ABSTRACT
Aboriginal children are included herein because they were forcibly removed from their parents, from the early 1800s to the late 1980s, to fulfill a religious as well as an eugenicist fantasy, that their placement in a variety of "assimilation homes” would end their Aboriginality by moving them into the white, Christian, and "civilized” mainstream. Other alleged (and contradictory) motives were concerns about child abandonment or neglect by their parents, and hence their need of protection; fear by some well-wishers that white or "mixed-blood” contact would hasten the demise of "full-blood” Aborigines; and fear (by many) that a "hybrid colored population of very low order” threatened the prevailing civilization. Churchmen, police, government officials, and even private citizens were the instruments of forcible removal. Despite claims about "the best interests of the child” and "loving protection,” removals were not voluntary, consensual, or because of "reckless and depraved indifference”—what American law defines as wanton,
morally deficient behavior, lacking regard for human life, and hence criminally blameworthy.
