Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
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Chapter 2<br />
In many parts of Australia, the government practiced the forceful removal of children from their families;<br />
a genocidal practice intended to destroy <strong>Aboriginal</strong> social <strong>and</strong> cultural identity <strong>and</strong> was exercised well<br />
into the 1980s. A common practice was simply to remove the child forcibly, often in the absence of the<br />
parent, but sometimes directly taking the child from its mother’s arms. The children were then sent to<br />
non-<strong>Aboriginal</strong> institutions where they were kept until the age of 14. Then, in the case of girls, sent to<br />
domestic services where they experienced sexual, psychological <strong>and</strong> physical abuses of unprecedented<br />
proportions. They were constantly monitored by their non-<strong>Aboriginal</strong> “protectors” <strong>and</strong> forced into<br />
social submission. On the other h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>Aboriginal</strong> men <strong>and</strong> boys often ended up in isolated detention<br />
centres as a result of their “delinquent behaviour.” Stripped of their <strong>Aboriginal</strong> status <strong>and</strong> identity, they<br />
were left to their troubled selves. Rose also talks about the bitterness experienced by <strong>Aboriginal</strong> men<br />
who were not paid wages <strong>and</strong> could not support themselves or their families:<br />
In order to obtain the food <strong>and</strong> other necessities that they needed, they had to rely on<br />
women who would get the goods from Europeans <strong>and</strong> share the goods with them. As<br />
fathers <strong>and</strong> brothers they were unable to protect their daughters <strong>and</strong> sisters, as their own<br />
Law requires them to do; <strong>and</strong> as husb<strong>and</strong>s they were unable to protect their wives.<br />
They were forced to accept that European men could have unlimited sexual access to<br />
the women they were meant to protect. Both men <strong>and</strong> women were also forced to<br />
accept that the government would take their mixed ancestry children, <strong>and</strong> that they<br />
themselves could be left with no descendants. Men <strong>and</strong> women all knew that their own<br />
survival, both in the short <strong>and</strong> long term, depended on acquiescing to these painful <strong>and</strong><br />
perverted practices (1991:187-188).<br />
Australia is a unique country in which colonialism had retained its primeval, brutal force for a much<br />
longer period than in other dominated l<strong>and</strong>s.<br />
In the Northern Territory, from 1911 to 1957 <strong>and</strong> again from 1957 to 1964, when all<br />
“full-blood” Aborigines were declared “wards,” protection included the need for permits<br />
to leave reserves <strong>and</strong> the Territory, prohibition on alcohol, prohibition on inter-racial<br />
sex, prohibition on inter-racial marriage unless with official permission, inability to<br />
vote or to receive social service benefits <strong>and</strong> employment at specified, statutory <strong>Aboriginal</strong><br />
rates of pay (Tatz, 1999:21).<br />
Prior to June 3, 1992, Australia was the only former British colony that had failed to acknowledge, in<br />
law, the prior l<strong>and</strong> ownership of its <strong>Aboriginal</strong> inhabitants (Hocking, 1993). In 1992, in Eddie Mabo<br />
<strong>and</strong> others vs. the State of Queensl<strong>and</strong>, the High Court of Australia h<strong>and</strong>ed down an historic judgment<br />
that signaled a significant legal, as well as symbolic, transformation in relations between the Indigenous<br />
people <strong>and</strong> non-<strong>Aboriginal</strong> of Australia. For the first time, the Court accepted the argument that,<br />
under common law, the native title of the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia could be recognized. In<br />
so doing, the Court ab<strong>and</strong>oned a 200-year-old legal fiction held at the time of the first British settlement<br />
that the continent was terra nullius - “a l<strong>and</strong> without owners” (Tonkinson, 1998:289).<br />
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