A new indigenous Stolen Generation

Jenna Price

Columnist for The Canberra Times.

Don't ever sit comfortably in your armchair and describe the stolen generation as a thing of the past. Don't do that.

At this moment, there are 14,000 Aboriginal babies and children in foster care, out-of-home care, or residential care. The attempted annihilation of the First Peoples continues.

Karen, a Kuku Yalanji woman, was the proud grandmother to a new baby. Her daughter delivered the baby in hospital. Three days later, while the baby breastfed, Karen says  child welfare staff came into the hospital ward and removed the baby from the breast, from the mother. The baby's mother suffered terrible postnatal depression. Two years later - never having set eyes on her darling child ever again - the mother hung herself.

Karen was so hurt and so angry she decided to take the welfare on. And last year, Karen won her case in the Federal Court in Queensland, to have her grandchild returned to her.

She thinks she can help others who are suffering the same fate.

In Gunnedah, earlier this year, Aunty Hazel witnessed the removal of yet another baby from yet another family. The baby was just 14 months old. In Aunty Hazels' kinship group, many women had been removed from their families, part of the last Stolen Generation.

She could see it all happening again. That was what made her decide to start Grandmothers Against Removal in January this year.

Karen is horrified at what she sees and wants a change in legislation to stop the removal of Aboriginal children. She says community services and welfare should not have the care and protection of Aboriginal children in any way.

"They need to know their culture and their heritage," she said.

And Karen says the rate of removal is escalating. To save and protect Aboriginal people and Aboriginal culture, it must stop.

I ask her why there seemed to be a period of time when it appeared from the outside as if the devastation of child removal was over. She said that people felt disempowered and so stopped talking about it.

Now she is fighting back. She says that Aboriginal children are being forcibly adopted out and now there are ten Grandmothers Against Removal in Gunnedah who have also started to speak out on behalf of this next generation of stolen children. They have been joined by others in Moree, Taree and Dubbo.

Paddy Gibson is a researcher into the Northern Territory intervention and has been travelling to remote communities. He and others held meetings to hear how the Intervention was impacting on those communities. At the end of each of the meetings, women approached him, seekingassistance to find out where their children were, or help to have the children returned. It happened almost at the end of every single meeting.

"I really discovered the scale on which this was happening and also what seemed to be insurmountable barriers for women who were trying to get their children back."

It was through those experiences that he started to have a serious look at the figures - from sources such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare - then he began to sift through the lived experience of Aboriginal mothers in NSW as well as the Northern Territory.

He was shocked.

"This was an underground phenomenon, people at the grassroots of Aboriginal communities, they felt under siege by child welfare departments.

"They were in this state of very open conflict - communities versus departments."

But instead of recognising that keeping a family whole was important, the departments continued to take the babies and the children.

Paddy was determined to support some of the stronger voices and began an analysis of what was going. He would make calls to welfare workers. He says there is this whole system which privileges the departments, which ignores the fate of the mothers and their children, and their needs.

One case was so cruel he  redoubled his efforts. In Alice Springs earlier this year, police turned up to a house to remove a one-year-old child. The police brought welfare workers with them and they watched while police threatened this woman with pepper spray if she did not yield her child, says Paddy.

Then the department case workers went to the school of the woman's two older children. Without her knowledge  or permission, the Department of Children and Families in the NT took her two children away from school and filed an application for a two-year protection order. The grounds were health concerns. The departments claimed that the woman's negligence was exacerbating the children's health issues. One child was struggling to put on weight, the other had a learning impairment, the other had a chronic bowel condition.

The woman fought the orders. With Paddy's assistance - but led by the mother - the woman went to see a senior paediatrician who was horrified at the removal. The paediatrician contacted the department. Just last week, after nine months of struggle, the case was closed and the children returned to their mother.

Here it is: Aboriginal children have the right to be in their families. If we want to intervene, we give not take. Give support. Don't take the kids.

Disclosure: Paddy Gibson has taught with me at the University of Technology Sydney where he is now a researcher.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/a-new-indigenous-stolen-generation-20141117-11o69o.html#ixzz3JMAkpGgF