The Trauma and Injustice of the Stolen Generation: A Look at Australia’s Forcible Separation of Aboriginal Children from Their Families

From 1910 to 1970, the Australian government forcibly separated about 100,000 aboriginal children from their families and sent them to special institutions or white families for “adoption”, cutting off their language and cultural ties with the original ethnic group and forcing them to “integrate into white society”. . People call the Australian aborigines who were forcibly “adopted” the “stolen generation”.

Among them, some Aboriginal children were sent to Croker Island, Australia, where they were beaten and sexually abused for a long time. A few days ago, 12 of them survived an out-of-court settlement with the United Church of Australia and the federal government over the injustice they suffered that year. reconciliation. Erin Cummings, 79, was one of the victims.

Erin Cummings, Indigenous Australian: In our lives, we can finally talk about this openly and move on. We weren’t asking for money, we were trying to get some peace of mind, and I think we did.

Eileen Cummings was forcibly taken from her home in Arnhem Land by the Australian government in 1948 at the age of four, and the scene is still etched in her mind.

Erin Cummings, Aboriginal Australian: I remember looking at my mother from the back of the truck, not knowing where I was going, not knowing what was going to happen to me, it was all part of my trauma.

Along with a large number of Aboriginal children, Erin Cummings was sent to a church on Croker Island, Australia, where she stayed for 15 years. During this period, Cummings suffered long-term abuse and sexual abuse by missionaries. At one point, she recalled, Aboriginal children were forced to undergo drug testing.

Eileen Cummings, aboriginal Australian: We were young at that time, only 5 to 10 years old. They experimented on us, why should they treat children like this? I try not to recall those things back then.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2021, Cummings recalled the first time she was reunited with her mother after being forcibly taken away from her family.

Australian Aboriginal Erin Cummings: I asked her (mother) “Do you know who I am”, and she said “I know, you are my daughter Erin who was stolen by them”. That’s all she said, and I said “okay”. I was devastated that for so many years I had been looking forward to seeing my mother and then I did see her and she didn’t respond. But how can you blame her?

The company lost for 15 years can never be made up, but in the heart of Irene’s mother, there is a question that will never be answered in her life.

Erin Cummings, Aboriginal Australian: I sat next to my mother and asked her “do you know why they took me away” and she said “no, Erin, why they took you away”” I have a job, I work on a cattle ranch” “I didn’t do anything wrong”…she doesn’t understand what the white system is doing. She doesn’t know, and no matter how many times I try to explain it to her, she doesn’t understand what the Australian government is doing and why they are doing it, and that’s what hurts me the most. But at least I lived with my mother for another 15 years before she died, which many people in the “stolen generation” couldn’t do.

Aboriginal survival status is still worrying

As Eileen Cummings puts it, many of the “stolen generation” never had the chance to wait for this policy of racial assimilation to be abolished. However, like Eileen Cummings, even if she has returned to her parents, the survival status of their group is still very poor.

Historically, Australia has implemented policies such as “genocide” and “forced labor” against aboriginal people, resulting in massacres and enslavement of a large number of aboriginal people. The population of aborigines has dropped sharply from 750,000 to 1 million before colonization to less than 80,000 today, accounting for about 3% of the country’s population.

The Australian government also implemented a series of assimilation policies for Aboriginal people, taking Aboriginal descendants away from their parents for so-called “modern education”. This policy was not gradually abolished until the 1970s.

Historian Reynolds: The Australian government once believed that aborigines were racially inferior, unable to participate in modern society, and had to go to host families for foster care, which was almost always the case in Australia in the 20th century. Aboriginal people had no civil rights, they were enslaved by white officials, and many, many children were taken from their parents.

In 2008, the Australian government officially apologized to these “stolen generation” Aboriginal people for the first time.

Rudd, then Prime Minister of Australia: For the “stolen generation”, I would like to say the following: as the Prime Minister of Australia, I say “sorry”; on behalf of the Australian government, I say “sorry”; on behalf of the Australian Parliament, I say “sorry” “.

Although the government has apologized, Australia’s policy towards aboriginal people is still disappointing, and the living conditions of aboriginal people are still worrying. According to official data, the average life expectancy of Aboriginal people is about 8 years shorter than that of non-Aboriginal people, and the unemployment rate of Aboriginal people is nearly four times that of the national average unemployment rate. The areas where many aborigines live concentrated are remote and barren, with poor economic conditions.

South Australian Aboriginal Mala Garret: We are tough, sometimes really tough. Without transport, people had to walk to pick some plums and it was very hot outside.

At the judicial level, Australia’s systematic racial discrimination against Aboriginal people is still deeply rooted, and Aboriginal people are often targeted. Statistics show that from 1991 to 2020, nearly 440 aborigines in Australia died accidentally while serving their sentences in custody, but none of the police officers involved were charged.

Editor: Nie Yue