The forced removals of Aboriginal children depicted in this book took place after Australia became an independent nation in 1901. Nothing to do with the British, then? Except that the policy is underpinned by the ideology of the motherland. As Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote in 2008:

‘Historical wrongs can not be put right by belated apologies unless there has been a genuine attempt to understand – then remember and condemn – the thinking behind the policies that have had such appalling results … For this reason, the UK Government should find a way to endorse the apology to Australian Aborigines, for whose suffering Britain has been in part responsible.’[1]

For anyone wanting to know more about Australia’s Stolen Generation, I would recommend the National Library of Australia’s Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, where the voices of hundreds of Australians have been recorded. The majority of those voices are people who were themselves removed as children, or whose family members were removed. Another moving account can be found in the film Rabbit Proof Fence, based on the novel by Doris Pilkington Garimara. The following information, derived mainly from the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, may also be helpful.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia who were forcibly removed from their families during the period from 1910 until 1970 are known as the Stolen Generation. Nobody knows exactly how many Aboriginal children were removed from their families in this time. Many records have not survived, and many of those removed in childhood are now deceased. It is thought that there are people removed in childhood whose Aboriginality is not known, even to themselves.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has estimated that between one in three and one in ten Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and communities. The Commission states that most Aboriginal families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forced removal of one or more children. Children removed in this way were placed in institutions where they were at heightened risk of physical and sexual abuse.

Prior to 1940, Aboriginal children were removed on overtly racial grounds, with lighter-skinned children being targeted for removal in the hope they might lose their Aboriginal identity and ‘merge’ with white society.[2] From 1940 onwards, the removal of Aboriginal children was governed by Child Welfare legislation. To justify removal, children had to be ‘neglected’, ‘uncontrollable’ or ‘destitute’. These terms were applied more readily to Aboriginal children than non-Aboriginal children, and poverty was often conflated with neglect[3].

In May 1967, Australians voted in a referendum which proposed two amendments to the Australian Constitution relating to Aboriginal people. The amendments were overwhelmingly endorsed and became law in August 1967. Consequently it became possible to count Aboriginal people in a census for the first time. A federal Office of Aboriginal Affairs was established and grants were given out to the states for Aboriginal welfare programmes.

In 1969, the New South Wales Aborigines’ Welfare Board was abolished. The Aboriginal Homes at Kinchela and Cootamundra were closed soon afterwards, but the Aboriginal Home at Bomaderry in New South Wales was operational until 1980.