Our State of Mind

by Quentin Beresford

  According to Alice Miller, an expert on child psychology, ‘it is not the traumas we suffer in childhood which make us emotionally ill but the inability to express trauma.’285 She says children prevented from expressing pain and anger will learn to be silent and it is in this silence that lie the seeds of future psychological problems. This perspective may help explain the extent of the severity of psychological problems which many of the stolen generations continue to experience, as well as point positively to the role appropriate counselling services can provide.

  If trauma represents the thread running through many children’s experience of institutionalisation it also comes with other, identifiable effects. Prominent among these is the legacy of identity confusion. This is not surprising given that the explicit aim of assimilating these children was to provide them with a new cultural identity. To this end, their Aboriginal identity was widely, and often cruelly, denied. One of the common recollections of the stolen generations is the length to which missionaries and foster-parents went to denigrate their Aboriginal heritage and to forbid any practice of it. The attitude of these people was frequently motivated by more than belief in the superior virtues of white civilisation; there was a corresponding contempt for anything Aboriginal.

  Racial identity is a large component in the development of personal identity which, in turn, leads to feelings of self-esteem and confidence. This natural path of development was broken for the stolen generations. Not only did they endure the heightened anxiety of being separated from their parents, the transracial experience of being placed in an institution, or fostered out, created widespread confusion over the fundamental issue of identity. Of course, the institutions were designed to effect cultural transformation. The regimented, doctrinaire, and harsh routine adopted by missions were calculated to ensure that some of their objectives were achieved.

  Little research has been carried out in this area of identity confusion among Australia’s stolen generations. However, there is substantial evidence of identity confusion from psychiatric work conducted among Native Americans who suffered similar experiences. These people, particularly in their adolescence, ‘had higher suicidal tendencies; had trouble forming intimate relationships; had trouble with violence, theft, truancy, and substance abuse and developed a mistrust of other Indian people.’286 Similarly, Aborigines taken from their families and institutionalised in a culturally alien environment report the effects as akin to profoundly fragmenting their sense of identity: ‘That has an impact on people’s sense of who they are, how you fit into the world and where you’re going—what in technical terms people call your sense of coherence.’287 As the Aboriginal Legal Service has explained:

  The Aboriginal person who is brought up with non-Aboriginal values and without any reinforcement or recognition of their Aboriginality may suffer an identity crisis when faced with non-Aboriginal attitudes in the outside world, where racist attitudes are prevalent. They may be spurned and rejected because they are Aboriginal yet have values and expectations that set them apart from Aboriginal people. Thus they feel they don’t belong anywhere.288

  Frequently, stolen children told the Aboriginal Legal Service that ‘a big problem with myself and other mission kids is that we feel we are in between a white society and an Aboriginal society and don’t really fit in either.’289 Even more directly, some pointed to an inability to feel comfortable living in either culture. One ex-Roelands inmate explained: ‘Because I was taken away from my parents I really did not know who I was, where I was heading. I felt really lost. I felt no one cared.’ Failure to develop self-esteem is a well-recognised component of mental health problems and is linked to behaviours such as depression and substance abuse. For Aboriginal children, few opportunities existed to develop self-esteem in foster homes, children’s homes and missions. Commonly these children experienced being ‘spoken down to’ or denigrated because of their Aboriginality.

  Problems over identity have only been compounded by the barriers in the way of reuniting with their families. For some, the barriers are language. Children taken from parts of the State where parents spoke Aboriginal languages as their primary mode of communication were unable to bridge the communication barrier. For others the difficulties are cultural; they feel assimilated into the white way and cannot rebond. There are others who cannot overcome the emotional bitterness and the feeling that their parents rejected them. Whatever the reason, the consequence for many is a loss of their Aboriginal heritage and the wider family connections this embraces.

  In the 1940s and 50s knowledge of child psychology was in its infancy, though this lack of knowledge cannot justify the cruelty and abuse many stolen children received. However there is little evidence that institutionalised Aboriginal children benefited much from the greater understanding of children’s needs that slowly spread in the post-war years. Right up until their closure in the early to mid 1970s, institutions continued to be run along the kind of strict and depersonalised lines which denied recognition of individual differences among children and failed to foster their sense of self-worth and competency. Such a regime may not have been experienced by all children in all the many institutions that looked after them, but it was sufficiently common for pertinent generalisations to be made.

  The enforcement of strict and frequently coercive discipline, which we have described as commonplace in many of the missions, characterises them as autocratic institutions. As long ago as the early 1940s, a study on the effects of different kinds of group leadership identified three types: autocratic, democratic and laissez faire. The study showed how techniques of institutional organisation can have profound effects on children. Summing up the study Wolff writes:290 ‘It was found that groups of boys react either with submission or rebellion to an autocratic leader’, and that children of such leadership display ‘a lack of initiative and individuality, and of … discontent.’ While some caution is obviously needed in directly applying such findings to mission life, they do offer some compelling insights. Mostly, the missions were unconducive to the development of individual responsibility, social development and personal goals, as the accounts given by the Department of Child Welfare and discussed in Chapter Four amply demonstrate. A recollection by Frank Gare about life for children in New Norcia Mission emphasises this point: ‘I remember going into the girls’ dormitory once and seeing about forty toothbrushes all the same colour and all lined up at exactly the same angle in their small beakers. The place was regimented to the nth degree.’291

  For many of the stolen generations, the lack of development of basic competencies persisted into their adult lives. One woman explained that when she left Roelands as a teenager she was too frightened to catch a bus. Others have spoken of the sense of helplessness they felt at sixteen when they typically left missions for the wider world. This could be a time of great confusion leading to early dependence on alcohol. Some were prone to involvement in crime and periods of imprisonment. In the Aboriginal Legal Service’s survey of the stolen generations, twenty-five percent of respondents reported they had been imprisoned, although the non-response rate of more than thirty percent to this question indicates that this figure might be an understatement. The connection between a background of removal and the likelihood of imprisonment involves a range of causal factors—such as low levels of education and poor employment prospects—applying more generally to the Aboriginal community. However, a study of survey data on the circumstances of two groups of Aborigines—one which had experienced removal and one which had not—revealed higher levels of unemployment and poorer levels of education among those who had been removed. The authors of the study concluded that these poorer outcomes are ‘a testimony to the total failure of child removal policies.’292

  When the numbers of Aboriginal prisoners began its steady climb in the late 1960s, contemporaries searched for deeper causes. A connection was drawn between imprisonment and a mission background by Mike Robinson, an honours graduate in a
nthropology, whose work focused on the problem of law and Aborigines. In 1969 he wrote an article heavily influenced by Erving Goffman’s book, Asylums, published in the early 1960s. Goffman had postulated the idea of the ‘total institution’ characterised by regimentation and restrictions on individual liberties. Drawing on this concept, Robinson noted that many Aborigines came to prison from a background in missions and/or reserves, the structure of which he likened to ‘total institutions’. He concluded that many Aborigines were not deterred by the thought of prison. Because of their

  frequent involvement in other ‘total institutions’, Aborigines tend to develop a ‘matter of fact’ attitude towards imprisonment which does not make a prison term as catastrophic for them as it might be for others. Previous institutionalisation may enable the Aboriginal inmate to make a smoother adjustment to the prison environment, and this adjustment is aided by the presence of other Aborigines in the goal.293

  How valid these conclusions are for the majority of Aborigines is open to question. Subsequent evidence of the rate of deaths of Aborigines in custody has revealed that many Aborigines with a background of removal from their parents find prison an unbearable experience: nearly half of those who have died in custody came from such a background. Equally disturbing are estimates showing the high rate at which Aborigines removed as children are imprisoned: at least half of those thirty years and older were removed as children, while an equal number below this age group have parents who were removed.294

  Whatever the mix of factors predisposing Aborigines from the stolen generations to imprisonment, it represents the continuation of the vicious cycle of institutionalisation. As the Aboriginal Legal Service has commented:

  Because of the profound psychological effects of being removed and abused as a child, a person may commit offences as an adult and end up in prison. These prisoners have children too, but as a consequence of their imprisonment, the next generation of children are denied the love and care of a parent and the parent is denied the chance of bringing up his or her children.295

  Family life can be disrupted by problems the stolen generations may experience in sustaining intimate relationships. Some find that they cannot settle down and form stable relationships because they do not want to get close to people. The difficulties in relating to people across a range of settings are well illustrated by Trish Hill-Keddie:

  I’m extremely protective of my own children. I don’t trust a lot of people. I’m very outspoken simply because of the disempowerment at such an early age and I’ve had to re-gain that. I’ve had dysfunctional marriages and relationships. People say that you’ve just picked the wrong partners. It’s nothing to do with that. I felt I could never keep a family together because that’s what I’ve been taught; my family went in all directions. I didn’t try very hard to keep things together because I thought that is what you’re supposed to do. The disempowerment was something that was very hard to grasp. It took a lot of years and a lot of hard work to stand on your own two feet.

  Children who experienced repeated dislocations by spending time in foster families in between stints in institutions are particularly vulnerable to the inability to form continuous, stable relationships. Research around the world has identified the specific consequences stemming from repeated family disruptions. Each separation breaks attachments generating insecurity that impairs the ability to form future attachments. Later in life, the learned insecurity about forming attachments affects the development of love relationships.296

  This loss of basic trust can affect their relationship with broader society. Difficulty in coping with authority after being brought up in an authoritarian institution is one manifestation. Some have linked this with their inability to hold down employment.297 For others the experience of removal has hardened into a bitterness towards white society and white people. The feeling of being badly treated by white society extends into a lack of trust towards white institutions. Most obviously, there is a residual distrust against ‘the welfare’ as it is mostly closely associated with the policy of removal.298 The historically bad relationships between police and the Aboriginal community in part stem from the role police officers played as ‘protectors’; that is, agents of the Department of Native Affairs. Schools and teachers are also the focus of widespread distrust because of the policies of exclusion meted out to Aboriginal people.

  Feelings of bitterness and resentment are not confined to the children who were taken. They are also found among the parents who suffered the pain of losing their children. The plight of these parents has been much overlooked even in the recent rush of interest and concern generated by the Human Rights inquiry and the publication of its Report Bringing Them Home. Most of the parents are now elderly or have passed on and, therefore, much will never be known about the effect of removal on their lives and their communities. It is clear that fear and anxiety were generated in Aboriginal communities by the policy of removal. Before their children were born many parents knew the fate that might await them. There are a number of stories of the elaborate measures that were taken by parents to protect any lighter-skinned children. The most common seems to have been darkening the skins of children with dust or charcoal in an effort to fool authorities that the children were ‘full-blood’ and, therefore, might be spared.

  The effect on those parents who had their children removed could be devastating. Very often it resulted in a rapid emotional disintegration. The case of a Cue family who had their children removed in the 1960s illustrates the impact. The father was a railway worker with a steady job and the family lived in a modest miner’s house. The parents were in the habit of spending their afternoons drinking in one of the local hotels. The regional Child Welfare officer believed something had to be done about the family because the children were missing a lot of school and because it was felt they were spending too much time playing around the streets outside the hotel waiting for their parents. Eventually the children were committed to Tardun Mission. ‘That family fell apart straightaway’, remembers Frank Gare who was familiar with the case. ‘The fellow tossed in his job and became derelict. It just ruined the family.’299 A cycle of despair, ill-health, heavy drinking and mental illness afflicted many such parents. ‘In some instances’, notes the Aboriginal Legal Service, ‘the removal of children created a downward spiral of alcohol abuse. Other children were neglected and the relationship of parents broke under the strain.’300 In other cases parents gave up hope; the removal of their children robbing them of the incentive to struggle against otherwise adverse conditions. It contributed to a sense of powerlessness within Aboriginal communities; there was nothing they could do to stop the ‘welfare’ taking their children in the face of the dominance of white power. The loss of so many of their children caused people ‘to lose confidence in what they know and their own value as human beings.’301 Thus, it further weakened and undermined the perpetuation of Aboriginal culture.

  The struggles of many Aboriginal people who were taken away as children challenges one of the dominant views about Aborigines still held today: that the current generation of Australians bears no responsibility for the actions of past generations. The severing of past from present is rarely so neat. For many of the stolen generations past and present continue to be closely entwined. Trish Hill-Keddie expresses this connection:

  There are many issues that I must deal with today arising out of the forced removal from my family: The child within me remains frightened; I am unable to maintain a close relationship with one person and I still fear being abandoned. I know in time to come that I will not hide behind the door, for there will be no more strangers to frighten me. I have come such a long way since I was removed, yet I also know some of my issues will not be resolved. They are ongoing. There are moments when I badly want normality, but what is normality? I know I have become a strong and empowered Aboriginal woman who is enormously proud of who she is today but, without the kindness, understanding, prompting and e
ncouragement of many non-Indigenous people, I may not have reached this point.

  As Trish so clearly conveys, there is an ongoing journey of self-discovery for many of the stolen generations. Finding their Aboriginal identity, resolving trauma, reuniting with family and dealing with sadness—these are daily responses to the painful legacy of assimilation. That so many manage to hold their lives together during this journey is testimony to their courage and strength.

  7

  The Inter-Generational Effects

  ‘We buried a girl the other day,’ Phillip Prosser explained to us in interview. She

  died from an overdose. Her brother was shot trying to escape from Canning Vale Prison. The mother of these two children spent her childhood in Roelands. If she had had parenting skills and counselling she would not have lost her two children in the way she did. If she’d had the knowledge to impart to her kids when they were growing up, things may well have been different.

  The loss of these two children in such tragic circumstances may seem, at first sight, to be an extreme and isolated case with which to illustrate the impact of removal on the next generation. However, this mother’s difficulties are at one end of a continuum of parenting problems linking the stolen generations with their children.

  Since the Second World War, two generations of Aboriginal children have been raised into adulthood as the offspring of the stolen generations. Children of a third generation are still in their teenage years. In a great many cases these young people have experienced a range of emotional, behavioural and adjustment problems. Together they represent the ongoing legacy of assimilation. Its effects are felt in the difficulties parents face in raising their children and in the manner in which contemporary institutions replicate the experience of institutionalisation for Aboriginal children.