- Title
- My brown skin baby they take him away: a reassessment of the role of adoption in the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families
- Creator
- Cheater, Christine
- Relation
- Other People's Children: Adoption in Australia p. 176-194
- Relation
- http://www.scholarly.info/book/9781921509469
- Publisher
- Australian Scholarly Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- In 1970 the ABC began playing a song by Bobby Randall titled 'My Brown Skinned Baby They Take Him Away'. Based on his own experiences, the song was an Aboriginal mother's lament for a child who had been taken from her by welfare officers. It was among the first public airings of a practice that had plagued Indigenous communities since 1783. In the late 1970s, the New South Wales government asked Peter Read to investigate the issue. Read called removed children 'the stolen generations'. This chapter seeks to reassess the role of adoption in Aboriginal child removals. It will look at how many children were adopted after removal and the circumstances that led to their adoption. By positioning indigenous adoptions within the history of Australian welfare policies it will show how changing views on the well-being of the nation and the family influenced the treatment of indigenous children throughout the twentieth century. Finally it will argue that the history of the stolen generations has led to the demonisation of the adoption of indigenous children by white parents.
- Subject
- Indigenous Australians; stolen generations; adoptions; welfare policy
- Identifier
- uon:8563
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/918286
- Identifier
- ISBN:9861921509469
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