FORGETTING INDIGENOUS HISTORIES: CASES FROM THE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA'S STOLEN GENERATIONS

• Published in: Journal of social history Vol. 44; no. 4; pp. 1033 - 1046
• Main Author: Haebich, Anna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford George Mason University 01.07.2011; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Aboriginal Australians; Aboriginal history; Adopted children; Adoption; Apology to the Stolen Generations (13 February 2008); Australia; Australia: History; Australia: Social policy; Australian history; Bennett, Mary Montgomery; Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia); Child care; Child welfare; Children; Childrens rights; Defense Mechanisms; Dyer, Molly; Family; Forgetting; Foster children; Genocide; Government; Grayden, William; Guilt; Historical analysis; Historiography; Howard government; Imagination; Indigenous Populations; Knowledge; Memory; Native children & youth; Neville, A. O. (Auber Octavius); Psychological Distress; Racial discrimination; Social history; SOCIAL JUSTICE; Social welfare policy; Stanner, W. E. H. (William Edward Hanley); Stolen generations; Warburton Mission; Whites; Australia
• ISSN: 0022-4529; 1527-1897
• DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2011.0042

Collective forgetting and denial of injustices perpetrated against Indigenous people have a long history in white Australia. This was evident in public response to the 1997 Bringing Them Home Report, concerning the systematic removal of generations of Indigenous children from their families. Emotions of shock, anguish and guild, as well as angry denial, suggested a long held secret finally exposed. Yet on numerous previous occasions, some quite recent, exposure had provoked similarly passionate debate. This paper addresses this puzzling phenomenon by drawing on recent research on forgetting, ignorance, and race to understand how these social processes help to construct dominant identities and histories that include and exclude, and that normalize unequal treatment to the point that dominant groups fail to recognize the discriminatory conditions of others or understand their own role in producing them. Several historical case studies document how knowledge of child removals emerged into public awareness and controversy and then subsided back into forgetfulness and ignorance, leaving issues of injustice against the Stolen Generations unresolved. The paper argues that, despite an emotive national apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008, this may also be the fate of the Bringing Them Home Report.