EL ENCADENADO

1) Why the aboriginal children were removed from their families?

Indigenous children were taken away from their parents for many different reasons but the policy's foundation was essentially a racist one. The white authorities believed that Indigenous parents were unable to look after their children properly and so they were removed. The importance and worth of Indigenous culture was once more completely ignored by the government and those who were supposed to be 'protecting' the Indigenous people. Again, as with the earlier protection policies, many people thought they were doing the right thing by the children when they took them away from the only family they knew. Others had more sinister motives.

2) What were the consequences of this separation?

Many children of the Stolen Generations were left with no sense of identity or belonging when they grew up. In many cases as soon as they were legally adults, they were made to leave the institutions they had been in all their lives. The children of mixed parentage who had lighter skin had spent years having it drummed into them that being black was a bad thing and that they had to be white. But when they went out into the world the white people would not see them as anything but black. There was no one to help them adjust to the white world into which so many were supposedly assimilated into.

3) What is your opinion about the apology of the stolen generations?

I think that what they did to the children was something that changed the history of Australia and of course the life of many other. When many of the children grew up and discovered they were adopted, they went searching for their real families. Many of them found families who had been torn apart by grief and despair at their removal. Many found entire family networks they knew nothing about - parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. Unfortunately for some, when they did manage to track down where they came from, it was only to discover their parents had recently died after spending their lives grieving and looking for them. We can tell that sometimes the identity is so powerful it makes you look for where you truly belong.

4) Why the colonies evolved different achieving independence?

Because many different factors:

- Geography

- Number of population

- History

- Culture

- Wars

- Religion

- Use of force

I do agree, because we get the chance to put this into our own experience because as Spain took control of many countries (including Mexico) now days we evolved totally different to the other places with the Spanish colonies. Now we can see that we are different to out folklore, religion, culture in general.

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