Gimpan, I believe that it was me that you accused of being retarded when I mentioned assimilation as a form of genocide.
OK I was just throwing it out there as discussion, but to be accused of retardism, is just plain ignorant.
There have been many scholarly articles about this practise.
One very good one is this; Jessica Schimmel – Williams Prize 2005
Killing Without Murder: Aboriginal Assimilation Policy as Genocide
and is located at
lsawarchives.lib.lehigh.edu/include/getdoc.php?id=459&article.
For those who can't be bothered reading it, allow me to post a couple of relevant paragraphs;
Greek root “genos,” meaning race or tribe, and the Latin root “cide,” meaning killing to
create a word for an action which was hardly new.
Genocide is ‘the coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the
destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups,
with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of
such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social
institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion and the
economic existence of the national groups, and the destruction of
personal security, liberty, health, dignity and even the lives of
individuals belonging to such groups.’3
Genocide is most often understood to mean the brazen and deliberate murder of a
group of people. Sometimes it is more sophisticated than gas chambers, starvation
tactics, machetes and guns. Lemkin’s definition formed the foundation for the United
Nations Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted
in 1948. Article II of that Convention states that “genocide means any of the following
acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”4
Here it is clearly apparent that the Stolen Generations and the forcible removal of
Aboriginal children from their families and communities into institutions or foster care
(most often with a non-Aboriginal family) fall under Article II (e) of the Genocide
Convention. It could also be argued that the Australian government are guilty of clauses
(b), (c) and (d). Article III also made conspiracy and attempt to commit genocide
punishable offences. Included in that definition will be an understanding that genocide is
an umbrella term encompassing “ethnocide,” that is, the attempt to destroy the culture of
a people without necessarily killing the members of that group.
Assimilation
The second and more exact aspect of the attempt to eradicate the culture of the
Indigenous peoples of Australia was through a program of assimilation into white culture
to the end that no Australian would look, act, think, speak, believe or associate
themselves with Aboriginality. This is the more popular claim to genocide under Article
II (e) of the UN Genocide Convention, “forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.” Children were removed from their families and communities in the hope
of breaking any ties to identity, religion, language, land and family. Inherent in a policy
of assimilation is the assumption that the majority group is superior to the minority.
The most succinct definition of Indigenous culture is “the whole complex of
relationships, knowledge, languages, social institutions, beliefs, values and ethical rules
that bind a people together and give the collective and individual members a sense of
who they are and where they belong. It is usually rooted in a particular place – a past or
present homeland.”25 The policy of assimilation in the twentieth century undertook to
destroy each of these defining characteristics systematically as will be presented below.
The Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families estimated that for
the years 1910 to 1970 between one in three and one in ten children were taken from
their families. This is obviously a broad range and should be understood in the context of
time and place (i.e. – more children were taken in Western Australia in the 1930s than
Jessica Schimmel – Williams Prize 2005
13
were taken in New South Wales in the 1970s). These figures are highly contentious.
Prominent historians and the current government have accepted one in ten as a
reasonable figure. It has been estimated that as many as 200-400 per 1,000 Aboriginal
children were removed from their communities each year between 1860 and 1960,
juxtaposed with a figure of ten to twenty per 1,000 non-Aboriginal children. 26 While a
numerical figure of children removed that is acceptable to all sides is unattainable, Peter
Read’s estimate of approximately 100,000 children separated from their families is
considered fair.27 The Protectors’ gave reasons for taking these children that were often
blatantly racist. For example, often on the committal notices under the heading “Reason
for Board taking control of child” the station managers would write: “For being
Aboriginal.”28 There can be no doubt that these children were targeted because they were
of Indigenous descent.
In his definition of genocide, Lemkin cites two phases in the course of
committing genocide: one, the “destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed
group,” and two, the “imposition of the national patterns of the oppressor.”29 The policy
and practice of assimilatio n entailed mission life in order to break down the culture of
Aboriginal children, most specifically in terms of identity, religion, language, land and
family which are all highly interconnected in Aboriginal culture, and then forced white
culture upon the children. Most importantly as scholars have pointed out, according to
the UN definition, these acts need not be malicious to be considered genocide.
The [Bringing them home] Report argues that, in order to constitute an
act of genocide, the planned extermination of a group ‘need not be
solely motivated by animosity or hatred.’ … This is important in
rejecting the assertion that the allegations of genocide can be avoided
simply by claiming that a particular course of action was felt to be ‘the
right thing at the time.’30
Destruction of a culture is a murderous action even when it is considered to be in the best
interest of a group because it is the result of a majority group taking away a minority
group’s self-determination.
Anyways, I did not write this, I hope that you read it, it is very enthralling.
All it indicates is that I am not retarded.
