The Stolen Generation

From 1869 to 1969, half-caste children were taken away from their families. In fact, the government thought that white people were higher than black and step by step, black people will be all dead because of the “process of natural selection”, but they were too many half-caste people and that’s why white people were afraid of it.

In this work, we will talk about the representation of the stolen generation in the art.
In 2002, the movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence” is an adaptation of the book written about a real-life story of three young aborigines girls who were taken away to the Moore Rive Native Settlement in the early 30’s. Doris Pilkington Garimara is the writer and she’s the daughter of one of these three girls. So, she wrote the biography of her mother.

(View of Doris Pilkington Garimara and the cover of “Rabbit-Proof Fence”)

Then, we will talk about Archie Roach he was born in 1956, Mooroopna, Victoria. Now he is a Australian singer, but when he was a young boy, he had been taken away from his family and lived with two white families where he were mistreated.
He wrote a song called “Took the Children away”

(View of him, listening to the song and lyrics.)

Archie has also explain his pain in another song "My Mother's Heartbeat” :
“My mother's heart stopped beating one dark and dreadful day and all I heard was weeping the day I went away ah, there's nothing so sweet as my mother's heartbeat beating inside her womb waiting inside my room her body loves me to sleep waiting through my darkest night beating, it's my rhythm of life the sound of my mother's heartbeat ah, my mother's heart is beating somewhere in this earth and at night while I lie there sleeping
I'll dream sweet dreams of her for there's nothing so sweet as my mother's heartbeat”
From the album "Looking for Butter Boy"