The children were denied all access to their culture, they were not allowed to speak their language and they were punished if they did. The impacts of this are still being felt today. There are currently more than 17,000 Stolen Generations survivors in Australia.
In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s*, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. These children became known as the Stolen Generations.
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.
Today, Stolen Generations survivors live right across Australia. Most (73%) live in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
1940. 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.
The children were denied all access to their culture, they were not allowed to speak their language and they were punished if they did. The impacts of this are still being felt today. There are currently more than 17,000 Stolen Generations survivors in Australia.
Eligible Stolen Generations Survivors can choose to receive the Funeral Assistance payment at the same time as their reparations payment or to defer the payment and nominate a person to receive the payment at the point it is required. Applications must be submitted before 30 June 2023.
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.
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.
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.
In NSW, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had wide ranging control over the lives of Aboriginal people, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of 'assimilation'.
In 2021, female Indigenous students had higher apparent retention rates than male Indigenous students across all school year groups and in all jurisdictions. Nationally, the apparent retention rate for female Indigenous students was 63% from Year 7/8 to Year 12, compared with 55% of male Indigenous students.
The Stolen Generations refers to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. This was done by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, through a policy of assimilation.
Authorities targeted mainly children of mixed descent, i.e. what they called 'half-caste' Aboriginal children (caution, this is a derogative term!). It was thought these Aboriginal children could be assimilated more easily into white society.
Many children experienced contempt and denigration of their Aboriginality and that of their parents or denial of their Aboriginality. In line with the common objective, many children were told either that their families had rejected them or that their families were dead.
In Victoria, the term 'Forgotten Australians' refers to people who spent time as children in institutions, orphanages and other forms of out-of-home 'care', prior to 1990, many of whom had physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse perpetrated against them.
In part this is because infant abandonment is a rare event. From my professional experience and research with vulnerable families, my best estimate is that there are probably less than 10 cases per year in Australia.
Another review prepared for the Australian federal police in 2021 found that at least 25.6% of children under 12 and 18% of those aged between 13 and 17 who go missing while in care are Indigenous, despite First Nations children making up just 5.9% of the total population under 18.
Most (81%) lived in non-remote locations, which was similar to the distribution of the broader Indigenous population. In 2018–19, approximately 142,200 Indigenous people aged 18 and over were the descendants of members of the Stolen Generations.
In Australia, 812,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 3.2% of the population.
Attempts at the mass killing of Aboriginal people were still being made as recently as 1981, according to a historian who has spent the past four years researching colonial violence in the Northern Territory.
It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
Many Aboriginal people who worked for white people did not receive their wages directly. Their bosses only gave them 'pocket money' while from 1897 to the late 1970s their wages were 'administered' for them by government or police authorities. In Western Australia wages were under "total government control" until 1968.
By 1867, 52 Aboriginal Trackers were in the employ of the police at a daily rate of 2s 6d (approximately £3/17/6 per month).
On 13th of February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal Apology on behalf of the nation to Australia's Indigenous Peoples, particularly the Stolen Generations.