It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. This all took place under past Australian Government policies.
In 2019/20, 952 Aboriginal children across NSW were removed from their families, a 2.6% increase on the year prior. In total, there were 6,688 Aboriginal children in what is known as “out-of-home-care” – about 41% of the total number of kids in the system.
More than 21,500 Indigenous children are in out-of-home care as of June 2020, with 79 per cent permanently living away from their birth parents.
The Inquiry found that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were removed from their families under past government policies, but could not be more precise due to the poor state of records.
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.
1969. By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
In 1969, New South Wales abolished the Aborigines Welfare Board, and this effectively resulted in all States and Territories having repealed legislation that allowed for the removal of Aboriginal children under a policy of 'protection'.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
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.
These children were forcibly removed from their families and communities through race-based policies set up by both State and Federal Governments. They were either put in to homes, adopted or fostered out to non-Indigenous families.
While First Nations young people make up less than 6% of the Australian population under the age of 18, they comprise around 20% of missing children. In reality, this rate is likely higher, with information on cultural identity often missing in national missing persons data.
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.
In 2021–22, there were 106 deaths in custody: 84 in prison custody and 22 in police custody or custody-related operations. In total, there were 24 Indigenous deaths and 81 non-Indigenous deaths in custody and one death of a person whose Indigenous status was unknown.
Attendance rates for Indigenous students remain lower than for non‑Indigenous students (around 82 per cent compared to 92 per cent in 2019). Gaps in attendance are evident for Indigenous children as a group from the first year of schooling. The attendance gap widens during secondary school.
In 2018, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children made up 5.9% (an estimated 278,000) of the total child population in Australia. The gender distribution of Indigenous children was the same as for all Australian children (51% boys and 49% girls) (ABS 2018c).
After the last census in 2011, the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research determined that the number of people who identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander had increased by 20% since 2006. The national census is taken every five years.
Generally speaking, the Greatest Generation are the parents of the "Baby Boomers" and are the children of the "Lost Generation" (those who grew up during or came of age during World War I). They preceded what is known as the "Silent Generation," a cohort born between the mid-1920s to the early-to-mid 1940s.
Raised in an age where selfies, Instagram, and Twitter are part of everyday life, their self-worth is affected by social media more than any other generation. They visit YouTube frequently and love expressing themselves with memes, Snapchat and Instagram.
Under the laws of the Australian Government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not included as citizens. Instead, in many cases they were treated as foreigners in their own land.
Another Stolen Generation
In 2018-19, one in five First Nations children removed into out-of-home care was less than one year old. The same year, First Nations infants were removed at a rate of 44.1 per 1,000 – nine times that of non-Indigenous infants.
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'.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
Real action needed on Aboriginal deaths in custody
Of the 516 recorded Indigenous people who died in custody since 1991, 335 were in prison, 177 were in police custody and four were in youth detention.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.