Like Africa, and Apartheid.
Queensland, Australia has its own dark side of history.
The Stolen Generations.
When the Federal and State Government and Church Missions forcibly removed mixed blood (half white) children from their Aboriginal mothers. Referred to as half-caste they were taken from 1905 until as late as 1970.
Estimates are that 1 in 10 children were removed from their families and adopted out to whites. The idea behind the Aboriginal Ordinance was that these children could be assimilated into a white society and eventually after marrying a white person their children would be also be white.
Creating a white society by "breeding the black out".
(this is an over-simplification- but these were the results they hoped to achieve)
One account of such an abduction
I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we'd gone [about ten miles (16 km)] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers' backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old. We were in the lock-up for two days waiting for the boat to Perth.
The children who were not fostered or adopted were placed in institutions until they reached 18 years of age.
Many had no records kept of where they came from or who their families had been. One such child (now an adult) stated:
I've got everything that could be reasonably expected: a good home environment, education, stuff like that, but that's all material stuff. It's all the non-material stuff that I didn't have — the lineage... You know, you've just come out of nowhere; there you are.
Others learned at 18 about their families after the Ordinance was discontinued.
I was requested to attend at the Sunshine Welfare Offices, where they formerly (sic) discharged me from State ward ship. It took the Senior Welfare Officer a mere 20 minutes to come clean, and tell me everything that my heart had always wanted to know...that I was of "Aboriginal descent", that I had a Natural mother, father, three brothers and a sister, who were alive...He placed in front of me 368 pages of my file, together with letters, photos and birthday cards. He informed me that my surname would change back to my Mother's maiden name of Angus
These were the lucky ones.
Some attempted to find their families to learn their mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and in some instances siblings, were dead.
And two, who finally found one another after all the years apart.
It is estimated that over 100,000 children were forcibly removed from their families
from 1905 to 1970.
Many were never reunited.
On February 13th, 2008, a formal apology from Parliament was issued, but to date few reparations have been made to those who have taken their cases to court. There are still cases pending.
The best film I have found documenting this period of time is the 2002 Rabbit Proof Fence.
Worth the watch.
More Anon...