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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
We say sorry to those Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families through the first seven decades of the 20th century. In doing so, we reach from within ourselves to our past, those whose lives connect us to it, and in deep understanding of its importance to our future.
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.
Since the colonisation of Australia by European settlers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have experienced extreme hardships, ranging from the loss of traditional culture and homelands to the forced removal of children and denial of citizenship rights.
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.
Survivors of Australia's Stolen Generations are calling on Pope Francis to apologise for atrocities committed by the Catholic Church against Australia's Stolen Generations survivors.
We fund programs and services that help members of the Stolen Generations and their families reconnect and heal. We fund programs that help strengthen the health, wellbeing and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and we fund workforce support and training for workers in the field.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
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.
'Indigenous Australian' is a very general term that covers two very distinct cultural groups: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments.
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
The Pew Research Center uses 1928 to 1945 as birth years for this cohort. According to this definition, people of the Silent Generation are 78 to 95 years old in 2023.
On top of the grief and suffering caused by their removal, stolen children were often subjected to harsh and degrading treatment including abuse, exploitation and racism. Many were also denied education.
Thousands of children were forcibly removed by governments, churches and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families, nationally and internationally. They are known as the Stolen Generations.
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.
Because they were brought up to be servants or labourers, members of the Stolen Generations often received a poorer education and are more likely to be unemployed.
Francis has said he is on a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the church's role in the residential school system, in which generations of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and forced to attend church-run, government-funded boarding schools to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society ...