History, Department of
Title
Stolen Generations and Vanishing Indians: The Removal of Indigenous Children as a Weapon of War in the United States and Australia, 1870-1 940
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
November 2002
Abstract
As a central component of the assimilation agenda in the United States
and of absorption plans in Australia, child removal became a systematic
government policy toward indigenous peoples in both countries in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using the rhetoric of protecting and
saving indigenous children, reformers and government officials touted
child removal as a means to "uplift" and "civilize" indigenous children.
Modern-day historians, until very recently, have characterized child removal
in similar ways: as a well-intentioned, though ultimately misguided,
alternative to warfare and violence against indigenous peoples.
If we turn our attention to the perspectives of the indigenous peoples
who confronted this policy, a different view emerges. While outright violence
against indigenous peoples in both the United States and Australia did
virtually end in the late nineteenth century, efforts by colonizers to pacify
and control indigenous populations and to confiscate their lands continued
with the removal of indigenous children. Such a policy was hardly a departure
from military methods of subjugation; rather, the systematic and
forcible removal of their younger generations represented an ongoing assault
upon indigenous communities.
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Comments
Published in Children and War: A Historical Anthology. Edited by James Marten; Foreword by Robert Coles. New York University Press. New York and London. 2002. Copyright © 2002 New York University Press. http://www.nyupress.org Used by permission.