There's things in my life that I haven't dealt with and I've passed them on to my children. Gone to pieces. Anxiety attacks. I've passed this on to my kids. I know for a fact if you go and knock at their door they run and hide. I look at my son today who had to be taken away because he was going to commit suicide because he can't handle it; he just can't take any more of the anxiety attacks that he and Karen have. I have passed that on to my kids because I haven't dealt with it. How do you deal with it? How do you sit down and go through all those years of abuse? Somehow I'm passing down negativity to my kids.
Confidential evidence 284, South Australia.
The impacts of the removal policies continue to resound through the generations of Indigenous families. The overwhelming evidence is that the impact does not stop with the children removed. It is inherited by their own children in complex and sometimes heightened ways.
Most forcibly removed children were denied the experience of being parented or at least cared for by a person to whom they were attached. This is the very experience people rely on to become effective and successful parents themselves. Experts told the Inquiry that this was the most significant of all the major consequences of the removal policies.
Denial of this experience results in an individual whose ability to parent his or her own children is severely compromised, and this is certainly my observation with people who were removed in early childhood. Not only has the legacy of impaired interpersonal relationships and poor self-worth rendered them more liable to unplanned parenthood, but they make poor parents and their children in turn have often been taken into care for having been abused or neglected. Such parents are often disorganised, impatient, capricious and ultimately demoralised, feeling unable to provide for their children what they missed out on and often being painfully aware that the experience of childhood they are providing for their children [is] not dissimilar to that which they experienced (Dr Brent Waters submission 532 page 2). ... when they grow up and begin to form family relationships as adults, they have not had a history of socialisation which includes processes of being nurtured, so that they have difficulty in sustaining and developing good constructive family relationships with their own children (Dr Ian Anderson evidence 263). The way it translates to the way they become parents down the track is that from a personal point of view sometimes they are very struck by the incongruity of the desire and yearning to look after their kids consistently, the difficulties in dealing with all the real world limitations on that at different times, but also just the sense of emotional continuity that they have not personally experienced because of their disruption and loss. In some way it becomes built into them as a way of defending against the need that their children may have for them in a consistent and ongoing fashion. So what it means is that they might become afraid of the dependency of the children, or they might become afraid of the needs of their children and they might not be as ready to ensure that all the things that maintain trust and continuity with the care of their children can be sustained (Dr Nick Kowalenko evidence 740).
The damage was recognised by a senior State welfare official in evidence to the Inquiry.
The fact that there has been no history there of family caring, nurturing, and because there has been a fair degree of in some cases institutionalisation upbringing, people don't have the social and emotional skills to cope. The child has been deprived of its role models (Mike Hepburn, WA Department of Family and Community Services, evidence).
Many parents from the stolen generations are very good parents. Dr Ian Anderson noted that `some individuals have been very lucky in the way in which they've been able to reconstruct their sense of self-worth and their sense of commitment to their children' (evidence 263). Michael Constable noted that `despite all the odds and despite the pain, so many people function. They manage to keep families together' (evidence 261).
I feel I have been totally denied of a childhood, but I could never repeat the cycle that happens to so many Aboriginal children that have been removed. It happened to my eldest brother: he had his five children removed. My other brother suffers from alcoholism ... Even though I drink, it's probably once or twice a year. I believe I got it out of my system when I had my first child. Even though I continued to drink when I had my first child, the drinking binges started easing up [to the point] where I didn't need to be drunk every weekend, cause my little boy needed me to be sober.
Confidential submission 788, New South Wales.
Shaun and his mother, Clare, are among the fortunate. Although her parents died when she was young, Clare was raised until the age of 13 by her mother's sister and her husband. She was then removed to a children's home with her younger sister. Clare was determined that her own two sons would not be taken from her and at one stage, when they were quite young, she decided to board them with different relatives to ensure that her own status as a sole parent would not lead to their removal. In this period Clare commuted on weekends alternately to the two homes from her place of work. Shaun told the Inquiry that,
I probably would've been still trying to find my way in life, but the foresight was there from our elders [mother and aunts], teaching some respect and some form or way of getting through life without having to worry.
Confidential evidence 207, Victoria.
Many Indigenous parents experience anxiety in rearing their children. In adulthood the forcibly removed children carry with them the fear that their own children will be taken from them in turn. This was said to be one reason Indigenous people `don't tap into mainstream services, because there's that fear that the children could be taken away' (Joyce Smith evidence 135).
I now understand the way I am and why my life is so full of troubles and fears. I find it hard to take my children to hospital for the fear of being misunderstood and those in authority might take my children away as I was.
Confidential submission 483, South Australia: woman removed at 18 months in the 1960s.
Now I understand why Mum is the way she is, why she's been strict on us, why she never used to take us to the doctors when we used to hurt ourselves, because the first thing they would have looked at was her skin and said, `Well, you're obviously not looking after them properly'. So now I know why all those times we never used to go to the doctors and go to the hospital ... because Dad worked all his life and Mum stayed home and looked after us kids, so she was very hesitant to take us kids to doctors.
Confidential evidence 143, Victoria.
Professor Ernest Hunter found among his patients a group of parents who `feel extremely uncertain and almost paranoid about looking after their kids and concerned for their kids' welfare' (evidence 61). The fears of the parents can translate into a lack of discipline for their children.
A lot of people think I'm very, very easy on my children. I don't smack them because I really used to get belted. A lot of people think a smack's not going to hurt them but I just remember it as a child, you know. They've got a lot of spirit in them and I won't knock it out of them. I just won't knock anything out of them that's in them already like I had it all knocked out of me.
Confidential evidence 629, Queensland: WA woman removed as a baby in the 1960s and eventually fostered at 10 years.
... You see some people that just don't know how to show love and they're getting into a lot of financial problems because they're spending all their money on their grandkids. They're doing this so that the kids think that they love them. You see other parents that can't chastise their kids at all or say no to them, you know, in case they won't love them. So some of the kids have just grown up with no limits set on them at all (Sister Pat Swan evidence 658).
That's another thing that we find hard is giving our children love. Because we never had it. So we don't know how to tell our kids that we love them. All we do is protect them. I can't even cuddle my kids `cause I never ever got cuddled. The only time was when I was getting raped and that's not what you'd call a cuddle, is it?
Confidential evidence 689, New South Wales: woman placed in Parramatta Girls' Home at 13 years in the 1960s.
I have a problem with smacking kids. I won't smack them. I won't control them. I'm just scared of everything about myself. I just don't know how to be a proper parent sometimes. I can never say no, because I think they're going to hate me. I remember hating [foster mother] so I never want the kids to hate me. I try to be perfect.
Confidential evidence 529, New South Wales: woman fostered as a baby in the 1970s.
A high proportion of the `stolen generations' have `problem children' of their own (Michael Constable evidence 261). Dr Max Kamien's 1972 study in Bourke, NSW, found that one-third of the Aboriginal adults he interviewed had been separated in childhood for more than five years. One-quarter of the Aboriginal boys aged between 5 and 14 and one-third of the girls had `substantial behavioural problems' (cited by Hunter 1995 page 378). Kamien commented that nearly all the Bourke children experienced `inconsistency, unpredictability, and a conflict of values with the dominant white society' (cited by Hunter quoting The Dark People of Bourke page 168). However, the study was not conducted in such a way that it could confirm a causal link between a parental history of separation and their children's `behavioural problems'.
Dr Jo Topp, a Victorian General Practitioner, was able to compare parenting among Koories in Victoria with parenting in remote communities in Central Australia where `most people had not been directly affected by removal policies'.
In Central Australia I never saw any infants with feeding or sleep difficulties and whenever I saw infants who were unsettled it was because they were unwell. Young mothers were clearly well supported and advised by their relatives and they had a strong belief in what they were doing. In contrast in Victoria ... I saw many young mothers with very little idea of how to interact with their young infants, how to feed them, how to rear and discipline their older children or how to set limits. Removal of children from their families and from their culture has at the very least resulted in loss of role models for them to learn their parenting skills (submission 767).
Separation of people from families interrupts the flow of knowledge and understanding with respect to stages of child development and culturally appropriate models of parenting and household management (Marion Kickett, WA Health Department, evidence).
Linda Briskman confirmed that `children coming to the attention of Aboriginal child care agencies frequently had parents who had been removed as children' (evidence 134). Professor Ernest Hunter, in his practice as a psychiatrist, has found that many adolescent patients of the second generation present `with pictures that look like personality disorders: girls with patterns of substance abuse, promiscuity, self-harm' (evidence 61).
Because of their behavioural problems there is a significantly increased risk that these second generation children will in turn be removed from their families or will have their children removed.
... as children who grew up under the stolen generations, the fact that we didn't often have our own parents, that we in fact as children when we were raised were not parented by other people and as adults and as women we go on to have children and that those skills and experiences that our extended family would have instilled in us are not there - that puts us at great risk of having our children removed under the current policies and practices that exist today (Joanne Selfe, NSW Aboriginal Women's Legal Resource Centre, evidence 739).
I'm a rotten mother. My own husband even put my kids in the Home and I fought to get them back. And then I was in a relationship after that, and he even put my kids in the Home. I think I've tried to do the best I could but that wasn't good enough. Why? Because I didn't have a role model for a start.
Confidential evidence 179, South Australia: multiple foster placements in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Aboriginal Legal Service of WA surveyed 483 clients who had been forcibly removed. More than one-third of those clients reported that their children had been taken away in turn (submission 127 page 44).
Professor Ernest Hunter has noted the very high rates of self-harm including suicide and domestic violence among young men in many Indigenous communities (1996). His research has led him to identify the root cause as the inappropriate construction of male identity in Indigenous families due to the fact that male role models were either absent or had been undermined (page 10). Professor Hunter looked beyond the contemporary Indigenous family to explain the reasons for the absence of effective male role models.
I believe that violence to significant others and self-harm are related and represent the enactment, at the centre of Aboriginal societies, that is, within the family, of the consequences of the protracted and damaging intrusion into family life that accompanied and followed colonisation. I contend that the destabilisation continues as a result of the poor social circumstances and disadvantage of contemporary Aboriginal societies (Hunter 1996 page 11).
Maggie Brady's findings on petrol sniffing strongly support Professor Hunter's conclusion that self-destructive behaviour among young Indigenous men is a consequence of the undermining of family roles and, in particular, of male role models. Brady found that petrol sniffing was rare in communities which had not experienced missionary or government intrusion into family life. These communities had been engaged in the pastoral industry. Pastoralists not only did not intrude into Indigenous families, at least not nearly to the extent experienced on missions and government stations, but they valued Indigenous families living on their traditional lands. The reasons may have been self-interested - the adult workers knew the country intimately and the children were a convenient current and future workforce - but the consequences include stronger Indigenous families and communities (Brady 1992 pages 183-190).
Ways of relating and ways of nurturing are passed from generation to generation.
There is no doubt that children who have been traumatised become a lot more anxious and fearful of the world and one of the things that impact has is that they don't explore the world as much. Second, a certain amount of abuse over time certainly causes a phenomenon of what we call emotional numbing where, because of the lack of trust in the outside world, children learn to blunt their emotions and in that way restrict their spontaneity and responsiveness. That can become an ingrained pattern that becomes then lifelong really .. and it becomes far more difficult for them as parents to be spontaneous and open and trusting and loving in terms of their own emotional availability and responsiveness to their children (Dr Nick Kowalenko evidence 740).
The Inquiry received evidence that unresolved grief and trauma are also inherited by subsequent generations. Parents `convey anxiety and distress' to their children (Professor Beverley Raphael evidence 658).
I've come to realise that because of Dad being taken away, grief and all that's been carried down to us. We're not organised. We don't know where we're heading.
Confidential evidence 403, Queensland: speaker's father was removed at the age of 18 months to The Bungalow, Northern Territory.
I have six children. My kids have been through what I went through. They've been placed. The psychological effects that it had on me as a young child also affected me as a mother with my children. I've put my children in Bomaderry Children's Home when they were little. History repeating itself.
Confidential evidence 444, New South Wales: woman removed at 4 years and suffering sexual abuse in one foster home and emotional abuse in the other.
The Inquiry has documented the high rates of depression among people who experienced forcible removal in childhood. The children of these parents are also known to be at risk. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Inquiry into Mental Illness reported that,
Other recent research indicates that children of depressed parents demonstrate significantly greater levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms and physical illnesses than children of non-depressed parents. They have more difficulty in school, with discipline, and in relating to their peers (pages 498-499 citing Gross 1989, Silverman 1989).
That Inquiry found that the children of parents with mental illness are at greater risk of being taken into care and this is done more swiftly and with less consideration of the alternatives (page 494).
James Family
Related by a psychotherapist and her colleagues at the Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network.
Grandmother Helen: Helen was removed from her family at the age of four and placed in a white institution. She was not allowed contact with her parents and left the institution at seventeen to work as a cook in the city. She had no family to support her and no idea of where she came from. She became pregnant very young and was unable to care adequately for any of her children as she had severe socio-economic problems and was also unable to cope because she had no model from which to develop her own parenting skills. Her partner was alcoholic and violent and she became very depressed and began to drink. As her own ability to trust and form close relationships was damaged due to her traumatic removal from her parents at such a young age with no substitute attachment figures provided, she was unable to maintain intimate long-term relationships, her marriage broke down and all her children were placed in care by `the welfare'. Mother Jenny: Jenny grew up in a chaotic family experiencing violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse from her father. At three and a half years she was placed in foster care. There were periods of time when she was returned to her mother and then removed again. Like her mother she also received no adequate model on which to base her future parenting and due to her deprivation and abuse her ability to trust and form close relationships was damaged. In addition, she also had to cope with a history of violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse that left her depressed and only just able to cope with life on a day to day basis. She could not hold down a regular job, abused alcohol, was attracted to violent, abusive men and tried to meet her needs for care and nurturing by having one child after another. While her children's basic needs were met, the family was chaotic and there were numerous times when Jenny was clearly not coping and needed to have respite from her children. However, she was not able to avail herself of this support for fear that `the welfare' would become involved and the children would be removed as she had been. Needless to say children brought up under these circumstances would inevitably have a lot of emotional and behavioural problems thereby continuing the cycle into the next generation. Baby Mary (3 months): Mary was born at full-term and considered to be a normal, healthy baby. However, due to her mother Jenny's depression and high level of stress she was emotionally unavailable to mother her child. Breast milk failed and she had difficulty organising regular bottle feeds. Mary lost weight and became listless and pale, ie. failed to thrive. Mary cried constantly which stressed mother Jenny further and reduced her ability to cope even more. Such severe deprivation in the first year of life can lead to disturbances in attachment process and the development of trust and does not bode well for this child's future development. Son Stephen (7 years): Stephen presented as a physically healthy though overweight little boy. He was depressed and talked of feeling that life was not worth living - he had in fact attempted to kill himself by cutting his wrists. Although a very intelligent boy he was failing at school, had no friends and was frequently placing himself at serious risk of physical damage. His behaviour also included sexual acting out which indicated possible sexual abuse, however this could not be substantiated. Due to his aggressive, out of control behaviour he was suspended from school and subsequently moved to another school where after a short period the behaviour continued. Although the school was prepared to try to manage his behaviour his mother could not manage and he was eventually sent to live with his grandmother. Thus at 7 years this boy is unable to learn and has had to be removed from his mother, sister and brother. His future in relation to being able to form relationships, get a job and live a satisfying life are at serious risk and it is very likely that he will end up as a `street kid'. Son Jo (14 years): Jo presented as a physically stocky 14 year old who was dressed neatly. He related initially in a hostile manner saying his problem was that his `mum was hopeless' and made him feel angry all the time. Jo believed he should be allowed to do what he wanted and gave a history of school truancy, staying out for nights at a time and mixing with an older Aboriginal group of boys where alcohol abuse, smoking marijuana and taking pills was a regular event. Jo felt he belonged with this group of friends whereas at school he was the only Aboriginal student and the butt of racial taunts. Issues of identity were also a major contribution to his distress. Behind the anger emerged a significant degree of depression with Jo describing himself as feeling hopeless and helpless about his life changing and believing he would be better off dead. He in fact identified his risk-taking behaviour as a `Russian roulette' of possible death from taking too many pills. He also saw getting stoned as a way to escape his worries. Jo's feelings of hopelessness were connected to his desire to look after his siblings and mum, but he also felt unable to do anything that prevented family breakdown. He often thinks about his father and wonders if life up north would be better. He has an idealised image of his father as his parents separated when he was very young. He wants to learn more about Aboriginal culture and feels saddened and fatalistic about the lives of the young people around him in Melbourne. As far as his own life is concerned, unless some changes occur Jo is likely to become more depressed and drop out of the education system carrying again this cycle on to the next generation. In addition his risk taking behaviour was escalating with the potential for suicide in the future.
Sue Wasterval and colleagues, Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network, submission 766.
| In the hard copy version of this report there is a reproduction
of the following item:
Nurse with two infants, Moore River Settlement, WA, undated Courtesy University of WA Berndt Museum of Anthropolgy.
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He was about 6 month becaus he was just sitting up. And we loved him very much. And my sister use to visit him on the veranda sitting in a cot but when I use to visit him they told me that he was not my brother becaus I was a half cast child and because of that they wouldnt let me see him because he was a dark child same as my sister.
Confidential submission 65, Tasmania: child fostered at 2 months in 1936.