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.
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.
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
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.
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.
For example, British colonialism with its eugenic character did not only export white “stock” to extend the racial reach of Empire, it also stole aboriginal children and placed them in white Christian families in a process of cultural genocide.
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'.
Children were forced to assimilate into non-Indigenous society and culture. They were refused access to their family and were stopped from speaking their native language and using their birth name. The government didn't keep records of birth dates or place of birth of many of the children.
Children had to assimilate to white American culture and hide their native selves or face harsh punishment. This practice began in the 1860s and continued for almost 100 years.
In 1920, under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
Research by the TRC found that thousands of Indigenous children sent to residential schools never made it home. Physical and sexual abuse led some to run away. Others died of disease or by accident amid neglect.
Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their family homes and sent to live in these boarding schools, completely alienated from their families. Earlier schools were segregated according to gender, which meant siblings were further separated from each other.
It also found 79 per cent, about 17,000 children, lived permanently away from their birth parents, with less than 15 per cent being reunified with their families. SNAICC is the national peak body for First Nations children.
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'.
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.
Six members of Nelson's opposition caucus — Don Randall, Sophie Mirabella, Dennis Jensen, Wilson Tuckey, Luke Simpkins, and Alby Schultz — left the House in protest at the apology. Peter Dutton was the only Opposition front bencher to abstain from the apology.
Slavery was sanctioned by Australian law
Legislation facilitated the enslavement of Aboriginal people across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.
Background to the scheme
Between 1922 and 1967 about 150 000 children with an average age of eight years and nine months were shipped from Great Britain to help populate the British Dominions of Canada, Rhodesia, New Zealand and Australia with 'good white stock'.
The English settlers and their descendants expropriated native land and removed the indigenous people by cutting them from their food resources, and engaged in genocidal massacres.
These students were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any indigenous traditions, routinely physically and sexually assaulted, and in some extreme instances subjected to medical experimentation and sterilization. The removals continued in Australia until the 1970s.
Although Indian Residential Schools operated in Canada for more than a hundred years, First Nations opposed them from the beginning and continually fought to have them closed. The first National Indigenous political organization to fight for the education rights of Indigenous Peoples was the League of Indian Nations.
Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, the government adopted the residential industrial school system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various church organizations.
Indigenous children in many parts of Canada were forced to attend residential schools, often far from their communities. Most were operated by churches, and all of them banned the use of Indigenous languages and Indigenous cultural practices, often through violence.
By the 1830s, frontier violence around NSW had become so widespread that the murder of Aboriginal people by British colonial stockmen, settlers and convicts was generally accepted, despite British law clearly articulating that it was a crime punishable by death.
Information exists in archives about the deaths of children, which has contributed to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's Memorial Register. As of May 24, 2022, the register has 4,130 confirmed names of children who died while at Indian Residential Schools.