Stolen Generations: Dreams of whiteness

Stolen Generations is a documentary that humanises the inhumane practice of removing children from their families. 'Stolen generations’, a term coined by Peter Read, refers to the assimilation practice of the Australian Government throughout history designed to remove the physical and cultural presence of Indigenous peoples from Australian society and cultural consciousness, and was informed by sciences such as eugenics, which the film explains. It became a less acceptable way of dealing with the Aboriginal population after the Second World War.

Stolen Generations offers a solid theoretical foundation while providing an emotional insight into the consequence of the implementation of the policies, and the children who endured them. The destruction of the familial, cultural and social fabric of Indigenous communities as the intention of the Australian Government throughout the history of colonisation, is demystified by Johnson’s documentary. The befuddlement of the children, now adults, as they try to translate the experience of being removed, means that the intensity of the experience is still being processed by those caught up in the administration of child removal. These experiences are also well documented in the Bringing Them Home Report, that provides personal accounts of children removed, and the confusion into which they were condemned. Testimonies in Stolen Generations show that, isolated and alienated within a strange culture, Indigenous children subjected to the cruel policies of removal are still healing, and some were never able to reconnect with their birth families.

The three main characters in this film are Bob Randall, Daisy Howard, and Cleonie Quayle, who give different accounts of the same policy.Stolen Generations takes us through the history of social theory that eventually led to children being stolen, and Johnson’s instigation to find answers to her own questions which thankfully, provide questions for the wider audience.

Stolen Generations synopsis

A documentary using historical and interview footage to tell the story of three people removed as children from their families, who are now one of the many referred to as the Stolen Generations. The tapestry of life experiences is woven around the filmmaker’s own personal questions of identity, and an administration put in place with the sole purpose of annihilating Aboriginal peoples.

Notes by Romaine Moreton

Education notes

This clip explores attitudes about the Stolen Generations. It begins with a black-and-white newsreel feature titled 'A Dream Comes True: NATIVE GIRLS’ “FAIRY PALACE”’. The feature shows two Indigenous children and an older Indigenous girl from Melville Island in the Northern Territory with their adoptive family at home in suburban Melbourne. This is followed by excerpts from interviews with professors Henry Reynolds and Marcia Langton. The interviews continue over black-and-white archival footage of anthropologists taking physical measurements of Indigenous people in the bush, and a shot of a page from an anthropological text of the 1930s containing calculations assessing ‘degrees’ of Aboriginality.

Educational value points

• Physical anthropology, which the clip indirectly refers to, studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, the biological bases of human behaviour, adaptability and variation, largely through looking at physical evidence such as physiology and anatomy. Anthropometry, which is demonstrated in the clip, involves the measurement of the body to understand human physical development and evolution. It was once used to determine and define racial characteristics and to explain individual character traits, but today such use is understood to be pseudo-science.

• Professor Henry Reynolds (1938–) explains in the clip that eugenics (the science of improving the qualities of the human race via parental selection) was once popular in Australia and the West generally and gave rise to the racist notion of 'breeding out the colour’ of Indigenous Australians to 'improve’ the population.

• Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian and expert in the field of Indigenous–European relations in Australia. He has been accused by some of propagating a 'black armband’ view of history. As well as having written a number of books on race relations, recognition under the law and the Indigenous struggle for land rights, in 1999 Reynolds published Why Weren’t We Told?, in which he asks why non-Indigenous Australians were not told about the history of relations with Indigenous people.

• Professor Marcia Langton, noted Australian anthropologist and one of Australia’s leading scholars on Indigenous issues, is interviewed in this clip. Langton (1951–) has become known for her work in several academic fields; the common feature of her work is her interest in Indigenous rights, justice and artistic expression. Her anthropological work supports land claims and negotiations with mining companies.

• The term Stolen Generations was coined by Australian historian Peter Read to draw attention to the generations affected by the government policy of removing some Indigenous children from their families and placing them in white homes or institutions. Several generations of Indigenous children who were removed from their families between about 1910 and 1970, as well as generations of their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and other family members, were affected.

• The Stolen Generations was the focus of a national inquiry commissioned in 1995 and headed by Sir Ronald Wilson, a former High Court judge and president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and Mick Dodson, the Commission’s Social Justice Commissioner. The inquiry visited every state and territory, receiving testimony from 535 Indigenous Australians. Its official report, Bringing Them Home, was released in 1997.

• The clip highlights the work of Indigenous filmmaker Darlene Johnson. A Dunghutti woman from New South Wales, she has specialised in Indigenous issues – both in her studies and in the subjects of her films. Her interest in the ways in which Indigenous Australians negotiate two worlds is an underlying theme in her films. These range from her first drama, Two Bob Mermaid (1996), and her award-winning Stolen Generations (2000) to Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), a documentary she wrote and directed on the making of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002). After Stolen Generations she wrote an Indigenous protocol for filmmakers for SBS.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia