Aborigines sue Australian government

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Six Aborigines flied papers to sue the Australian government last week

for being forcibly separated from their families. Under laws in effect

from 1928 to 1953 Northern Territory, the huge, sparsely populated area

in north-central Australia which includes the Outback and most of the

Aborigine reserves, police snatched children from their families and

farmed them out.

The light-skinned kids were adopted by white families; the dark-skinned

children ended up in orphanages, described by people who were there as

akin to concentration camps. This may sound familiar to Canadian Natives

who were subjected to similar atrocities, but the Australian government

had a different rationale: the "stolen generation" was an effort to save

the Aborigine race from dying out.

Paul Keating's Labour party, which came into office in 1991, has had a

much more sympathetic attitude to Aborigines and their affairs, but

governments before that time were bluntly and often blatantly racist.

Australia's Aborigines now number only about 45,000 with maybe 80,000

people of mixed Aboriginal and European descent.

Hilda Muir is now 76, and is one of the suing six. She was taken from

her mother at eight years old, but isn't bitter.

"I always regret that I never went back to see my people or see my

mother especially," she said. "That was the saddest part--that we

didn't go back."

Police continued to remove Aborigine children from their homes into the

1960s, bringing the totals into the thousands. Depending on April 11,

hundreds or thousands of other cases could be heard, resulting in

compensation costs to the Australian government of millions of dollars.

Family, cultural and spiritual losses and suffering are grounds given

for damages which will be sought by Aborigines affected by the

separations if the suit is successful. The papers filed last week

charge that the Northern Territory law was unconstitutional and violated

the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

The separation of the light and dark-skinned children into potential

adoptees and orphans is just one example of the overly racist actions of

the government, who claimed that they were trying to help the kids. The

belief was that the Aborigines were going to die out, and that the race

could be saved by mingling it with the white adoptive families.

The darker-skinned kids were put into camps, in which they could expect

to sleep on the floors and to be beaten at the whim of those operating

the places. They were not allowed to make any or maintain any contact

with their families, or with any Aborigines at all. Some of the camps

were specifically set aside for mixed-race Aborigine children, who were

similarly isolated from their Native heritage. According to some

accounts, there were the worst of all.

The government did not comment on the law suit.