Stolen Generations

Passage of the Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and "half-caste" persons, including the forcible removal of children, especially "at-risk" girls.

Policemen or other agents of the state (some designated as "Aboriginal Protection Officers") were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from their mothers, families, and communities into institutions for care.

[citation needed] The academic Robert Manne has stated that the lower-end figure of one in 10 is more likely; he estimates that between 20,000 and 25,000 Aboriginal children were removed over six decades, based on a survey of self-identified Indigenous people by the television station ABS.

In that time not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects of forcible removal (confirmed by representatives of the Queensland and WA [Western Australia] Governments in evidence to the Inquiry).

[33][15] The Bringing Them Home report identified instances of official misrepresentation and deception, such as when caring and able parents were incorrectly described by Aboriginal Protection Officers as not being able to properly provide for their children.

The boys were generally trained as agricultural labourers and the girls as domestic servants; these were the chief occupations of many Europeans at the time in the largely rural areas outside cities.

The report noted this was likely due to the increased urbanisation of removed individuals, and greater access to welfare payments than for Aboriginal people living in remote communities.

According to the testimony of one Aboriginal person: I was requested to attend at the Sunshine Welfare Offices, where they formerly (sic) discharged me from State ward ship.

It took the Senior Welfare Officer a mere 20 minutes to come clean, and tell me everything that my heart had always wanted to know...that I was of "Aboriginal descent", that I had a Natural mother, father, three brothers and a sister, who were alive...He placed in front of me 368 pages of my file, together with letters, photos and birthday cards.

[47][48] There are high incidences of anxiety, depression, PTSD and suicide, along with alcohol abuse, among the Stolen Generations, with this resulting in unstable parenting and family situations.

[3] Widespread awareness of the Stolen Generations, and the practices that created them, grew in the late 1980s through the efforts of Aboriginal and white activists, artists, and musicians (Archie Roach's "Took the Children Away" and Midnight Oil's "The Dead Heart" being examples of the latter).

It described the large-scale negative effects of past government policies that resulted in the removal of thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families and their being reared in a variety of conditions in missions, orphanages, reserves, and white foster homes.

As public pressure continued to increase on the government, Howard drafted a Motion of Reconciliation with Senator Aden Ridgeway, expressing "deep and sincere regret over the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents", which was passed by the federal parliament in August 1999.

At its hearing on this subject in July 2000, the Commission on Human Rights strongly criticised the Howard government for its handling of issues related to the Stolen Generations.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded its discussion of Australia's 12th report on its actions[53] by acknowledging "the measures taken to facilitate family reunion and to improve counselling and family support services for the victims", but expressed concern: that the Commonwealth Government does not support a formal national apology and that it considers inappropriate the provision of monetary compensation for those forcibly and unjustifiably separated from their families, on the grounds that such practices were sanctioned by law at the time and were intended to "assist the people whom they affected".The Committee recommended "that the State party consider the need to address appropriately the extraordinary harm inflicted by these racially discriminatory practices.

The internationally successful rock group Midnight Oil attracted worldwide media interest by performing at the Olympic closing ceremony in black sweatsuits with the word "SORRY" emblazoned across them.

White welfare officers, often supported by police, would descend on Aboriginal camps, round up all the children, separate the ones with light-coloured skin, bundle them into trucks and take them away.

[56]According to the archaeologist and writer Josephine Flood, "The well-meaning but ill-conceived policy of forced assimilation of mixed-race Aborigines is now universally condemned for the trauma and loss of language and culture it brought to the stolen children and their families.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement, and economic opportunity.

Thousands of people who had gathered in public spaces in around Australia to hear the apology turned their backs on the screens that broadcast Nelson speaking.

Beforehand, the Leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown, attempted to amend the motion to include words committing parliament to offering compensation to those who suffered loss under past Indigenous policies, but was opposed by all the other parties.

[73] Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2008 Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples was not expected to have any legal effect on claims for compensation in NSW.

[76] In October 2006 the Tasmanian Government allocated a package of A$5 million to fund various reconciliation measures, including compensation for affected people, or their descendants if no longer living, under the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal Children Act 2006.

More recent usage has developed since Peter Read's publication of The Stolen Generations: The Removal of Aboriginal Children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969 (1981), which examined the history of these government actions.

[3] The 1997 publication of the government's Bringing Them Home – Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families[87] heightened awareness of the Stolen Generations.

In response to a submission by the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Commissioner Johnston considered whether the policies and practices of the Australian Governments pertinent to the Stolen Generations constituted a breach of the Convention but concluded that "[i]t is not my function to interpret the Convention or to decide whether it has been breached, particularly since the policies involved were modified in 1962 somewhat and abandoned by 1970".

[99] The Bringing Them Home report concluded that: The Australian practice of Indigenous child removal involved both systematic racial discrimination and genocide as defined by international law.

[103] In its twelfth report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Australian Government argued that the removal policies and programs did not constitute a breach of the Convention.

[104] In 1997, Sir Ronald Wilson, then President of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, commissioner of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and co-author of the Bringing Them Home report, argued that the policies resulting in the Stolen Generations constitute attempted genocide: he stated, "It clearly was attempted genocide.

As of 2020[update] the Foundation had provided funding for more than 175 community organisations to develop and run healing projects, "to address the ongoing trauma caused by actions like the forced removal of children from their families".