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.
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 NSW Minister for Education, John Perry, instructed NSW schools to remove Aboriginal children from school if non-Aboriginal parents complained. Non-Aboriginal parents frequently claimed diseases were rampant among Aboriginal students, and that they were unhygienic.
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.
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.
1969. By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
Another review prepared for the Australian federal police in 2021 found that at least 25.6% of children under 12 and 18% of those aged between 13 and 17 who go missing while in care are Indigenous, despite First Nations children making up just 5.9% of the total population under 18.
Effects of the Stolen Generations
Children experienced neglect, abuse and they were more likely to suffer from depression, mental illness and low self-esteem. They were also more vulnerable to physical, psychological and sexual abuse in state care, at work, or while living with non-Indigenous families.
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 highest number of Indigenous deaths in prison custody in 2021/22 occurred in NSW, with five deaths. There were four Indigenous deaths in prison in Queensland, three in Western Australia, two in South Australia and one each in Victoria and the Northern Territory.
In Aboriginal communities, the responsibility of raising children is often seen as the responsibility of the entire family rather than the biological parents alone, and so adoption was not necessary and an unknown practice in traditional Aboriginal culture.
Abuse in institutions and missions
Children, even very young ones, were stripped of their names and only called by a number. Boys were flogged for wetting their bed or chained to a tree all alone overnight. The children were told that they weren't Aboriginal, that their mothers didn't want them or were dead.
This history of injustice has meant that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been denied access to basic human rights, such as rights to health, housing, employment and education. Did you know that there were over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages at the time of colonisation?
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.
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 NSW Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme provides one-off ex gratia payments and an apology to surviving Stolen Generations members who were removed by, committed to, or otherwise came to be in the care of the Aborigines Welfare Board under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, until the Act was repealed on 2 June ...
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.
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.
The research project, currently in its eighth year and led by University of Newcastle historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, now estimates more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives were lost in more than 400 massacres, up from a previous estimate of 8,400 in 302 massacres.
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.
250 First Languages were spoken around Australia at the time of British invasion. There were many dialects within each language group. Today, only 120 First Languages are still spoken.
On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples, particularly the Stolen Generations, on behalf of the nation at Australian Parliament House. The Apology was presented as a motion for voting to the Chamber.
Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont left their home in Adelaide to go swimming at the beach on Australia Day 1966 and were never seen again. Their disappearance changed Australian life forever.
Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003) is a British missing person who disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal on the evening of 3 May 2007, at the age of 3. The Daily Telegraph described the disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".
Terence Kelly jailed for abducting Cleo Smith as court told of family's 'immeasurable' distress. Terence Darrell Kelly, 37, the man who abducted four-year-old Cleo Smith from her family's tent at a remote Western Australian campsite, has been sentenced to 13 years and six months in jail.