Children, even very young ones, were stripped of their names and only called by a number. Boys were flogged for wetting their bed or chained to a tree all alone overnight. The children were told that they weren't Aboriginal, that their mothers didn't want them or were dead.
Effects of the Stolen Generations
Children experienced neglect, abuse and they were more likely to suffer from depression, mental illness and low self-esteem. They were also more vulnerable to physical, psychological and sexual abuse in state care, at work, or while living with non-Indigenous families.
Many children from the Stolen Generations suffered extreme physical, psychological and sexual abuse living under state care. Children were forced to reject their culture and adopt a new identity. So they often felt ashamed of their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage.
The 1915 amendments to the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 gave the New South Wales (NSW) Aborigines Protection Board the power to remove any Indigenous child at any time and for any reason.
Usually no encouragement or support was given to the birth mother to keep her child. On the contrary, mothers were forced to give up their child. Many stories about the Stolen Generations are testimony to how very deeply mothers suffered because their children were forcibly taken from them.
Children, even very young ones, were stripped of their names and only called by a number. Boys were flogged for wetting their bed or chained to a tree all alone overnight. The children were told that they weren't Aboriginal, that their mothers didn't want them or were dead.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Stolen Generations Funeral Fund
The Funeral Fund provides eligible applicants with up to $10,000 to cover the costs of a funeral, headstone or plaque and/or repatriation of your Stolen Generations family member. It is administered by Connecting Home. For more information see firstpeoplesrelations.vic.gov.au .
The British settlement in Australia was not peaceful. Aboriginal people were moved off their traditional land and killed in battles or by hunting parties. European diseases such as measles and tuberculosis also killed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Many were stripped of their names and called by a number. They were severely punished when caught talking their Aboriginal language. Some children never learned anything traditional and received little or no education. Instead the girls were trained to be domestic servants, the boys to be stockmen.
The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970. '
The NSW Aborigines Protection Board loses its power to remove Indigenous children. The Board is renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board and is finally abolished in 1969. By 1969, all states have repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
Thousands of children were forcibly removed by governments, churches and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families, nationally and internationally.
250 First Languages were spoken around Australia at the time of British invasion. There were many dialects within each language group. Today, only 120 First Languages are still spoken.
The New South Wales Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme provides ex-gratia payments of $75,000 to living Stolen Generations survivors who were removed from their families and committed to the care of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection or Welfare Boards.
During the goldrush era, they were also used to patrol goldfields and search for escaped prisoners. They were provided with uniforms, firearms, food rations and a dubious salary.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project.
Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
The NSW Minister for Education, John Perry, instructed NSW schools to remove Aboriginal children from school if non-Aboriginal parents complained. Non-Aboriginal parents frequently claimed diseases were rampant among Aboriginal students, and that they were unhygienic.
It's a story that has been repeated for generations of Aboriginal families in Australia, and it's still happening today. In 2019/20, 952 Aboriginal children across NSW were removed from their families, a 2.6% increase on the year prior.
1969. By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.