Colonialism has mastered the crime of stealing our children for generations and then punishing and criticizing our parents and grandparents for how they originally raised children.
Then, they went ahead and stole, renamed & rebranded our sacred original parenting instructions as “attachment” parenting, “conscious” parenting, “gentle” parenting, “positive” parenting, and “child led” parenting.
It has been used as a tool of profit.
It has been used as a means of stealing babies from families, then forcing the mothers and fathers of those babies to take colonial based parenting courses in order to get their babies back. And those colonial based parenting courses are heavily twisted and skewed versions of our parenting instructions - but twisted and skewed so severely, so deeply, that they only accommodate and feed colonial agendas and systems.
It is a matter of indigenous parents today abiding to colonially twisted, and colonially backwards parenting “styles” in order to fit the criteria of being a “good parent.”
Here’s the thing though.
Residential schools, the 60’s scoop, the child welfare system, and every other colonial policy embedded in the colonial fabric of society was created to do just this.
Keep the children out of our families to continue the ongoing attempts of assimilation and genocide against our peoples.
Even today.
So rather than pushing for “attachment” parenting, “conscious” parenting, “gentle” parenting, “positive” parenting, and “child led” parenting let us open into, revitalize, maintain and relearn the original instructions of raising and nurturing children.
Let us heal and dissolve what generations of colonialism has embedded into our parenting styles.
May we do our best to continue that.
So we can continue to raise children in the ways that we were originally meant to….
For generations to come.
Because this is the least we can do for the children in our lives today.
Acknowledging that today (26 May) is the 26th Sorry Day. And I am thinking of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people stolen by government and church, and the many who never came home 💗 :firstnations:
#SorryDay is a day of remembrance for the many 1000s of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families and communities. And a day of reflecting on the the pain their families felt, and the intergenerational impact.
The word sorry in Sorry Day does not refer to apology or regret. It comes from the Indigenous practices and protocols of grief and loss, known as Sorry Business.
Sorry Day centres First Nations people who suffered loss due to these race-based government policies, not on settlers who feel remorse/white guilt.
This annual day of remembrance is one of the very few actioned recommendations of the 1997 Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Bringing Them Home Report), which was the result of a royal commission >https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997
The Healing Foundation has more information about the Stolen Generations, including an excellent portal of resources > https://healingfoundation.org.au/
In the next post (ie linked) I'll do a quick explainer on Sorry Day and the Stolen Generations >
These State and Federal governments' practices of child removal was based on eugenics and was a form of genocide. Christian doctrines underlined these removals, and churches run many of the institutions the children were incarcerated in.
Basically, the idea behind the removals was to quicken the eradication of First Peoples (to create easier access to land and resources for settlers) by removing children and forcing them to assimilate. Alongside this was State control of Aboriginal women and girls relationships and reproduction rights.
At the same time, First Peoples were regarded as a free source of labour to build the new empire. So the children were trained in basic skills, and then sent out to work on farms/stations, businesses, and in private homes, as young as 9 years old.
They were not paid, and would be captured if they escaped. They were given basic shelter and food, and often subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Pregnant girls/women would be sent back to the Homes (institutions). Once they'd given birth, the baby was taken and the girl/woman sent back to work.
Government removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children commenced in the early 1900s. Before then, settlers were stealing First Nations children (women and men) without government authorisation.
These policies of race-based removal of First Nations children ended in the 1980s.
Too many setters argue that all the bad things happened a long time ago, but the Stolen Generations, enslavement and Stolen Wages happened in many of their lifetimes. And the bad things are still happening.
In recent years, Sorry Day has also become a day of activism for the many First Nations children still being removed, wage theft, and the unfinished business of the Bringing Them Home Report recommendations. This activism is First Nations-led, and does not over-shadow Sorry Day's purpose of a day of remembrance for the Stolen Generations.
And no, the voice will not stop the bad things happening - it's one more toothless committee the government will ignore, just like previous committees and governments - so don't fucking @ me, I don't care how you intend to vote.