Australia: The stolen generation wins a round, first aboriginal awarded damages

This is about one of the great horror stories of Australian history. Thousands of Aboriginal children were removed from their parents by government officials and missions in the last century. They’re the Stolen Generation.

This BBC article has a long story behind it. It’s a very sad, almost unbelievably moving, filthy saga of deprivation, denial, racism, and colonial administration at its worst. The cultural goal was “assimilation”. Since the UN was formed, it now fits the UN definition of “genocide”. The idea was to turn the Aborigines into a vanishing race. In addition to the injustice, neglect, poverty, murders, abuse, and general indifference of the time, it very nearly succeeded. Aboriginal children were removed from their parents and raised as white kids, either in foster homes or in special schools, often missions. Generally, they knew nothing, or less than nothing, about their families and in some cases their heritage. There was more than one generation affected, too. There aren’t any survivors left from the earlier generations, but the subject of this verdict, Bruce Trevorrow, was stolen in 1958, and he’s part of a large bloc of living Aborigines affected by this situation. I remember seeing one particular story of an Aboriginal man trying to find his mother, who’d died long ago. It would be hard to justify the use of language to describe that story. A scream would have been more appropriate. I was stunned. The significance of this story is that with any luck it might be the precedent those people need to finally get some vindication. Nobody could describe this century-long marathon of sullen official inactivity an embrace of human rights. It barely qualifies as lip service. There isn’t yet any Aboriginal commentary on this development. That’s a pity, because their views on compensation don’t necessarily include money. The land speaks when they speak, sometimes. It’s so hard to penetrate a culture born with such loss, even in sympathy. Maybe the Earth understands better.