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.
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.
As described in the Bringing Them Home report (HREOC 1997:31): '… 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 Stolen Generations
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.
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.
Answer and Explanation: It was never legal to shoot any Aborigine but it was an occurrence that was ignored and discounted. On September 18, 1973, capital punishment throughout Australia was abolished.
The total number of deaths following British settlement in 1788 has long been debated, but many historians estimate it numbered tens of thousands.
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.
Being separated from kin and witnessing the abuse of children was devastating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. The removal of generations of children disrupted the transfer of knowledge and oral culture between generations.
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 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South Wales abolished the Aborigines Welfare Board, and this effectively resulted in all States and Territories having repealed legislation that allowed for the removal of Aboriginal children under a policy of 'protection'.
Analysis of data: The rolling annualised percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children 'fully immunised' by 12 months of age is 90.96%. For individual antigens due by 12 months of age, all states and territories had coverage levels equal to or above 86.51%.
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.
Estimates of the number of people living in Australia at the time that colonisation began in 1788, who belonged to a range of diverse groups, vary from 300,000 to a million, and upper estimates place the total population as high as 1.25 million.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment rate decreased by 3% from 2,412 to 2,330 prisoners per 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult population. At 30 June 2022: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for 32% of all prisoners.
There were 13,716 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, up from: 13,197 in the December quarter 2022. 12,566 in the March quarter 2022.
'In 2018–19, there were an estimated 33,600 Stolen Generations survivors, including 27,200 aged 50 and over,' said AIHW spokesperson Dr Fadwa Al-Yaman. 'The 27,200 people aged 50 years and over comprised 1 in 5 (21%) of Indigenous Australians in that age group.
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.
On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been blighted by past government policies of forced child removal and assimilation.
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.
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.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 50 per cent of Australia's land mass. Connection to land is of central importance to First Nations Australians.
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.
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.