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.
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 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'.
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.
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.
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.
- Between one in three and one in 10 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. - The children were at risk of physical and sexual abuse in institutions, church missions and foster homes.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
Aboriginal peoples
Genetic studies appear to support an arrival date of 50–70,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
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.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
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.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
Around 33 per cent of adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are descendants of Stolen Generations survivors. In Western Australia, this figure is as high as 46 Per cent. Today, Stolen Generations survivors live right across Australia.
Usually no encouragement or support was given to the birth mother to keep her child. On the contrary, mothers were forced to give up their child. Many stories about the Stolen Generations are testimony to how very deeply mothers suffered because their children were forcibly taken from them.
After 23 years since the Bringing Them Home report was tabled, our Stolen Generations continue to experience higher rates of adversity than Indigenous people who were not removed, with poorer health and socioeconomic outcomes. This continues to impact on our children, families and communities today.
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.
Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius'). The history of Aboriginal dispossession is central to understanding contemporary Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations.