This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. 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.
The phrase Stolen Generation refers to the countless number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families under government policy and direction.
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.
The Aborigines Protection Amending Act (NSW) gives power to the Aboriginal Protection Board to separate Indigenous children from their families without having to establish in court that they were neglected.
The government didn't keep records of birth dates or place of birth of many of the children. This made it extremely difficult for them to reconnect with their biological families when they were older. In many cases children were removed and housed far away from where they were stolen.
Emergence of the child removal policy
The idea expressed by A. O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines for Western Australia, and others as late as 1930 was that mixed-race children could be trained to work in white society, and over generations would marry white and be assimilated into the society.
The Apology represented a formal acknowledgement that the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was based on racist policies that caused unspeakable harm to our communities. Children were forced off their lands.
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 addition, the Criminal Record Discrimination Project also identified that up until 1989, members of the Stolen Generation and many non-Aboriginal Victorians were given criminal records as children when they were forcibly taken from their families and placed into state care.
These children were exploited. They had to work from as early as 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. As many as 20% were abused, physically and mentally, during these years.
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.
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.
It is estimated some 16,000 on-reserve children were removed from their homes by Ontario's child welfare services between 1965, when the federal government signed an agreement with the province to extend its welfare programs to reserves and 1984, when the provincial government incorporated protections regarding ...
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 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.
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.
Barriers include inappropriate teaching materials and a lack of Aboriginal role models. Aboriginal education requires connection to communities and informed parents.
Residential school education was intended to convert Indigenous children to Christianity; to strip them of their culture, values and social behaviours and to “Westernize” them. Missionaries and European settlers, who saw Indigenous people as “savages,” believed Western civilization was superior.
In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings.
Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their home, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate into the dominant culture.
The NDICP was established at the Australian Institute of Criminology in 1992 in response to recommendation 41 by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The NDICP is supported by a steering group. There have been 527 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission.
Sixteen Indigenous people died in custody in 2021 – double the previous record in NSW, which was eight deaths in 1998.
In the late 1980s Tasmanian activist Michael Mansell introduced an Aboriginal Passport. The passport was issued to a delegation that visited Libya in 1988.
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.