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Guinness
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Fri Aug-18-00 04:33 AM

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"The "Stolen Generation""


  

          

this severely under-reported story was gleaned from the sports.philly.com website. more evidence that white people are very, very bad.


NBC probably won't devote much of its tape-delayed Olympic coverage to this story.

Still, if the extreme factions of Australia's indigenous population carry out their threats, the story of the "Stolen Generation" could become the social issue of the 2000 Sydney Games.

As the Island Continent prepares to host the world's greatest sporting spectacle, a dark chapter of its past could be exposed to the international community in the form of threatened violent protests.

"It's not for me to say there will be or won't be violence," Geoff Clark, chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission, said earlier this year. "The fact is that violence is part of demonstration. What you need to do is be able to contain that, suggest to people that there shouldn't be violence, and that's been my call. I would hope people would heed those suggestions."

I hope so too - for several reasons.

First, it troubles me when sports, normally the one thing that links diverse cultures, is used to promote political agendas that contradict such unity.

Unfortunately, a global event such as the Olympics is an irresistible stage.

Second, with local security having prepped for more than six years to deal with terrorist threats at the Games, a violent protest from native Australians likely would be quickly and decisively squashed before it reflected negatively on the continent's shining moment.

But most important, as the demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles show, when protesters turn violent and start affecting innocent people, any message becomes lost in the chaos.

And the "Stolen Generation" story needs to be told.

Between 1910 and the 1970s, Australian government policy allowed Aboriginal children, predominantly those of mixed race, to be taken from their families and given to white people to raise in a misguided attempt at assimilation.

The problem with looking at world history with a Eurocentric view is that European settlers ignored cultures that had been around for thousands of years, and viewed the thriving indigenous cultures as little more than savages. They weren't of European descent, so they were less than people. It happened in North America, South America, Africa, Asia and everywhere Europeans settled.

So even though Australia was settled primarily by British convicts on Jan. 26, 1788, where Sydney now stands, they considered themselves superior to the Aborigines who had been on the continent between 40,000 and 100,000 years.

Naturally, the way to make the Aborigines more like people would be to convert them to Christianity.

But the early missionaries, who brought influenza, measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, venereal diseases and other diseases to the Aborigines, decided it would be impossible to convert the children and teach them "proper" European skills and customs as long as they remained with their parents.

By the late 19th century, the "educated" opinion in Australia was that full-blooded tribal Aborigines were a dying race, doomed to extinction.

So in 1883, it became policy in some states that Aboriginal children could be taken from their parents.

Light-skinned Aboriginal children were often given to white families for adoption, while darked-skinned children were often put in orphanages.

Today, the Aboriginal community says, close to 100,000 people of Aboriginal descent, taken between 1910 and 1969, do not know their true families or communities of birth.

A recent report by Australia's Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron, suggesting that that number was exaggerated, has led to threats of protest at the Olympics.

"A generation is all people born around that period," Herron told Australia's Channel Nine Television in April. "It didn't affect all Aboriginal people, and that's the point that I'm making in my ."

Some Aboriginal people, who considered the removal of children government-sponsored genocide, have not taken kindly to playing down the significance of the "Stolen Generation."

"I think it matters not whether it was a generation or whether it was 10 percent. The policy was wrong," said Lowitja O'Donoghue, chairwoman of an Aboriginal advisory committee set up by Olympic organizers, who was taken from her parents when she was 2.

On one side, the simple solution would be a government apology, but does white Australia really want to be associated with a perception of genocide?

Is it fair to blame white Americans for the horrific treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans by their ancestors?

"Of course, we treated Aboriginals very, very badly in the past," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said in 1997, "but to tell children that we're all part of a sort of racist, bigoted history is something that Australians reject."

Still, if violent protest by Aborigines affect the Olympic Games, Australia's "Stolen Generation" will become part of the global debate. NBC probably won't devote much of its tape-delayed Olympic coverage to this story.

Still, if the extreme factions of Australia's indigenous population carry out their threats, the story of the "Stolen Generation" could become the social issue of the 2000 Sydney Games.

As the Island Continent prepares to host the world's greatest sporting spectacle, a dark chapter of its past could be exposed to the international community in the form of threatened violent protests.

"It's not for me to say there will be or won't be violence," Geoff Clark, chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission, said earlier this year. "The fact is that violence is part of demonstration. What you need to do is be able to contain that, suggest to people that there shouldn't be violence, and that's been my call. I would hope people would heed those suggestions."

I hope so too - for several reasons.

First, it troubles me when sports, normally the one thing that links diverse cultures, is used to promote political agendas that contradict such unity.

Unfortunately, a global event such as the Olympics is an irresistible stage.

Second, with local security having prepped for more than six years to deal with terrorist threats at the Games, a violent protest from native Australians likely would be quickly and decisively squashed before it reflected negatively on the continent's shining moment.

But most important, as the demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles show, when protesters turn violent and start affecting innocent people, any message becomes lost in the chaos.

And the "Stolen Generation" story needs to be told.

Between 1910 and the 1970s, Australian government policy allowed Aboriginal children, predominantly those of mixed race, to be taken from their families and given to white people to raise in a misguided attempt at assimilation.

The problem with looking at world history with a Eurocentric view is that European settlers ignored cultures that had been around for thousands of years, and viewed the thriving indigenous cultures as little more than savages. They weren't of European descent, so they were less than people. It happened in North America, South America, Africa, Asia and everywhere Europeans settled.

So even though Australia was settled primarily by British convicts on Jan. 26, 1788, where Sydney now stands, they considered themselves superior to the Aborigines who had been on the continent between 40,000 and 100,000 years.

Naturally, the way to make the Aborigines more like people would be to convert them to Christianity.

But the early missionaries, who brought influenza, measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, venereal diseases and other diseases to the Aborigines, decided it would be impossible to convert the children and teach them "proper" European skills and customs as long as they remained with their parents.

By the late 19th century, the "educated" opinion in Australia was that full-blooded tribal Aborigines were a dying race, doomed to extinction.

So in 1883, it became policy in some states that Aboriginal children could be taken from their parents.

Light-skinned Aboriginal children were often given to white families for adoption, while darked-skinned children were often put in orphanages.

Today, the Aboriginal community says, close to 100,000 people of Aboriginal descent, taken between 1910 and 1969, do not know their true families or communities of birth.

A recent report by Australia's Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron, suggesting that that number was exaggerated, has led to threats of protest at the Olympics.

"A generation is all people born around that period," Herron told Australia's Channel Nine Television in April. "It didn't affect all Aboriginal people, and that's the point that I'm making in my ."

Some Aboriginal people, who considered the removal of children government-sponsored genocide, have not taken kindly to playing down the significance of the "Stolen Generation."

"I think it matters not whether it was a generation or whether it was 10 percent. The policy was wrong," said Lowitja O'Donoghue, chairwoman of an Aboriginal advisory committee set up by Olympic organizers, who was taken from her parents when she was 2.

On one side, the simple solution would be a government apology, but does white Australia really want to be associated with a perception of genocide?

Is it fair to blame white Americans for the horrific treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans by their ancestors?

"Of course, we treated Aboriginals very, very badly in the past," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said in 1997, "but to tell children that we're all part of a sort of racist, bigoted history is something that Australians reject."

Still, if violent protest by Aborigines affect the Olympic Games, Australia's "Stolen Generation" will become part of the global debate.


if you don't bring me some muthafuckin' cognac, i'll kill you -- supherb

how do it feel to hold my dick in public, cock-blower? -- prodigy

  

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Topic Outline
Subject Author Message Date ID
thanks for the info...n/m
Aug 18th 2000
1
Australia has problems
Isis
Aug 18th 2000
2
by the way
Isis
Aug 18th 2000
3
Good post..
PDB
Aug 20th 2000
4
who was that.....
Aug 20th 2000
5

wbgirl
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5929 posts
Fri Aug-18-00 04:44 AM

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1. "thanks for the info...n/m"
In response to Reply # 0


          

~~wbg~~
AIM: wbgirl218 (although e-mail's still the easiest way to find me...)

http://www.breastcancer3day.org
between this and the (re), Chicago in 2001 will be on some whole new fantabulous shyt! (c) me

August as Quotewhoulike Month (c) me:
"I don't ask to be forgiven/nor do I wish to be given up,/not entirely, not yet, not while/pain is shooting clean through/the only world I know: this one.


Who am I now? What have I become?/Where do we draw the line between being/who I am and what I ought to be?"

both passages (c) al young's "how stars start"

~~wbg~~
"I pray sometimes to keep my head together,
because you can use prayer however you want.
There are no rules one way or the other."
--Jami Attenberg

http://helpcde.blogspot.com
http://queeneulalia.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/queeneulalia

  

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Isis

Fri Aug-18-00 05:00 AM

  
2. "Australia has problems"
In response to Reply # 0


          

I spent five months there last year around this time so I know. I worked with the Aboriginal Reconciliation Committee to help create a document to reconcile the Aboriginal and white Australian community. The Prime Minister and other govt officials refuse to apologize.
No one acknowledges that for so long children were taken from their families and put into white homes so they can be assimilated.
Not only that but Australia had White Australia policy until the 1960s which meant no one that was not from Europe could immigrate. Before 1949, no one from east Europe (including Italy, Greece) could come in. This means that Aussies are very tied to Britain and WASPy ways even though their country is not like that.
Their policy towards Aboriginals has been to eliminate them.
Aboriginals were forced to live on reservations (that's not the name they use but I can't remember). They were given cards that identified them and were required to carry them around. They could not leave the reserve unless they had permission from the white owner. They had to work for this guy for little wages and were fed by the state.
The only way you could permanently leave the reserve to get a job somewhere else was to renounce your Aboriginal heritage. You could longer have ties to your family and would become white. Not everyone could do this, you had to pass a color test first to see if you could even look white.
Now the state of Aborigines is still bad. They live mostly in rural areas where there is no infrastructure or jobs. They are only 3% of the population but occupy over 70% of the criminal justice system.

This shit happens everywhere.

**********************
This life is temporary but the soul is eternal, separate the real from the lie, let me learn you. --Mos Def

  

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Isis

Fri Aug-18-00 05:03 AM

  
3. "by the way"
In response to Reply # 0


          

I hope they fuck shit up when the cameras get there. They have this Aboriginal Tent Embassy they set up outside the capital. They just set up tents trying to replicate the conditions they face on the daily. They were planning to set one up at the Olympics, I hope they do. It will shock everyone. But the media probably won't get to into it.

***********************
This life is temporary but the soul is eternal, separate the real from the lie, let me learn you. --Mos Def

  

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PDB

Sun Aug-20-00 11:40 AM

  
4. "Good post.."
In response to Reply # 0


          

As the only Australian OKP (that I know of) I feel I have to say something on this. Firstly, the Australian Prime minister will NEVER apologize to Aboriginals. It's a financial decision. If he apologizes it will cost the government millions. Recently 2 Aboriginals lost a case against the govt about this issue. The judge claimed there was "insufficient evidence that the govt workers were negligent at the time". Logic tells me that taking a child away from it's mother and against the mothers will is WRONG !! How can it not be wrong - oh, I know how, when money is involved. Stupid me for thinking a person's life is worth more than money !
As compensation the govt gives Aboriginals very low interest loans which are useless if you can't get a job. They also have declared some parts of Australia as sacred land - most of which is in the outback and is useless although some of it could be mined for diamond/coal but isn't because of the sacred land ruling (thank god for that)
The only useful thing the government has offered is free education. Aboriginals can get into the best universities for free.

The housing is finally starting to improve. My parents sold their house for approx $310,000 2 years ago, to the govt for Aboriginal housing. The plan is to buy houses in relatively wealthy areas and move Aboriginals in so they aren't surrounded by poverty and unemployment. They're working off the product of your surroundings idea. Makes some sense. Only problem is, what was once a nice house is now completely run down. It's by far the worst house in the street now.

The Australian media only shows Aboriginals in a bad sense. Always shows them asking for handouts but doesn't show them doing good (other than sports people). I've asked many non-Aboriginals if they'd hire an Aboriginal at their workplace and they all said no. WTF ? These same people expect Aboriginals to "get a job like the rest have to", yet concede that they wouldn't employ them !! As with most racism, it's all about ignorance. Also, as with most racism, the bad is highlighted and it ruins the reputation for all.

I don't know that this issue will ever be resolved. As long as mindless people keep believing the media, anti-Aboriginal attitudes will thrive.

That's my say.



"you people, if it's not in a hollywood movie it's not worth knowing"

"wisest is he who knows he does not know"

"if life is prison, music is the yard time"

  

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Gloworm
Charter member
6077 posts
Sun Aug-20-00 02:00 PM

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5. "who was that....."
In response to Reply # 4


          

that had the sunpeople/icepeople theories....
darker skinned people were the sun people and innately good
lighter skinned aka white people were the ice people...cold and ruthless...

not trying to play the "kill whitey" card....but north america, asia, africa, south america, australia....they've kinda screwed all of them up.


_____________________
For Brainchild...
The Miss Cleo Quotes:
"Ha! You're walkin' around looking like a pauper while he's dressed GQ!"
"called to check 'pon the husband when it's you i should be checkin 'pon"

~*~*~The Soulinsomniacs~*~*~ (in honor of those 3am AIM chats)
-Gloworm
-Krylonwifey1979
-Sleepy
-BrainChild
-Mil
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-Inez
-Meek Meek

  

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