Australia’s Stolen Generations
A glimpse of Australia’s genocide against the region’s indigenous population.
The story of the Stolen Generation is one of hardship, trauma, forced displacement, ethnic and cultural cleansing. And has left generations of Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders cut off from their history and culture.
The Stolen Generation describes a period between 1905 to 1970 where Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders children were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government — in efforts to assimilate these groups into white society as a way to ‘improve’ them. It is similar to other colonised regions of the world, such as in Canada where they also practised a similar policy, causing Canada’s Stolen Generation — where indigenous children as young as six were taken from their homes and put into church and government-run residential schools, in attempts to assimilate them into white society.
The policy of assimilation, instituted by various government policies, specifically targeted children as government officials believed them more adaptable to white society than their adult counterparts. Children which were from Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and white parentage (who were referred to as “half-caste” and “crossbreeds”) where highly pursued by…
