Stolen generation continues - No to the removal of Yolngu citizens

Yingiya Mark Guyula

In the last month I have been made aware of eight children who have been taken from the lands of the Yolngu Nation and stolen away to Darwin by the Northern Territory government. The communication I am receiving from community members is that there are many more children that have been removed. Children are being taken off their country and literally out of the arms of their family, despite protective legislation and policies. The Yolngu kinship structure is composed of several mothers and fathers, many grandmothers and grandfathers. It is very hard to exhaust this list of people when looking for someone to provide care for a child.

 

In 2015, Grandmothers Against Removal reached an agreement with Department of Families and Children Services in New South Wales on a set of guiding principles aimed at giving Aboriginal communities more control over child protection issues. In Arnhem Land I want the same opportunity for the Yolngu Nation with the intention of giving Yolngu clans control over the welfare of Yolngu children.

 

Yolngu leaders and Yolngu people – we are a sovereign nation. Without a treaty and without our consent, what makes the NT Government think they can take our citizens from our lands, especially the most vulnerable of our society - our children. I am walking in both worlds with the aim of creating a treaty whereby Yolngu people can maintain culture and have the right to self-determination while working in partnership with all Australians. We seek unity, but the NT Government is acting with cruel and oppressive behaviour.

 

As you can see, the issue of child removal goes to the very core of sovereignty, self- determination and Treaty. If the NT Government is taking Yolngu children off Yolngu country without the consent of the Yolngu community and placing them in a foreign community with foreign carers, then they are abusing the entire people group.

 

I demand the NT Government stops the practice of removing Yolngu children from their family and their country and their culture. I want the Government to engage with myself and Yolngu leadership about giving Yolngu communities the authority and resources to work in partnership to protect Yolngu children from harm: including the harm that occurs when they are removed from their culture.

 

(Monday the 13th is the Anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generation in 2008).

 

Supporting documents for media statement

In Australia, The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, which has been incorporated in legislation and policies across Australia, outlines a preferred order for Aboriginal out-of-home care

o Carers within the family and kinship networks

o Non-related carers in the child’s community and then

o Carers in another Aboriginal community

(Children in Care, CFCA resource sheet – October 2016, Australian Institute of Family Studies)

NT Legislation: CARE AND PROTECTION OF CHILDREN ACT 2007 (NO 37 OF 2007) - SECT 12

Aboriginal children
 (1) Kinship groups, representative organisations and communities of Aboriginal people have a major role, through self-determination, in promoting the wellbeing of Aboriginal children.
 (2) In particular, a kinship group, representative organisation or community of Aboriginal people nominated by an Aboriginal child’s family should be able to participate in the making of a decision involving the child.
 (3) An Aboriginal child should, as far as practicable, be placed with a person in the following order of priority:
 (a) a member of the child’s family;
 (b) an Aboriginal person in the child’s community in accordance with local community practice;
 (c) any other Aboriginal person;
 (d) a person who:
 (i) is not an Aboriginal person; but
 (ii) in the CEO’s opinion, is sensitive to the child’s needs and capable of promoting the child’s ongoing affiliation with the culture of the child’s community (and, if possible, ongoing contact with the child’s family).
 (4) In addition, an Aboriginal child should, as far as practicable, be placed in close proximity to the child’s family and community.

 

In 2010 the NT Children’s Commisioner Howard Bath conducted an inquiry that recommended that a family placement be adopted - which empowers and resources the extended family of an at risk child, in decision making about their protection. The Inquiry report articulates “the need for Aboriginal controlled child and family service organisations… Building on its commitment to self determination, the Inquiry proposes a comprehensive conceptual model for consideration of and participation by Aboriginal people in the delivery of programs and services to Aboriginal children and young people involved in the child protection system and in all aspects of decision-making.”
(Growing them strong, together: Promoting the Safety and Wellbeing of the Northern Territories Children, Report of the Board of Inquiry into the Child Protection System in the Northern Territory 2010, page 18)

Further to this, the current NT Children’s Commissioner, Colleen Gwynne has also made a statement to the current Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children stating that “ more indigenous children should be placed with Aboriginal families. The NT has the highest child placement rate in the country but a comparatively low rate of placement of Aboriginal children in kinship care.”
(NT Aboriginal Survival Rest on Inquiry, news.com.au, 12 Oct 2016)
Article 23 of the UN Rights of Indigenous People: “In particular, indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programmes affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programmes through their own institutions. “
- See more at: http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/pr-article/stolen-generation-continues-the-yolngu-natio/#sthash.PjBDgNEw.dpuf

 

Yingiya Mark Guyula MLA, is the Independent Member for Nhulunbuy

Contact through Kendall Trudgen – 0428402929

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Opposition leaders calls for reparations for stolen generations – video

 

Addressing the House of Representatives, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, says: ‘I applaud the state governments of New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania, already taking steps towards providing reparations to families torn apart by the discrimination of those times. Decency demands that we now have a conversation at the commonwealth level about the need for the commonwealth to follow the lead on reparations. This is the right thing to do’

 

Aboriginal child protection laws being 'broken' by NT Government: Member for Nhulunbuy

The Northern Territory Government is failing to follow its own child protection laws that recommend Indigenous children be placed within their families and communities as a priority, the Independent Member for Nhulunbuy says.

Yingiya Mark Guyula used the anniversary of Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology to the stolen generations to issue a warning about the way Indigenous children were being removed from their families today.

"That legislation was broken by the Government themselves — they broke their own law and that's why I have stood here and I am standing here to say this must stop," Mr Guyula said.

 

Indigenous kids are still being removed from their families, more than ever before

So more Indigenous children are being removed today than at any other time in Australian history – they are 10 times more likely to be in care than their non-Indigenous peers. Although they represent only 5.5 per cent of their age population, they make up 35 per cent of children in out-of-home care.

 

That the number of Indigenous children removed from their families is now higher than at the time of the apology raises serious concerns.

 

 Nine years after stolen generations apology Aboriginal child removals higher than ever

Nine years after the apology to the Stolen Generations, the rate of removals of Aboriginal children from their families is at an all-time high. A social media campaign demanding change has been gaining momentum.

 

Monday marks nine years since former prime minister Kevin Rudd made the historic apology to the Stolen Generations. The Stolen Generations refer to the systematic forced removal of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government between 1909 and 1970. The children were placed into the care of non-indigenous families and state-run homes for boys and girls. It is widely acknowledged as one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history. But decades after the government stopped the practice of removing Indigenous children because of their race, the number of young Aboriginal people in out-of-home care is at crisis point.

 


Victories for Indigenous people are always short-lived. That's why we need a treaty – now

' @IndigenousX host Steve Bunbadgee Hodder Watt was in Canberra for Kevin Rudd’s national apology in 2008. It was easy to get caught up in the emotion, he says, but real progress for Aboriginal people is still not happening'

13 February 2017: "Nine years ago I happened to be on the lawns at Parliament House in Canberra for the National Apology. It was an accidental showing on my part. I’d flown down to the ACT from Alice Springs to cover an event the day before called the
Converge on Canberra rally, which was protesting the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), otherwise known as the “intervention”.

"As a reporter for CAAMA Radio, I rode along in the bus with other members of the central Australian community, people from remote desert areas who had converged to voice their angst at the paternalistic and draconian policies that had been imposed upon them by the federal government barely six months earlier.

"The gathering sought to end “welfare quarantining”, compulsory land acquisition and “mission manager” powers that were part of the NTER. There were also calls for an immediate review of the intervention, and for reinstating the Racial Discrimination Act, implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal People and for Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs. ... "