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.
Between 1910 and the 1970s*, many First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families as a result of various government policies. In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s*, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.
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.
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.
European colonisation had a devastating impact on Aboriginal communities and cultures. Aboriginal people were subjected to a range of injustices, including mass killings or being displaced from their traditional lands and relocated on missions and reserves in the name of protection.
They are more likely to come to the attention of the police as they grow into adolescence. They are more likely to suffer low self-esteem, depression and mental illness. They had been almost always taught to reject their Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture. They are unable to retain links with their land.
Background to status of Aboriginal Australians prior to 1967
When the Australian constitution took effect on 1 January 1901, each individual state acquired the primary lawmaking power over Aboriginal people. Consequently, the legal status of Aboriginal people shifted from British subjects to wards of the state.
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 Stolen Generations refers to a period in Australia's history where Aboriginal children were removed from their families through government policies. This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
The removal of Indigenous children was a deliberate effort by the Australian Government as part of its assimilation policy. The 1997 Bringing Them Home report found that government officials took children away from caring and able parents.
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.
The claim that a “Licence To Shoot Aborigines” was distributed in Australia as part of a 1965 pest control law is false. The supposed licence is a fake and can be traced back to a racist propaganda leaflet distributed in the 1990s. Indigenous history experts confirmed no such licence ever existed.
All living Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that arrived about 50,000 years ago, the study shows. They swept around the continent, along the coasts, in a matter of centuries.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
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.
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.
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. Increasingly sophisticated dating methods are helping us gain a more accurate understanding of how people came to be in Australia.
The researchers found that Aboriginal Australians diverged from Papuans some 37,000 years ago, before the Australian land mass separated from New Guinea roughly 10,000 years ago. The groups traveled into Australia from mainland Asia, becoming the ancestors to a large population of modern-day Australians.
Give voting rights
It is frequently stated that the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people Australian citizenship and that it gave them the right to vote in federal elections; however this is not the case.
The Coniston massacre, which took place in the region around the Coniston cattle station in the then Territory of Central Australia (now the Northern Territory) from 14 August to 18 October 1928, was the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and one of the last events of the Australian ...
It is important to acknowledge that photographing, filming and sound recording Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, places, objects, sites and cultural activities do occur without consent. In some instances privacy, identity and cultural heritage are exploited, misrepresented and depicted in negative ways.
It is happening today. While the intent of child removal today may be different to that experienced by the Stolen Generations, the effect is the same: a loss of identity and the exacerbation of intergenerational trauma.
Molly and Daisy made it home. In 1996, Molly's daughter, Doris Pilkington Garimara, published the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, which was based on the girls' escape from the Moore River settlement.