Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Population

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Apology, No Compensation For Lost Generations

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Jan 27 2008 (IPS) - While aboriginal groups have welcomed the Australian government’s pledge to apologise to the &#39stolen generations&#39, they argue that the gesture should be backed up with compensation.

But earlier this month, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin ruled out such a fund for people taken from their families.

Lyn Austin, chairperson of Stolen Generations Victoria, told IPS that the stolen generations are victims of crimes and deserve to be compensated. "The forced removals, the atrocities that our people have suffered in the institutions and the church homes and wherever (as) victims of sexual and physical abuse and the trauma and the pain," are reasons for compensation, she says.

"I could walk out on the street tomorrow and trip over the footpath and sue the local council. I’d get compensated for that, so why not compensation for stolen generation members?" asks Austin.

Some 230 years have passed since Europeans first established a settlement in Australia. But Australians – non-indigenous as well as indigenous – are struggling to come to terms with the past, and therefore, the present.

The seminal ‘Bringing Them Home’ report, released in 1997, from the ‘National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families’ acknowledged that indigenous children were "forcibly separated from their families and communities from the very first days of the European occupation of Australia."

Among the 54 recommendations contained in the report is a call for monetary compensation, as a part of reparations, "in recognition of the history of gross violations of human rights".

Instead of a compensation fund, minister Macklin says the government will be funding health, counselling and education services. She argues that providing funding to these sectors will help to close the gap between the life expectancies of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The minister says that this will be the best way of adding "force" to the apology, which is expected to be made in February.

Studies – such as the report commissioned by Oxfam and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, released in April last year – show a discrepancy in the life expectancy between the country’s indigenous and non-indigenous populations of around twenty years. Indigenous Australians’ health also ranks poorly compared to the indigenous populations of the United States, New Zealand and Canada.

Unlike Australia, the Canadian government has agreed to establish a $2 billion compensation fund for indigenous people forcibly separated from their communities as children.

According to Austin, the Australian government’s plan to provide funding to health, education and counselling is far from sufficient. "They’re already pumping millions into those things anyway. They’ve been doing it for years… It’s not good enough at all. It’s just absolutely outrageous," she says.

John Browne, chairperson of the Journey of Healing Association of South Australia, argues that if the federal government will not set up a compensation fund, then it should provide more specialised programmes for people who were stolen, such as a funeral fund and free medical services.

Browne says that being removed from their families was "bad enough" for the stolen generations. He argues that they should also be compensated for "all the pain and hurt that they’ve suffered because of that abuse in foster families and adoption families."

He told IPS that moving children into a foreign culture had devastating effects. "They lost their link to their culture. They lost their kinship ties to their families, their link to the aboriginal spirituality, like a link to the land," he says.

Browne says the issues stemming from the forced removal of children have created many problems for other generations. "It’s an ongoing issue and it needs to be resolved fairly quickly because it becomes an intergenerational issue after a while."

He likens the effect to radiation poisoning, where the poison shifts from one generation to the next. The problems are transferred "to the next generation, and the next generation then lives out those problems and then again with the grandchildren," he says.

But one Australian state appears to want to end these problems. Following its landmark decision in 2006 to establish a compensation fund, the Tasmanian state government announced on Jan.15 that 84 people who were removed from their families as children would receive financial compensation, while another 22 ex-gratia payments were approved for children of stolen generations victims. The Tasmanian government has allocated five million Australian dollars to the fund.

Austin says that the federal government’s refusal to set up a similar fund means the apology will be empty. "You’ve got to have something to go with the apology…They’re going to say sorry but it’s going to be more tokenistic," she says.

Austin told IPS that the lack of a federal fund means that people – including herself and her adopted siblings – will be looking to take legal action, with class action also an option.

And a precedent has been set. Following a 13-year battle, Bruce Trevorrow last year became the first person removed from their family to successfully sue authorities. Trevorrow was awarded AUD 525,000 (461,291 US dollars) for false imprisonment, pain and suffering.

But John Browne says the apology, even without compensation, should be seen as a first step. "People are saying (that) an apology is hollow without reparations or compensation. Well, I say it may be hollow but it’s a start. I mean, just to get the federal government to apologise is a big thing," says Browne.

While he plans to continue applying pressure to the federal government to establish a fund, Browne says that he will also look to the South Australian state government. "The state governments seem to be more conducive to providing that remuneration. Tasmania’s already started and Western Australia is on its way. South Australia has to look at that sort of thing," he told IPS.

But like Austin, Browne views legal action as an option. Either a fund is set up "or we can do a class action through the courts," he says."First we try the good way and then we try the other way.’’