Stolen, Jane Harrison

  Hello everyone,

Today I'm going to talk about the book Stolen written by Jane Harrison (1850-1928) in 1998. First, Stolen is a candid and empathetic work that relates the lives of five Aboriginal children, Anne, Shirley, Ruby, Sandy and Jimmy, as they share their own stories. Indeed, they were taken away from the families under  the official Australian government policy known as ‘Assimilation’. Jane Harrison’s, Stolen represents a important work for Australian Theatre, dramatising the fear, persecution and anguish felt by the children and their families, displaying the happening and devastating effects on generations of Aboriginal people physically, psychologically and also culturally. This non-linear play opens with the characters as children and reveals their experiences through story. It is through this personal experience of these characters that we are able to understand this devastating period of our history and allows us the opportunity to build a deeper unity between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal people. The title was changed after the audience of early readings argued that the children were never lost but rather, stolen. It took six years for a full production to be mounted at the Malthouse Theatre, premiering at the Melbourne International Festival in 1998. It has since played annually in Australia and on tour to the UK, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Between 1909 and 1969, Aborigines children’s was forced and maintained by the Aborigines Protection Board (APB). This removal policy had the power to remove Aboriginal children without any parental consent or a court order. In addition to that, these parents of Aboriginal children were they were judged inappropriate to bring up their own children for a number of reasons including the desire to teach the children English, the conditions in which they lived were considered to be dirty and squalid and the desire to bring the children up in the Christian faith. By the 1950s, the Australian Government was attempting to 'breed out' Aboriginality for assimilation. Aboriginal children who were mixblood or, lightskin were more likely to be removed from their own families and placed in mission, welfare homes or fostered out to white homes ostensibly to provide them with a better standard of living condition and education. It was intended these children would assimilate and intermarry into mainstream society. Assimilation was rigorously pursued by most authorities and by non-indigenous foster and adoptive families. It is estimated that 100,000 Indigenous People have been affected by the removal of children. In particular, children and their families were discouraged or prevented from contacting each other. Because of that, many children were told they were unwanted, rejected or their parents were dead, when this was not true.

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, In 2008 the Commonwealth apologized to the families affected by this story.We can therefore think that the Australian government regrets what happened, and that it belongs to the past. Despite the fact that families are still searching for their missing children, nothing can make this sentence go away.

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