Child abuse & Fears of a second stolen generation

We’re failing to protect indigenous children for fear of another Stolen Generation

...On ABC’s The Drum, Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price rebuked Rudd saying: “Indigenous children’s lives must come before anything else.” She also spoke of family members having “begged for children to be removed” and placed with non-indigenous families they know and trust only to have child protection workers say “No, No. It’s their culture that’s more important” or citing the Stolen Generation as justification for not removing them...

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a choice between a child’s individual interests and the child living within their family, community and/or cultural group. This isn’t a hard choice. The child’s interests come first. Few people object to this principle when it comes to white children. When it comes to indigenous children it’s sensitive or “controversial”, as if their membership of a group is more important than their wellbeing. This mentality is racist...

Today’s situation is nothing like the Stolen Generation. Indigenous children aren’t being removed to assimilate them into white society in anticipation of indigenous extinction, but because of abuse and neglect at home...

Price’s statement that child protection agencies justify leaving children in unsafe environments because culture is more important is shocking. This must stop. In the future there’ll be another generation of indigenous people deserving an apology from government, not for removing them but for failing to protect them.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO chairs the Yaabubiin Institute for Disruptive Thinking.