Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T19:24:57.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Australia’s Stolen Generations, 1914–2021

from Part I - Racism, Total War, Imperial Collapse and Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2023

Ben Kiernan
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Wendy Lower
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna College, California
Norman Naimark
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Scott Straus
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access

Summary

From the earliest period of British invasion of the lands now referred to as Australia, white authorities have removed Indigenous children from their communities. Sana Nakata even states that ‘the history of Australia is a history of interventions into the childhoods of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’. In this chapter, we describe how Indigenous child removal has been perpetrated in Australia since 1914. We consider the period from 1914 until the 1980s, during which the removal of Indigenous children was explicitly enabled under a growing range of laws and policies. While it is impossible to calculate the exact number of children removed during this period, the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (henceforth ‘the National Inquiry’), headed by federal judge Sir Ronald Wilson, concluded in 1997 that ‘Most [Indigenous] families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children.’ In this chapter, we also consider the contemporary context, from the 1990s onwards, in which Australian governments have apologised for the historic Stolen Generations but continue to remove Indigenous children from their families in rising numbers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×