Australia’s “Stolen Children” by Ali MC

In considering the concept of a “Black Pacific,” one of the geo-cultural historical trajectories we must consider always, is Australia and the South Seas, along with the Pacific Islands in general. The histories of the Pacific are usually not considered when looking at Blackness. Even if, nowadays, people consider blackness as an aspect of Asia and the Pacific, they will be governed by the oft-repeated notion of all people coming “from Africa” or at least “Black people are from Africa” trope. I, for one, disagree with this concept. The Transatlantic Slave Trade histories have been constructed as a single origin story, just as everything has in the *Colonial technique* governed by Christian/western metaphysics that render everything–all reality, to originate from a single location and time. It is a story, even ideology. Difference is killed. It is inconsiderate of, and yes, oppresses the realities of peoples around the world. We may be “All One” as some spiritual traditions maintain, but this does not mean one location, one egg, one birthplace. Many births. Still brothers and sisters–if you will, not relying on the Single Origin motif of colonial western systems of thinking—*assuming and presuming.*

In the stories of the Aboriginal and black peoples of the Pacific and South Seas, there are the traditions of being enslaved, displaced, genocided and assimilated into several location left invisible by people’s myopic and culturally genocidal forms of thinking about color, locations, memory, identity. The Aboriginal peoples of the continent of Australia and the surrounding islands, have a horrific history in relation to the Pacific Slave Trade and the nation-making of White Empire nations.

“The Stolen Generation” as they are sometimes called, are the peoples considered and named “indigenous” and therefore just made into a “sad past” and then left as only that. But nowadays, people are more willing to hear these stories and to know they are surviving and resisting.  I link to this article by Ali MC of Al Jazeera—Click the following title:

‘It never ends’: Trauma of Australia’s ‘stolen’ children — On the 11th anniversary of Australia’s apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’, two survivors reflect on their experiences.