At least 100,000 Aborigines were taken from their parents and placed in the care of institutions, religious missions or white foster parents. They were part of a nationwide ethnic assimilation programme, now discredited, which started in the early twentieth century and lasted until the beginning of the 1970s.

Bruce Trevorrow's journey into legal history began on Christmas Day 1957. Then just 13 months old, he was suffering from stomach pains and his father, Joseph, asked neighbours to take him for treatment to the Adelaide Children's Hospital in South Australia.

On admission, the hospital recorded that Bruce had no parents and that he was neglected and malnourished, three untruths that were to change his life forever. They meant that Joseph Trevorrow, who died some eight years later, would never see his son again.

That same Christmas, a local woman called Martha Davies answered an advertisement in the local paper. It sought white foster parents for Aboriginal babies. On 6 January 1958, she and her husband visited the children's hospital, and decided to take Bruce home.

Thinking he was still in hospital, Bruce's mother Thora tried to keep track of her son's progress by corresponding with the local Aboriginal Protection Board. The family did not have a car or telephone. "I am writing to ask if you will let me know how baby Bruce is," she wrote five months after he was taken away, "and how long before I can have him home."

Even though Bruce had already been fostered, and was being raised by his new family, the Aboriginal Protection Board responded that he was making "good progress", but needed to remain in hospital for further treatment. It was the cruellest of lies. Bruce had by now become an unwitting victim of what later became known as the Stolen Generation.

Growing up in a white family was the most disorientating of experiences. "I kept on asking my parents why I was different to the other kids," he told the BBC. "They said they had dark relatives."

His school life was miserable. "Being the only black person, I was bullied at school. That was very traumatic. I got called names like nigger and black."

It was not until 1967, when Bruce was 10, that he was reunited with his mother,Thora. However, the reunion proved short-lived (just 14 months) and thereafter he spent much of his adolescence in and out of institutions.

Now, almost 50 years after being taken from his family, Bruce Trevorrowhas not only discovered the truth of his upbringing, but become the first Aborigine to win compensation for being taken from his family. […] "We've won a case, and there are lots of people out there who lived the same life as me. Hopefully, they'll get some compensation. But you can't put a value on what happened. You can't put a dollar sign on that. Most of my life has been lost to me."

 

1. Kevin Rudd is the President of Australia. ____

2. Australians are not responsible for the policy of ‘Stolen Generations’. ____

3. Indigenous Australians have a strong bond with their land. ____

4. In the 18^th century the indigenous population were brutally treated. ____

5 For indigenous Australians apologies are not enough. ____

6. Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians had a different concept of land. ____ 

7. All members of Australian society want national reconciliation. ____ 

8.  Indigenous Australian culture is one of the world's oldest living cultures. ____

 

On February 13, 2008, Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, read his apology to the Federal Parliament for the acts of his forebears in enabling and implementing the policy that is best known as the 'Stolen Generations.'

Although indigenous children were removed from their families from the earliest days of non-indigenous settlement in Australia, the term 'Stolen Generations' primarily refers to the official and legally sanctioned Australian government policy between 1909 and 1969.

Rudd's apology was rightly seen as a significant breakthrough on the part of the Australian state in coming to terms with and accepting its responsibility for the brutal, if not genocidal, treatment of indigenous Australians since the colonization of the country. Surely, now the way has been paved to enable the indigenous population to share in the wealth of Australia. […]

However, while the apology was undeniably a step forward, there are signs that further progress will still be a struggle. Arguably the most important issue for the indigenous population of Australia is the question of ownership of the lands they have occupied for over 60,000 years.

In economic terms, ownership of their own land could potentially prove highly beneficial for indigenous people in tackling the problems of poverty that plague their communities. Compared to non-indigenous Australians, indigenous people live 20 to 21 years less, experience 3 to 5 times higher childhood mortality, are 12 times more at risk of infectious diseases and 2.5 times more likely to be unemployed.

Land is also of crucial significance to the indigenous population in terms of their social and cultural identity, as it could provide indigenous people with the resources and space they need to foster and cultivate their culture and way of life.

It is this profound bond with the land in which they live that has proved so difficult for non-indigenous Australians to understand. […] The cultural and social differences in how land was viewed served only to create even greater division between the native inhabitants and the colonists. Whereas for indigenous Australians, the land served as the "source of social, spiritual and legal arrangements" founded on the attendant duties of "reciprocity and custodianship," the British-derived concept of the new arrivals was intrinsically bound up with the legal notion of private possession. Given the political dominance of non-indigenous people, their concept of land became law, creating a situation that continues to work greatly to the detriment of the indigenous inhabitants.

[…] In effect, the indigenous community is facing a double colonization and dispossession. Firstly, their lands were seized from them unjustly over a brutal period in their history. Now, in order to retrieve some of the lands they lost, they are obliged to return to the courts of the civilization that dispossessed them in the first place.

[…] The issue should be given serious consideration by all members of Australian society who are genuinely intent on ensuring a process of national reconciliation. Failure to do so could result in the "end of history" for one of the world's oldest living cultures.

 

 

 

 

1. What did Kevin Rudd apologize for?

2. What did that mean?

3. Do indigenous and non-indigenous Australians have the same standard of living?

4. Why is the ownership of their lands so important for the indigenous population?