Stolen Generations

Stolen Generations, the generations of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples who, as children, were forcibly removed from their families by Australian state agencies and church missions from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. A national inquiry established by the Australian attorney general in 1995 and conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) found that between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3 children of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were taken from their families. Although the Australian government issued an apology in 2008 and some states have given reparations, the forced removal policy continues to affect thousands of survivors and their descendants.

Legal framework

The forcible separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families dates back to the early days of colonization in Australia. In the 1790s the Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy led attacks against the colonists in part as a reprisal for the kidnapping of Aboriginal children, who were often taken and made to work as personal servants for the colonists. Missionaries and colonial officials also participated in the separation of children from their families, as they sought to teach Aboriginal children European values and train them for work in colonial settlements, with the first school for Aboriginal children opening in 1814. The British government, concerned by reports of atrocities committed by their subjects in Australia, appointed the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (commonly called the Select Committee) in 1836. In 1837 the committee recommended the creation of an office called the Protector of the Aborigines, which was tasked with such duties as claiming land for the various Aboriginal groups and educating children, including teaching them European customs. However, in 1849 the Select Committee recommended the abolition of the Protector office, claiming that the protectors had failed in their mission. The Select Committee further asserted that the compulsory separation of children from their parents was required for the assimilation of First Peoples.

The latter part of the 19th century saw the establishment of a number of laws and institutions across much of Australia that allowed for the taking of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, including those of mixed descent. For example, the state of Queensland’s Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act (1865) and Victoria’s Aborigines Protection Act (1869) granted the governors of those colonies the ability to remove Aboriginal children from their parents and place them into reformatory or industrial school in cases of parental neglect. “Neglect” in such cases was generally interpreted so broadly as to make merely being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent as proof of neglect. In other cases the children were placed into foster care with white families or adopted to white parents. By 1911 all Australian states except Tasmania had enacted legislation conferring broad powers over First Peoples to a Protection Board or Chief Protector. Tasmania introduced similar policies in the 1930s.

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In 1937, with the first Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities, Australia formally adopted assimilation as a national policy. Government authorities continued to justify child removal as a welfare matter, claiming that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in poverty would be better off if raised within white institutions and by white families. The assimilation of those of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry was of particular concern to many officials, who believed that “the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption….with a view to their taking their place in the white community on an equal footing with the whites.”

Impacts of the policy

The result of the assimilationist policies was immense cultural disruption for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Children taken under such policies were forbidden from speaking their native languages or participating in their cultural customs. Ties to both culture and land were severed as children were not allowed to learn their families’ traditional ways of life, establish their places within their communities, or become connected to their traditional lands. The last of these had not only cultural impacts but legal ramifications, as separation from land made it difficult for Stolen Generations peoples to assert their rights under various land rights legislation, such as the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act (1976). A number of people of the Stolen Generations reported feeling a lack of belonging in either their original communities or in white Australian society.

Many children experienced instability, neglect, and abuse after being separated from their families. More than half of the children were either moved between institutions or between institutions and foster care. Conditions at a number of schools across the country were harsh, with children often receiving inadequate food and clothing. Punishments were frequently severe, and about one-fifth of children in institutions reported being physically abused. Sexual abuse was also common, especially of girls. Rates of the sexual abuse of boys varied from about 1 in 20 if they lived with an adoptive family to about 1 in 10 if they were in an institution or living with a foster family. Girls were sexually abused at rate of just under 12 percent when they were in institutions and over 25 percent when living with an adoptive or foster family.

Aftermath

The second half of the 20th century saw the overturning of Australia’s child separation policies and the beginning of the long process of recognition and reconciliation. In 1967 the Australian constitution was amended to give the commonwealth the power to make laws concerning Aboriginal peoples instead of the states. Two years later the last piece of state legislation that allowed for the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was repealed. Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation was founded in 1980 to support members of the Stolen Generations and, when possible, help them find and reunite with their families. In the following two decades a number of other Link-Up organizations formed in several states and cities.

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Historian Peter Read coined the term “Stolen Generations” in 1981. The term and the recognition of what it described grew over the course of the 1980s and early ’90s. In 1995 the HREOC began an inquiry into the removal of children from their families. Its findings, based on more than 500 written and oral testimonies from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as well as organizations and foster parents from every state in the country, were published in 1997 in the Bringing Them Home report. Apologies from several states followed soon after. May 26, 1998, was the first National Sorry Day. On February 13, 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the Australian government’s formal apology for its past policies of child removal and assimilation. With the exception of Queensland, all jurisdictions in Australia have implemented a reparations program for the Stolen Generations.

Despite major gains in the recognition of past injustices, Stolen Generations survivors and their descendants continue to be affected by the policy. Rates of depression and mental illness are high among those who were forcibly removed. Many of those who were taken away from their parents in early childhood have trouble creating and sustaining nurturing and stable relationships with their own children. As a result, the children of Stolen Generations survivors are at an elevated risk for behavioral and mental health conditions. Family separation remained disproportionately common in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia into the 21st century: In 2023–24 the rate of out-of-home care—that is, the placement of a child with someone other than the child’s parents—for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was about 5 percent, compared with a rate of 0.5 percent for non-Indigenous children.