November 12, 2008 • 13 mins
When British explorers reached Australia in 1768, Aborigines were seen as savages in need of assimilation. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the Lost Generation, and the laws Australia passed to force assimilation on the Aborigines.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath.
Say that, Jane, when you think at the out back,
what comes to mind crocodile bundy. Oh, very nice, it's
(00:24):
very nice. I think of Koala's, kangaroo's mostly animals, boomerangs,
did you reduce love those? And um, you know, funny
side bar to that those are actually created in this
multi step process. And the first is finding a piece
of wood that's been a holida out by termites. It's crazy,
I know, not quite like making an electric guitar, you know, similar. Nonetheless,
(00:47):
So the out back, I think is a pretty picturesque
place in many of our minds, or at least it's
one that you know, connotes adventure and and fun. And
you know, Mary Ment, Australia seems on the whole like
a very merry out of place. It's funny, there's water.
Nicole Kidman came from there and she's pleasant. Step when yeah,
(01:07):
that's kind of sad now, but it's picturesque as we
may envision the outback Australia has a pretty sad history,
that's right. And um, it all comes down to the
people who were there before the European settlers. And we're
talking about the Aborigines, of course, who got to the
Australian continent somewhere between about forty thousand and sixty thousand
(01:27):
years ago, and then the British, by contrast, came in
seventeen sixty eight, that's right. And they weren't interesting. The
Aboriginies weren't interesting. Anomaly that they were isolated from any
other major civilization for so long. They were actually still
hunter and gatherers when um, the Europeans arrived, and they
hadn't like perfected any sort of uh, farming technique or
(01:48):
anything like that, and they were sort of attached to
the land and a lot of both religious and sort
of just you know, sustenance, you know. Um, and they
had sort of the same a similar sense of perty
that American Indians have if you're familiar with that, is that, um,
they didn't have the same sense that Europeans did, basically,
and that made it easier for Europeans to come in
(02:09):
and sort of push them out of the way, right.
And you mentioned their connection to the land being a
spiritual one. And that's very true because their creation myths
tie them very strongly to the land, because they see
divinity and natural aspects of the land and the landscape.
And so when the Europeans came and essentially pushed them away,
it was an insult not only their spirituality but also
(02:33):
to their way of life because it's hunter gatherers. If
they were forced into areas of the land that didn't
offer any sustenance, well, there wasn't much that they could
do because they had no farming knowledge and they had
like their own, their own ways of gathering, and if
they were pushing to a new area, they weren't sure
where to go to get the best sustenance. And you
mentioned that there were a lot of connections between what
happened with the Native Americans and the United States and
(02:56):
what happened with the British and the Aborigines, and you're
absolutely right, because if you recall when the Native Americans
were introduced to diseases that American settlers had that you know,
could be innocuous to us, could wipe out, you know,
a third of their population. The same thing happened there,
and in Aborigines would get like small part upox and
tuberculosis and things like that, and so both the starvation
(03:18):
that was going on and these diseases, it really impacted
the population of Aborigines severely, severely. Even around two thousand
and six, after the Aborigine culture started to come back
and really be restored on the Australian continent, I think
they estimated that only about two percent of the population
was made up of Aborigines, staggering and sadly ironic considering
(03:42):
that they were the ones who were there in the
first place. But if we get back to when Australia
was I guess if you want to use the word discovered,
you could by James Cook. That was seventeen sixty eight,
and he called it New South Wales and he was
there for an instant. He saw it, and then he
moved on. And this is the same guy who would
go on to explore Polynesia, and he was the one
(04:04):
who also found Eastern Island. So he was down in
this part of the world and it was very much
about entitlement and being territorial. He saw this land, he
staked it out, but then no one visited for a
couple of generations after that. They had no reason to
be there, that's right, and the English actually didn't want
didn't have any need for it until a little bit
later when um they in the past they had been
(04:27):
sending their debtors, their prisoners over to the American colonies,
and as we all know, seventeen seventy six, the American
colonies were you know, declared independence and they didn't want
to take any more of the English debtors, basically understandably,
and so Europe or England, it's um, I should say,
had all these prisoners where they wanted to send them someplace,
and so they were like, well, Australia is there, Let's
(04:49):
just send them over there. And it was a long voyage,
but it's felt that purpose. But it's kind of sad
that prisoners would trump and he claims to land at
the native virgines had But that's exactly how it played out.
And so the average the Aborigines who were in the
way were beaten or killed or put into slavery, but
(05:09):
into slavery and the women were sometimes made sex slaves.
And so we see the population beginning to really really dwindle,
and those who did survive. I think we're at a
higher likelihood to become alcoholics, or to be depressed, or
to engage in criminal activity. And this continued well until
the twentieth century. That's right in the government of the
(05:32):
Australian government at this time saw this, these risks that
the Aborigines were were encountering, and they're like, we we
should help out, we should make them so they have
a better upbringing. And so that's when they instituted these
laws that basically legalized the stealing of Aboriginal children from
their families. And this took place from about nineteen tenths
(05:53):
from nineteen seventy had affected nearly a hundred thousand children.
And again, this wasn't an under one prime minister's administration,
or it wasn't just one person who masterminded the planet.
Continued through several generations, and I think that it was
sincerely a benevolent idea. These people wanted to keep the
(06:14):
Aborigines alive, but they didn't want to do it by
preserving their culture. They wanted to do it by taking
the Aboriginal children. And there was a sense of eugenics,
I guess behind it as well. They wanted to breed
out the Aboriginal color from them right, precisely. They wanted
to assimilate them into white, non indigenous Australian culture. And
they did this a number of underhanded ways, and no
(06:36):
matter if you thought it was a benevolent plan, the
manner in which it was executed, it was certainly not
benevolent at all. They would kidnap children, They would have
parents signed them away. They would give them forms and
faint that they were for uh vaccination, thank you vaccination,
And in reality, the Aboriginal parent was signing away custody
(06:58):
of his or her child, that's right. And they were
like sometimes when kids were sent to hospitals or whatever,
they would leave them there and and then the Australian
government would legalize taking the children from there and telling
the parents that the child had died. And that's what's
the most tragic, because of these families underwent, you know,
massive grief thinking that they had lost their children, and
like was the children were sometimes told that they were orphans, yeah,
(07:20):
which which had to hurt too. I think about being
an Aboriginal child growing up in an all white family
or in one of these orphanages, and knowing how different
you are from everyone else, and being treated often very differently. Exactly.
A lot of them were subject to molestation, or they
were ridiculed, or they were abused in other ways. And
(07:42):
it's it was a very stark difference between the Aboriginal
children and the white children because, as Jane mentioned before,
the Aborigines had evolved in isolation, so they all have
very specific facial features and skin colorations, and so a
lot of the accounts today, I think that some of
the Aborigines say that on the basis of their appearance,
(08:02):
they were made to fill inferior and ostracized in social
and academic settings. And this went on for so long
throughout the twentieth century, even while the American Civil rights
movement was going on. And could you say, Candice that, um,
the American Civil rights movement actually kind of instigated, uh,
the reform in Australia. Yeah, that's an absolute fact. And
(08:22):
while we may think of Australia being an ocean away,
it actually ideologically was very closely tied to the American
civil rights movement and that was used as a model
for the Aborigines to reclaim their land and reclaim their rights,
and they did. They got their voting rights and they
got um, permission to be included in the Australian Census,
which may not sound like a big deal, but it
(08:44):
was because it meant that they were marked as Australian
citizens and they threatened equality. And then in this investigation
was launched into the members of the Stolen Generation as
these children were called, and there was a report called
Bringing Them Home and it was sponsored by the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and they basically outlined about
(09:07):
fifty different stuffs that the government could take to essentially
make reparations for what happened to these members of the
Stolen Generation. This written, the government didn't really um act
on these immediately, or at least there were there were
problems um with even making an apology. Um created a
problem for the political leaders in Australia because once they
(09:29):
did that, they felt that they were exposing themselves to
lawsuits basically against the government. And they had a reason
to feel that way because one of the staffs one
of the four steps that the commission outlined was compensation.
The others were restitution, the rehabilitation of the wrong parties,
and a guarantee against future violations. And so Prime Minister
back then was John Howard, and he was very adamant
(09:51):
and insisting that there would be now apology and on
the grounds that the movement may be seen today as
culturally irresponsible, back then it was, you know, genuinely done
as a benevolent thing to save the Aboriginal population. That's
where they had good intentions, um, which you can argue,
but it goes to show where good intentions can bring
(10:12):
you sometimes exactly. But there was an apology issued by
the new Prime Minister, that's Kevin Read and that wasn't
too long ago, February two thousand and eight. And in
the meantime, actually there haven't been many reparations made to
anyone in any member of the Solen generation, except for
one successful lawsuit in the late nineties, and that was
(10:33):
a man named Bruce. It's Trevor o or Trevora. I'm
not sure how his last name is pronounced, but essentially,
he was thirteen months old when his mother took him
to a hospital on Christmas Day for stomach pains and
he was kept and the mother was told that either
he had died or he couldn't be given back to her,
and she managed to keep her other children and they
(10:56):
were raised in the Aboriginal culture, and she went several
times back to the hospital to pursue Bruce and his whereabouts.
And because there was such an intense paper trail between
her requests for permission to see him and for her
search for him, and because Bruce's siblings had grown up
and hadn't subcome to a life of alcoholism or crime,
which were some of the popular claims against the Aborigines,
(11:19):
he was able to wage a successful case against the government.
That's right, and he won. He did the amount if
I think, four seven thousand U s. Dollars, which may
seem like a small few for all that he endured,
but it's it's something, and it is to this day
the only reparation that has been made except in Tasmania.
Tasmania does have a fund for reparations. That's right. And Um,
(11:43):
there's actually other lawsuits um uh kind of related in
terms of by the I think they about the seventies. Um,
there were laws passed where Aborigines could actually reclaim land
that had belonged to their ancestors. Um. But this actually
came into would be a problem, um flicked with their
religion because in order to show that they were actually there. Uh,
(12:03):
their ancestors were there. They would have to tell their history,
which meant um telling like revealing some secrets about their religion,
which is very tied with their history. And uh and
this was was wrong according to their religion because these
secrets were supposed to be kept from the outsiders. And
so it came down to your matter of you know,
revealing that sacred part of their lives, your modern society
(12:24):
that wouldn't understand, or getting the land back. And it's
it's still, you know, a pretty heated debate, and it's
a very charge climate right now. So we'll have to
keep our eyes and ears on the news for what
happens with other possible reparations for members of the stall
In generation. But if you want to read more about
the Stalln generation and other aspects of Aboriginal culture, be
(12:44):
sure to visit how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath.
Say that, Jane, when you think at the out back,
what comes to mind crocodile bundy. Oh, very nice, it's
(00:24):
very nice. I think of Koala's, kangaroo's mostly animals, boomerangs,
did you reduce love those? And um, you know, funny
side bar to that those are actually created in this
multi step process. And the first is finding a piece
of wood that's been a holida out by termites. It's crazy,
I know, not quite like making an electric guitar, you know, similar. Nonetheless,
(00:47):
So the out back, I think is a pretty picturesque
place in many of our minds, or at least it's
one that you know, connotes adventure and and fun. And
you know, Mary Ment, Australia seems on the whole like
a very merry out of place. It's funny, there's water.
Nicole Kidman came from there and she's pleasant. Step when yeah,
(01:07):
that's kind of sad now, but it's picturesque as we
may envision the outback Australia has a pretty sad history,
that's right. And um, it all comes down to the
people who were there before the European settlers. And we're
talking about the Aborigines, of course, who got to the
Australian continent somewhere between about forty thousand and sixty thousand
(01:27):
years ago, and then the British, by contrast, came in
seventeen sixty eight, that's right. And they weren't interesting. The
Aboriginies weren't interesting. Anomaly that they were isolated from any
other major civilization for so long. They were actually still
hunter and gatherers when um, the Europeans arrived, and they
hadn't like perfected any sort of uh, farming technique or
(01:48):
anything like that, and they were sort of attached to
the land and a lot of both religious and sort
of just you know, sustenance, you know. Um, and they
had sort of the same a similar sense of perty
that American Indians have if you're familiar with that, is that, um,
they didn't have the same sense that Europeans did, basically,
and that made it easier for Europeans to come in
(02:09):
and sort of push them out of the way, right.
And you mentioned their connection to the land being a
spiritual one. And that's very true because their creation myths
tie them very strongly to the land, because they see
divinity and natural aspects of the land and the landscape.
And so when the Europeans came and essentially pushed them away,
it was an insult not only their spirituality but also
(02:33):
to their way of life because it's hunter gatherers. If
they were forced into areas of the land that didn't
offer any sustenance, well, there wasn't much that they could
do because they had no farming knowledge and they had
like their own, their own ways of gathering, and if
they were pushing to a new area, they weren't sure
where to go to get the best sustenance. And you
mentioned that there were a lot of connections between what
happened with the Native Americans and the United States and
(02:56):
what happened with the British and the Aborigines, and you're
absolutely right, because if you recall when the Native Americans
were introduced to diseases that American settlers had that you know,
could be innocuous to us, could wipe out, you know,
a third of their population. The same thing happened there,
and in Aborigines would get like small part upox and
tuberculosis and things like that, and so both the starvation
(03:18):
that was going on and these diseases, it really impacted
the population of Aborigines severely, severely. Even around two thousand
and six, after the Aborigine culture started to come back
and really be restored on the Australian continent, I think
they estimated that only about two percent of the population
was made up of Aborigines, staggering and sadly ironic considering
(03:42):
that they were the ones who were there in the
first place. But if we get back to when Australia
was I guess if you want to use the word discovered,
you could by James Cook. That was seventeen sixty eight,
and he called it New South Wales and he was
there for an instant. He saw it, and then he
moved on. And this is the same guy who would
go on to explore Polynesia, and he was the one
(04:04):
who also found Eastern Island. So he was down in
this part of the world and it was very much
about entitlement and being territorial. He saw this land, he
staked it out, but then no one visited for a
couple of generations after that. They had no reason to
be there, that's right, and the English actually didn't want
didn't have any need for it until a little bit
later when um they in the past they had been
(04:27):
sending their debtors, their prisoners over to the American colonies,
and as we all know, seventeen seventy six, the American
colonies were you know, declared independence and they didn't want
to take any more of the English debtors, basically understandably,
and so Europe or England, it's um, I should say,
had all these prisoners where they wanted to send them someplace,
and so they were like, well, Australia is there, Let's
(04:49):
just send them over there. And it was a long voyage,
but it's felt that purpose. But it's kind of sad
that prisoners would trump and he claims to land at
the native virgines had But that's exactly how it played out.
And so the average the Aborigines who were in the
way were beaten or killed or put into slavery, but
(05:09):
into slavery and the women were sometimes made sex slaves.
And so we see the population beginning to really really dwindle,
and those who did survive. I think we're at a
higher likelihood to become alcoholics, or to be depressed, or
to engage in criminal activity. And this continued well until
the twentieth century. That's right in the government of the
(05:32):
Australian government at this time saw this, these risks that
the Aborigines were were encountering, and they're like, we we
should help out, we should make them so they have
a better upbringing. And so that's when they instituted these
laws that basically legalized the stealing of Aboriginal children from
their families. And this took place from about nineteen tenths
(05:53):
from nineteen seventy had affected nearly a hundred thousand children.
And again, this wasn't an under one prime minister's administration,
or it wasn't just one person who masterminded the planet.
Continued through several generations, and I think that it was
sincerely a benevolent idea. These people wanted to keep the
(06:14):
Aborigines alive, but they didn't want to do it by
preserving their culture. They wanted to do it by taking
the Aboriginal children. And there was a sense of eugenics,
I guess behind it as well. They wanted to breed
out the Aboriginal color from them right, precisely. They wanted
to assimilate them into white, non indigenous Australian culture. And
they did this a number of underhanded ways, and no
(06:36):
matter if you thought it was a benevolent plan, the
manner in which it was executed, it was certainly not
benevolent at all. They would kidnap children, They would have
parents signed them away. They would give them forms and
faint that they were for uh vaccination, thank you vaccination,
And in reality, the Aboriginal parent was signing away custody
(06:58):
of his or her child, that's right. And they were
like sometimes when kids were sent to hospitals or whatever,
they would leave them there and and then the Australian
government would legalize taking the children from there and telling
the parents that the child had died. And that's what's
the most tragic, because of these families underwent, you know,
massive grief thinking that they had lost their children, and
like was the children were sometimes told that they were orphans, yeah,
(07:20):
which which had to hurt too. I think about being
an Aboriginal child growing up in an all white family
or in one of these orphanages, and knowing how different
you are from everyone else, and being treated often very differently. Exactly.
A lot of them were subject to molestation, or they
were ridiculed, or they were abused in other ways. And
(07:42):
it's it was a very stark difference between the Aboriginal
children and the white children because, as Jane mentioned before,
the Aborigines had evolved in isolation, so they all have
very specific facial features and skin colorations, and so a
lot of the accounts today, I think that some of
the Aborigines say that on the basis of their appearance,
(08:02):
they were made to fill inferior and ostracized in social
and academic settings. And this went on for so long
throughout the twentieth century, even while the American Civil rights
movement was going on. And could you say, Candice that, um,
the American Civil rights movement actually kind of instigated, uh,
the reform in Australia. Yeah, that's an absolute fact. And
(08:22):
while we may think of Australia being an ocean away,
it actually ideologically was very closely tied to the American
civil rights movement and that was used as a model
for the Aborigines to reclaim their land and reclaim their rights,
and they did. They got their voting rights and they
got um, permission to be included in the Australian Census,
which may not sound like a big deal, but it
(08:44):
was because it meant that they were marked as Australian
citizens and they threatened equality. And then in this investigation
was launched into the members of the Stolen Generation as
these children were called, and there was a report called
Bringing Them Home and it was sponsored by the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and they basically outlined about
(09:07):
fifty different stuffs that the government could take to essentially
make reparations for what happened to these members of the
Stolen Generation. This written, the government didn't really um act
on these immediately, or at least there were there were
problems um with even making an apology. Um created a
problem for the political leaders in Australia because once they
(09:29):
did that, they felt that they were exposing themselves to
lawsuits basically against the government. And they had a reason
to feel that way because one of the staffs one
of the four steps that the commission outlined was compensation.
The others were restitution, the rehabilitation of the wrong parties,
and a guarantee against future violations. And so Prime Minister
back then was John Howard, and he was very adamant
(09:51):
and insisting that there would be now apology and on
the grounds that the movement may be seen today as
culturally irresponsible, back then it was, you know, genuinely done
as a benevolent thing to save the Aboriginal population. That's
where they had good intentions, um, which you can argue,
but it goes to show where good intentions can bring
(10:12):
you sometimes exactly. But there was an apology issued by
the new Prime Minister, that's Kevin Read and that wasn't
too long ago, February two thousand and eight. And in
the meantime, actually there haven't been many reparations made to
anyone in any member of the Solen generation, except for
one successful lawsuit in the late nineties, and that was
(10:33):
a man named Bruce. It's Trevor o or Trevora. I'm
not sure how his last name is pronounced, but essentially,
he was thirteen months old when his mother took him
to a hospital on Christmas Day for stomach pains and
he was kept and the mother was told that either
he had died or he couldn't be given back to her,
and she managed to keep her other children and they
(10:56):
were raised in the Aboriginal culture, and she went several
times back to the hospital to pursue Bruce and his whereabouts.
And because there was such an intense paper trail between
her requests for permission to see him and for her
search for him, and because Bruce's siblings had grown up
and hadn't subcome to a life of alcoholism or crime,
which were some of the popular claims against the Aborigines,
(11:19):
he was able to wage a successful case against the government.
That's right, and he won. He did the amount if
I think, four seven thousand U s. Dollars, which may
seem like a small few for all that he endured,
but it's it's something, and it is to this day
the only reparation that has been made except in Tasmania.
Tasmania does have a fund for reparations. That's right. And Um,
(11:43):
there's actually other lawsuits um uh kind of related in
terms of by the I think they about the seventies. Um,
there were laws passed where Aborigines could actually reclaim land
that had belonged to their ancestors. Um. But this actually
came into would be a problem, um flicked with their
religion because in order to show that they were actually there. Uh,
(12:03):
their ancestors were there. They would have to tell their history,
which meant um telling like revealing some secrets about their religion,
which is very tied with their history. And uh and
this was was wrong according to their religion because these
secrets were supposed to be kept from the outsiders. And
so it came down to your matter of you know,
revealing that sacred part of their lives, your modern society
(12:24):
that wouldn't understand, or getting the land back. And it's
it's still, you know, a pretty heated debate, and it's
a very charge climate right now. So we'll have to
keep our eyes and ears on the news for what
happens with other possible reparations for members of the stall
In generation. But if you want to read more about
the Stalln generation and other aspects of Aboriginal culture, be
(12:44):
sure to visit how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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