Question

In four or more complete sentences, explain who the people of the “stolen generation” were and what impact they had on Australia. true or false

Answer 1

The Stolen Generations were the generations of indigenous children forcibly removed from their families as a result of various government policies in Australia.

They were children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and they were removed from their families by the Australian state, in the period between 1905 an 1967.

The removal of these children was part of the policy of assimilation and the assumption of white superiority and black inferiority. The ingenious people should be allowed to die out through natural elimination (the indigenous children marrying whites and producing white children, their children marrying whites and producing white children, till the blood clears completely), or they should be assimilated into the white culture.

This attempt of assimilation failed because white Australians refused to accept the Indigenous people as their equals. The forcible removal of children had a profound affect on the society of Australia. Many parents never recovered from the separation and ended up with mental and psychical problems, the same can be said about the children who also suffered frequent sexual abuse. The children did not receive proper education as they were allocated to manual jobs mostly.

The removal of several generations of children severely disrupted Indigenous oral culture, and consequently much cultural knowledge was lost.