Loss of Social Connectedness

RUNNING HEAD: CULTURAL SAFETY
CULTURAL SAFETY
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CULTURAL SAFETY1
Cultural safety is an integral aspect of preserving the social and cultural identities and
the act of fostering the same is an important intervention within the sociological framework.
While cultural safety ensures protection of ancient and long existent culture, it also assures
protection of the culture’s core values, ethics and traditions. In some cases though, as seen in
the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – the cultural safety is highly
hindered by legislative or socio economic or sociocultural actions taken the administrative
bodies in Australia. It was reported that, previously the children were abducted from their
Aboriginal families in order to break their communal, social and kinship ties this act of forced
dispossession left deep sociological, psychological and psychosocial impact on the aboriginal
community’s culture (Pauly et al., 2015). While emotional and behavioral impacts were
significant, as reported by various previous studies – this also lead to chaos and disruption in
the national harmony of the country (Taylor & Guerin, 2019). The essay is focused to
determine that various causes, short term and long term effect of the children dispossessions
and how the government, in the recent years has up the ante by apologizing to the aboriginal
people and has taken massive steps in bringing their disposed children home.
Attorney General devised the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in the year of 1995. In about two years
only, the Inquiry obtained testimony from more than 500 Torres Strait Islander and
Aboriginal people across Australia and it also interviewed the indigenous cultural supporting
organizations using various written and verbal methods (Funston & Herring, 2016). The
inquiry incorporated the functionality of foster parents, representatives (national and state
level government employees), the church representatives, the non-governmental
organizations (Arney et al., 2015) the charity missionaries and the social activists in
community framework, in order to bring the abducted children home to their aboriginal
parents. They formulated a six eighty nine page final report which was presented on 26th of

CULTURAL SAFETY2
May, 1997 to the parliament and this report gave fifty six recommendations in order to
support the psychological healing and the reconciliation of Stolen Generations. The trauma
was reported to a mental transfer of heavy depression and sadness down the generations from
grandparents to parents to future progenies and this inquiry revealed strong psychosocial
consequences resulting from the family and kinship detachments. The report bought up or
rather surfaced various cases of violence that forcibly detached the aboriginal children from
their parents and this was seen as rather an inhuman act committed in the yester years.
The government as a result of this inquiry, formulated the sorry book campaign and
signified an apology for the loss suffered by these unfortunate families of community
residing people, on the National sorry day. As a respond to the inquiry, the government
apologized to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people for all the previously
formulated regulations, legislations, rules and policies that led to forceful abduction of the
aboriginal children from their indigenous parents and consequent social disruption.
Aboriginal dispossession started around 1900 century and ended around 1960-1970 and in
this long run of decades where the Australian government, back in the day, forcibly abducted
the integral components of their culture – the children (Brown, 2018). The cultural
disposition amongst the aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people led to various health
related issues such as depression amongst the children and parents alike, social isolation,
disruptive behavioral issues and even physical breakdowns and complications. The
reconciliation strategies must focus on positive communication techniques and effective
relationship building with the aboriginal people. Empathic behavioral strategies with positive
behavioral attributes is regarded important in reconciling the disruption caused in their
community, sociologically.
The stolen generations mean the generations of children who were stolen from their
parents in the decades spanning between 1900s and the 1960s. The aboriginal culture suffered