THE EROSION OF THE "STOLEN GENERATIONS" SLOGAN.

THERE IS NO PLEASURE in saying "We told you so" when it comes to human misery and unhappiness, so the admission of Lowitja O'Donoghue that she is neither a "stolen child nor a member of the "stolen generation" gives us no pleasure. But it does serve to underline an important fact, that the notion of the stolen generation(s) has been to a large extent an invention, and it has swept along with it many Aborigines of good faith who have had unhappy lives.

That there is a great burden of responsibility for their unhappiness on the shoulders of our ancestors, and on all of us to make every effort to overcome the misery resulting from European settlement of Australia, remains true. But the invention of false historical "facts" is in the final analysis of no good to anyone. This particular issue has become the football of those non-Aborigines who want to use Aboriginal issues for political purposes regardless of either truth or the welfare of Aborigines, along with Aboriginal leaders who see it as a stepping stone to more power and wealth. The notion of the stolen generation was the invention of white academics, and was popularised by Sir Ronald Wilson in his progressively discredited report, Bringing Them Home.

In the Quadrant editorial for June last year we said:

 
   There is a certain moral ambiguity about the most furious, or affectedly 
   saddened, responses [to criticisms of the notion of the stolen generation] 
   of some leaders of the Aborigines. Charles Perkins [since deceased] in 
   particular has done his own cause irreparable harm and done his best to 
   provoke a backlash against Aboriginal claimants everywhere. In this context 
   it is important to again raise the issue of how much of the talk about 
   "stolen children" is an invention subsequent to the events. Thus both 
   Perkins and Lowitja O'Donoghue have claimed to be either "stolen children" 
   or part of a "stolen generation" ... Equally, the O'Donoghue story seems to 
   have changed over the years. Stewart Cockburn of the Adelaide Advertiser 
   interviewed her and published on 15th March 1977 a very sympathetic account 
   of her story. 
 
      "Members of the frankly paternalistic United Aborigines' Mission visited 
   her tribe at Indulkana, 200 miles north of Coober Pedy, in 1934," Cockburn 
   wrote. "They persuaded her mother that it would be best for Lois to be 
   brought up at the Mission's home for children at Quorn. Without necessarily 
   approving that policy, Miss O'Donoghue acknowledges that she had a happy 
   childhood there with fifty other part-Aboriginal boys and girls. `Two 
   single women ran the place,' she told me. `They were dedicated to their 
   job, and we all had the dependable care and affection of the same foster 
   mothers until we were well into adolescence. Of course the younger children 
   also had the affectionate support of the older ones, as in any good 
   Aboriginal community.'" 
 
      When she was ten the mission moved to Adelaide. She went to Unley Girls' 
   High, where she prepared for the Leaving Certificate but by her own choice 
   did not sit the exam. She "drifted into domestic service" after school, at 
   about seventeen. It is clear certainly from that age at least there was 
   nothing stopping her visiting her mother. To her credit, she became a nurse 
   despite all obstacles, and the rest we all know. But her story now is very 
   different from what it was in 1977, before the powerfully emotive slogan of 
   the "stolen generations" had been invented. 

On 22nd February Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald-Sun raised this issue directly with O'Donoghue, who admitted that she was not indeed stolen. Nevertheless, she told another version of the story of how and by whom she was separated from her mother which does not match up with her story of 1977. Much more importantly, as Bolt wrote, she "called on Aboriginal activists to stop using the phrase `stolen generation' and to drop legal claims for compensation. `Stop saying stolen, start saying removal,' she said."

The next day O'Donoghue had varied her tune again, and said that she had given other Aborigines no such advice, and that distinguishing between "stolen" or "removed" children was just splitting hairs. But it is not. The term has been used as an emotional weapon, and people who have questioned it to O'Donoghue's face have been abused for deliberately upsetting her and being callous and uncaring (the fact that she has been loaded with honours and rewards does not, it seems, lessen her vulnerability). Now the people who kept on repeating the term "stolen generation" are saying that anyway, it is just a matter of semantics. But the allegation that deliberate removal without consent of Aboriginal or part-Aboriginal children from their mothers was government policy on the part of the federal and state governments has been repeated over and over, and Senator John Herron has been vilified for arguing against the term "stolen generation" in his response to the Wilson report. When the allegation in two cases (Gunner and Cubillo) was tested in the federal court, it was shown not to be supported by the evidence. Some of the witnesses who had also claimed to be "stolen" admitted in the course of the hearings that this was not true. The judge in that case was at pains as a good judge is to point out that he was making his decision on the facts before him, not the whole issue--and his remarks were deliberately misconstrued to falsely say that he had confirmed the existence of a stolen generation.

Equally, a case brought before the New South Wales Supreme Court, in which the trial judge's judgment was upheld on appeal by the full bench, showed that such a policy did not exist in New South Wales. O'Donoghue's confession suggests that it did not exist in South Australia. Whether there was ever such a policy in Queensland or Western Australia remains to be established. It should not be necessary to add that there were undeniably cases of children being removed without their mother's consent of whom it could properly be said that they were "stolen", and there were racists and eugenicists who did have influence in policy matters. But that there was a government policy of systematic compulsory removal of part-Aboriginal children is yet to be established.