With the death of Truganina in 1876 the Tasmanian government [TasGov] considered that there were no more Aboriginals in Tasmania.  Tasmania from 1876 up until the 1970s didn’t have any Aboriginals.  Aboriginals were only considered Aboriginals if they were “full-blood” and Tasmania did not have any “full-blood” Aboriginals. 

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There were no laws created for Aboriginals or their partial descendant Aboriginals in Tasmania.  All the States laws applied equally to all people. Partial-descent Aboriginals enjoyed the same rights and liberties as all other Tasmanians.  Tasmania did not have a government agency or otherwise with specific responsibility for Tasmanian Aboriginal people between 1833 and the 1970s and none was needed.

 

On this basis alone it is impossible for Tasmania to have a Stolen Generation of Aboriginals.

 

The simple and incontrovertible fact that is now known is that less than 100 partial-descent children in Tasmania appear to have been necessarily taken into welfare in the period 1935 to 1975 and yet in the same period, over 11,000 other children of non-Aboriginal descent were taken into welfare.

 

Less than 1% of the children taken into welfare in Tasmania from 1935 to 1975 were of Aboriginal descent.  People identifying as Aboriginal in Tasmania is currently estimated to be 5%. 

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Statistically, Tasmania never had a Stolen Generation.  In its submission to the Commission, the TasGov maintained and proved it had no policy to remove children on racial grounds, and yet after the release of the Bringing Them Home report, the TasGov reversed its position and fully embraced the myth.  My purpose here is to expose the extent of that shameful capitulation.

 

Legislative changes in the 1970s introduced an administrative definition of Aboriginal and as a result despite not having had any Aboriginals for over 100 years, despite their very distant Aboriginal descent, people were entitled to identify as Aboriginal.

 

 The only known descendants of Aboriginals came from Fanny Cochrane Smith [Hobart] and Dolly Dalrymple [Perth] or from a small, impoverished community of distant Aboriginal descent peoples living on the Cape Barren Islands [CBI].  The CBI people did not consider themselves Aboriginals and referred to themselves as Straitsmen or Islanders.  The TasGov never considered them Aboriginal or their descendants Aboriginal.

 

Some of the people that now identify as Aboriginal, were as children, necessarily legally removed from where they lived [the CBI or mainland Tasmania] over the prior 40 years [1935 TO 1975] for their own welfare and survival.  This is not a Stolen Generation.  This is the legal and necessary application of welfare laws.

 

This paper details/analyses the history of the People Identifying as Aboriginal [PIA] and the facts that lead to the fabrication of the Stolen Generations of Tasmania and the alleged Genocide.