'Australia' and the Stolen Generation

So yesterday evening I saw Baz Luhrmann's 'Australia.'
I made a point to avoid reading any reviews or even watching any trailers prior to seeing the film, simply because what little hearsay I had heard already began to skew my perspective. "I hear that film is like an Australian 'Pearl Harbor'" someone told me. Recalling the three hours of torture I had endured watching 'Pearl Harbor' back in 2001, I found this comment to be extremely unsettling.

Regardless, yesterday I watched ‘Australia’ and I have to admit.. it wasn’t bad. Though running at close to three hours seemed rather long, I was definitely entertained for a good portion of the film (or at the very least visually stimulated by the beautiful cinematography). I especially enjoyed noticing the references to Peter Weir’s ‘Walkabout’ that occur at a handful of places throughout the film, as well as seeing our friend David Gulpilil making another appearance on the big screen. Having said that, I feel that the film was a little too ambitious; covering too many plot points and historic events in the span of one two and half hour movie.

Upon glancing at various reviews online, I find that others shared this opinion. In fact, I’ve come across numerous reviews by actual Australians who found this film rather offensive. One reviewer went as far as saying it was tactless of Luhrmann to discuss so many aspects of Australia’s young history in such a brief and over the top approach. Particularly on the topic of the ‘lost generations,’ an event still so recent in the countries history – especially in light of the fact that only now, in 2008, a formal apology was issued to the Aborigine population by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

But what of the ‘Stolen Generations’? Now that time has passed, what was the outcome of ‘The Aboriginal Protection Act’?



The alleged goal of the act was to help these Aboriginal children integrate into a modern western society - so that they could gain and education and one day be employed. Unfortunately, the outcome for these children turned out to be very different. One study I found in ‘Decades of Change: Australia in the Twentieth Century’ compared statistics of removed children in the city of Melbourne to children who remained with their Aborigine parents, and the results are rather shocking. The study showed that removed children were less likely to gain a secondary education, twice as likely to use illegal drugs and three times as likely to have a police records. The only real area of improvement according to the study, was that those removed had a slightly larger income – though this probably attributed to the fact that the removed children in the study were living in the city and hence had better access to welfare checks than those non removed living in their home communities.

Today the indigenous community suffers from increased unemployment (20% of Aborigines unemployed verses 7.6% of non indigenous Australians), more health problems and according to this study they are twice as likely to be victim of violent crime. Furthermore there is reported huge increases in alcoholism and sexual abuse amongst present day Aborigine families.

Considering that I've only found two cases of reparations being paid, and that only this year has an apology been issued by Australia's Prime Minister.. I wonder what the future holds for Australia's Aborigine population?