'Still Stolen': Ray Jackson on the New Stolen Generation

Ray Jackson 16 September, 2014
The late Aboriginal Human Rights Activist Ray Jackson was from the stolen Generation

Today I did what I consider was a good in-depth interview with CAAMA radio relative to the NITV article that I have included below after the notice of Thursday's meeting.

This is an issue that must be made more public. Where are the voices of the politicians who whimpered and simpered during the unctuous hand-wringing on the 'Bringing Them Home' Report?

Where too are those tearful political voices resonating throughout parliament during the Rudd Apology?

Why is the horror and trauma of Aboriginal families and the FACS and police abused children not a national narrative, an item of national importance?

The where and why, dear reader, is quite simple.  We Aboriginal people are still living, or more honestly described, existing in a colonial regime. We have no rights that cannot be changed at the whim of a politician, a government official, a 'bully-man'. We Aboriginal people are never allowed to win. But more importantly, the inheritors of the invasion have never lost their assimilationist desires. Perhaps these desires merely arise from the multiple guilts of the invasion and the crimes that followed.

Can those crimes, that national guilt be assuaged by forceful assimilation? sadly for us the answer seems to be Yes!   Yes with a hate towards us that is, I believe, sociopathic and endless.

Come to the Forum.  Hear the voices of Aboriginal families whose children and grand-children have been monstered beyond belief by these diktats of assimilationist and genocidal policies. For some 80+ years our people have suffered an enormous collective trauma that has decimated all who have been inflicted by these infamous and cruel acts. Remember, if you will, that of the 99 +1 Aboriginal deaths in custody 'investigated' by the Royal Commission, some 47% were taken from their families and became state wards.   Stolen children. allegedly taken from their family because of neglect.  How much neglect must now be recognised and measured by the state that currently makes over 50% of those children, both now and future, custodial fodder and eventually to just another death in custody event?

Come to the forum to learn why, after 226 years, we as a distinct people with a recognised culture that is over 60 000 years of one to one existence with our lands are still being judged as lacking in the ability to nurture our children.  Why are we being judged as failing to live in a nuclear family concept when we have an innate culture of communalism.  We live the vibrant value of togetherness as a living breathing example whereby our children have many generations to live and share with on a daily basis. It is not our houses that are overcrowded, it is our families!  Our cultural way of living is denigrated simply because we have far more different values.

From a society that had no houses and our camp-fires were literally our lounge-rooms we are now expected (forced?) to live under uncommon rules.
We are judged on our poverty.  We are judged on the 'cleanliness' of our houses, a hangover of the mission days when the white-gloved hand ruled. We are judged on what is in the cupboard or the fridge without recognising that our children go to nan's, aunt's, cousins, etc. we have community. we have an extended family within and without.

Yes, there are situations where some Aboriginal children are traumatised by physical, sexual or mental abuse but it is not the pandemic that is daily screamed from the verbal vomit arena.  These children, as a matter of course, must be taken from their non-carers but they must not be removed from their wider extended family just to be adopted out to non-aboriginal families.   Why is this being done?  The collective blame placed upon our extended families is totally unjust.

Come and learn the real truth and help us fight this human rights abuse totally.  For all time.

Ray Jackson

Ray Jackson (RIP)
Past President, Indigenous Social Justice Association

2013 Laureate, Prix de l'Homme de Francais (French Human Rights Medal 2013)

Statement from GMAR NSW

13 September 2014

Image source:
Rabbit-Proof Fence

Grandmothers groups condemn child removal at gunpoint

Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR NSW) condemn the forced removal of multiple Aboriginal children from one family at gunpoint earlier this year as highlighted on NITV news last night.

The footage of NSW police in riot gear barging into a household at 6am to remove children was released during National Child Protection Week and has caused outrage across the country.

NITV reported, 'The parents, who were asleep when the raid began, have told NITV News they awoke to find guns pointed at them and that they were then handcuffed by police as the children were forcibly removed in front of them'.

These revelations became public following a forum held by GMAR and NSW MP David Shoebridge in Moree last week as part of a recent engagement tour which also saw emotional meetings in Dubbo and Gunnedah. These meetings were well attended by Aboriginal families suffering from continuing Stolen Generations.

More Aboriginal children are currently being removed than at any time in Australia’s history, with over 14,000 now in 'out of home care'. One in ten Aboriginal children in NSW is in the foster-care system.

While this raid with guns drawn is particularly shocking, the reality is that police are routinely used across Australia by Child Protection staff to forcibly remove Aboriginal children.

At a recent conference of our national network, the National Aboriginal Strategic Alliance to Bring the Children Home (NASA), a member from Alice Springs spoke about a baby being ripped from her mothers arms while pepper spray was pointed in her face. Sheila Oakley from Brisbane was recently blinded in one eye by police using a taser when they accompanied 'Child Protection'to her house.

It is currently 'National Child Protection Week', sponsored by the Commonwealth government, seeking to raise awareness about child abuse and ensure it is reported to the authorities. But, as demonstrated by these raids, the police force and Child Protection departments are responsible for some of the worst trauma perpetrated on Aboriginal children.

This use of police is just one reflection of the brutality that underlies the crisis of mass child removal gripping Aboriginal communities.

Child protection departments continue to harbor racist attitudes and unjustly target Aboriginal families. Aboriginal children are increasingly removed from hospitals within hours of birth. The legal system continues to deny representation and any meaningful access to justice to Aboriginal parents suffering from child removal. Aboriginal children continue to be placed with non-Indigenous people, far away from their families, cut off from their culture and language. The NSW and Commonwealth governments are currently cutting services that provide assistance to families in crises and guard against removal, such as Aboriginal controlled women’s shelters and Legal Aid services.

But our network is growing in strength, successfully fighting for the return of many children. New GMAR groups are forming in Dubbo and Moree and are planning protest action. In Gunnedah, we have pushed FACS into negotiations about establishing an Aboriginal Community Expert Committee, accountable to the community, which could play a central role in decision making about Aboriginal child welfare.

We demand a complete moratorium on the use of police by Child Protection authorities.

We need Aboriginal control over all decisions affecting Aboriginal children and an urgent injection of resources into our communities to support families in crisis.

NASA has called a national mobilization outside Federal Parliament House on the anniversary of the National Apology on February 13 2015.

We will not accept the brutality of continuing Stolen Generations and will continue in our fight to stop removals.