allowed for the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Discussions then turn to the effects of these policies on the Indigenous community today and the way in which Indigenous Australian performers and songwriters tell the story of the Stolen Generations through the medium of contemporary song. Examples of song texts are examined to come to an understanding of how Indigenous Australians attempt to tell both “stories of pain and stories of healing” (Atkinson, 2002, 96) in order to reconcile the traumatic effect of protectionist and assimilationist policies on their lives. It also shows the determination of Indigenous people to tell the story of the past, present, and transgenerational trauma of the Stolen Children so that the same mistakes will not be made again.