Description and feeling
Bringing Them Home
2
0 years on:
an action plan for healing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Healing Foundation
Bringing Them Home
20 years on:
an action plan for healing
Executive summary 4
Background 6
The Stolen Generations 7
The Bringing Them Home report
1
0
Responding to Bringing Them Home 14
Why action is needed now 19
An action plan for making things right 26
Action one: comprehensive response for
Stolen Generations members 27
Action two: healing intergenerational trauma 40
Action three: creating an environment for change 45
Appendix 1: key themes and recommendations
from the Bringing Them Home report 50
Bibliography 52
Notes 54
Contents
We acknowledge Stolen Generations members across Australia, including
those who have passed on, for their courage in sharing their stories and
wisdom in the Bringing Them Home report.
This report, written by Pat Anderson and Edward Tilton, was guided by
the Healing Foundation’s Stolen Generations Reference Committee. The
Committee’s efforts were central to ensuring that this report reflects
the experience of Stolen Generations and for forming the critical
recommendations to bring about change in Australia.
We acknowledge and thank all other contributors who were consulted
for this report.
1
…the past is very much with
us today, in the continuing
devastation of the lives of
Indigenous Australians.
That devastation cannot be
addressed unless the whole
community listens with an
open heart and mind to the
stories of what has happened
in the past and, having listened
and understood, commits itself
to reconciliation.
Extract from the 1997 Bringing Them Home report
2
On 26 May 1997 the landmark Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal
Parliament. The report was the result of a national inquiry that investigated the
forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. This marked a pivotal
moment in the healing journey of many Stolen Generations members. It was
the first time their stories—stories of being taken from their families—were
acknowledged in such a way.
It was also the first time it was formally reported that what governments did to
these children was inhumane and the impact has been lifelong.
Most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been affected by the
Stolen Generations. The resulting trauma has been passed down to children
and grandchildren, contributing to many of the issues faced in Indigenous
communities, including family violence, substance abuse and self harm.
Two decades on and the majority of the Bringing Them Home recommendations
have not yet been implemented. For many Stolen Generations members, this has
created additional trauma and distress.
Failure to act has caused a ripple effect to current generations. We are now seeing
an increase in Aboriginal people in jails, suicide is on the rise and more children
are being removed.
Addressing the underlying trauma of these issues through healing is the only way
to create meaningful and lasting change.
Commemorative events, like the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home
report, are an important part of the healing process, for Stolen Generations
members, their families and the broader community. In order to change, you have
to remember.
The anniversary presents an opportunity to reset—to secure sustainable support to
help reduce the impact of trauma. This report makes three key recommendations:
1 A comprehensive assessment of the contemporary and emerging needs of
Stolen Generations members, including needs-based funding and a financial
redress scheme.
2 A national study into intergenerational trauma to ensure that there is real
change for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the future.
3 An appropriate policy response that is based on the principles underlying the
1997 Bringing Them Home report.
Executive summary
While this report might primarily detail the response from government to the
Bringing Them Home report, it is not a report to government about government.
This is a report for everyone, and outlines as a whole how we can actively
support healing for Stolen Generations and their descendants. There needs to be
commitment to making change. We all have a responsibility to do this together.
The price of not acting on the recommendations means an increased burden
for Australia as a whole. It’s time for action. We need to address the unfinished
business—for the sake of our Elders, our young ones, for our entire communities
and all Australians.
554
In 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Bringing Them
Home (BTH) report was made public. The report was a significant milestone for
the Stolen Generations members, their families, and the broader Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander community. It was also important for Australia as a whole.
In the testimonies it recorded and the recommendations it made, the Bringing
Them Home report provided a basis for addressing the rights and needs of Stolen
Generations members and for progressing reconciliation based on a genuine
acknowledgement of Australia’s past.
Despite progress in some areas, there has never been a collaborative and
systematic attempt to address the recommendations the report made. Most have
never been implemented.
To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the release of the Bringing Them Home
report in 2017, the Healing Foundation commissioned this review to revisit
the principles and its recommendations of the report, and to examine their
advancement in the contemporary policy landscape.1
This review outlines a plan of action to meet the continuing and emerging
needs and rights of Stolen Generations members and their families, based
on the priorities of the Stolen Generations, the evidence of the effects of the
failure to implement the Bringing Them Home recommendations, the report’s
recommendations and underlying principles, namely:
• self-determination
• non-discrimination
• cultural renewal
• coherent policy base
• provision of adequate resources.
This review is intended to mark the start of a conversation led by Stolen
Generations members to inform the continuing process of acknowledging and
making reparation for the wrongs of the past.
The forcible removal of children
The effects of colonisation on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
of Australia have been catastrophic. The histories of colonisation are highly
diverse, unfolding at different times and in locally and regionally specific ways.
Nevertheless, the common experience for Indigenous people was one of
devastation caused by introduced disease, frontier violence, dispossession from
land and its resources, and the disruption and suppression of traditional cultures.
Added to these factors was the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children from their families. These children have become known as the
Stolen Generations. The practice of removal became a systematic part of the
policy of assimilation adopted by all Australian governments in the 20th century,
and while the number of children forcibly removed under this policy is not known,
the estimate provided by the work of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families was that:
… between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were
forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from
approximately 1910 until 1970. In certain regions and in certain periods
the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in 10. In that time not
one Indigenous family has escaped the effects of forcible removal… Most
families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible
removal of one or more children.2
Children were moved to institutions run by churches and non-government
organisations, adopted by non-Indigenous families, or placed with non-Aboriginal
households to work as domestic servants and farm hands. Many children suffered
very harsh, degrading treatment (including sexual abuse), limited or no contact
with families, and were frequently indoctrinated to believe in the inferiority of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culture.
Background The Stolen Generations
776
The laws of those times
are still impacting on
our people today …
it is time to finish
this business
The campaign for recognition
Laws supporting the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
on the basis of race were repealed across Australia by the 1970s. As self-
determination replaced assimilation as the dominant policy approach, the Stolen
Generations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations began to force
a re-appraisal of the practice of forcible removal. In 1995 this led to the Australian
Government asking the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to
carry out a national inquiry to:
• examine the past laws, practices and policies of forcible separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and their effects
• identify what should be done in response, including any changes in current
laws, practices and policies with a focus on locating and reunifying families
• examine the justification for any compensation for those affected by the
forcible separations
• look at then current laws, policies and practices affecting the placement and
care of Indigenous children.
8
The Inquiry held extensive consultations across Australia, taking evidence
from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, government and church
representatives, foster and adoptive parents, health professionals, academics,
and police, as well as receiving hundreds of written submissions. The final report
of the Inquiry was tabled in the Australian Parliament on 26 May 1997.
The report extensively documented the experience of the Stolen Generations,
finding that a deliberate policy of assimilation underlay the removal process
and that:
the forcible removal of Indigenous children was a gross violation of their
human rights. It … was an act of genocide contrary to the Convention on
Genocide ratified by Australia in 1949.3
It concluded that those affected had a right to reparations, including an
acknowledgment of the truth and an apology; guarantees these human rights
would not be breached again; the return of what had been lost where possible;
rehabilitation; and compensation. The report also made findings about the
contemporary removal of children from their families.
Principles
The Bringing Them Home report proposed a set of key principles to underlie
government responses to those affected by the forcible removal of children4:
1 Self-determination – the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,
Stolen Generations members and their families to exercise autonomy in their
own affairs and make their own decisions.
2. Non-discrimination – the right to be free of racial discrimination, and to be able
to access services which are appropriate to their particular needs.
3. Cultural renewal – the right to participate in cultural activities, recognising the
diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and the need to repair
the damaged family and cultural ties resulting from the removal of children.
4. A coherent policy base – the need for an agreed set of services to begin the
process of healing and redress, with agreed objectives and goals.
5. Adequate resources – appropriate funding to enable services to address the
diverse effects of removal on individuals, families and communities.
The Bringing Them Home
report
Recommendations
Stemming from its findings and founded on those principles, the report made 54
recommendations:
• acknowledgment and formal apology with all parliaments, police forces and
churches to acknowledge, apologise and make reparation for past wrongs
• reparation for people who were forcibly removed including monetary
compensation through a national compensation fund
• records, family tracing and reunion, including funding community-based
Link-Up services to help families reconnect, and the establishment of records
taskforces
• rehabilitation for survivors of forcible removal, including local healing and
wellbeing approaches
• education and training, including a National Sorry Day and the inclusion of
compulsory modules on the Stolen Generations in school curricula
• guarantees against repetition, including the implementation of self-
determination approaches to the well-being of Indigenous children and young
people
• addressing contemporary separation, with national standards legislation to
ensure compliance with the Indigenous Child Placement Principle
• a national process for coordination and monitoring the implementation of the
recommendations.
111110
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen_summary/stolen13.html
Finally the truth was out there
The Australian Government response,
1997 – 2007
Following the tabling of the report, the immediate response of the Australian
Government of the day was to reject many of the key principles and
recommendations linked to them, in particular the need for a formal apology
and for reparations. However, the government did provide funding ($63 million
over four years) including for regional social and emotional wellbeing centres,
counselling positions, Link-Up services, culture and language maintenance
programs, and family support and parenting programs.5 Much of this funding was
made permanent in 2001-2002, initially as part of the Department of Health’s
budget and more recently within the Indigenous Advancement Strategy under the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
While the Bringing Them Home recommendations for a national process for
monitoring implementation were not agreed to, between 2000 and 2007 there
were a number of attempts to evaluate the government response to the report.
The results of these inquiries were generally highly critical, finding that the
Australian Government’s response in particular had been under-funded, badly
directed, poorly coordinated, and insufficiently targeted to the needs of the Stolen
Generations.6 In 2007, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Commissioner reflected on the decade since the report was made public:
For Aboriginal people, the years since the Bringing Them Home report
have been filled with great hope as well as lost opportunities. While there
have been positive developments and initiatives, many opportunities for
governments to work with our communities and advance the goal of
national reconciliation have been lost. Ten years on, the recommendations of
the Bringing Them Home report still stand as the starting point for a national
reconciliation process.7
Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous
Mental Health Programs (2007)
The Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health within the then
Department of Health and Ageing commissioned Urbis Keys Young to carry out
an evaluation of the implementation of the Link-Up program, the Bringing Them
Home counsellors program, the Social and Emotional Wellbeing Regional Centre
Program, and the funding of mental health service delivery projects in Aboriginal
Community Controlled Health Organisations.
Responding to
Bringing Them Home
It found that the funded organisations (Link-Ups, ACCHOs and others) had
delivered a number of important achievements but faced a number of limitations,
including a lack of focus on first generation Stolen Generations survivors, variable
skills and qualifications of staff, a lack of consistency in service delivery, and
limited geographical coverage. More broadly it found that:
The Government’s response to the Bringing Them Home report has been
insufficiently documented, poorly coordinated and insufficiently targeted
to meet the needs of the Stolen Generations, as concluded by reports
examining this issue. This is consistent with the findings of this evaluation.
There has been insufficient prioritisation of the needs of first generation
Stolen Generations members.8
The Apology (2008) and beyond
Under a new Australian Government, the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous
Peoples was passed by the Australian Parliament on 13 February 2008. As well as
delivering on one of Bringing Them Home’s central, unfulfilled recommendations,
the Apology also marked a shift in the policy response back towards some of its
underlying principles. It also led to the establishment of the Healing Foundation.
However, the Australian Government continued to oppose establishing national
processes for compensation, and continued a response based on funding of
services, though once again these were often aimed at the broader Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander community, rather than the Stolen Generations in particular.
In the absence of any formal monitoring process, two non-government agencies have
recently carried out their own assessment of the response to the Bringing Them Home
report.9 These found very limited implementation of the recommendations: less than
one in 10 were identified as having been fully implemented.
The Bringing Them Home report created some positive change: it provided the
opportunity for Stolen Generations members to put their stories on the public
record; it led to the Apology; it foreshadowed a greater focus on social and
emotional wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; and it
led to increased support for Link-Up services and the establishment of the Healing
Foundation.
However, the great majority of its recommendations have yet to be implemented,
and the principles that underlay them are yet to form a coherent basis for a
national response to the historical trauma suffered by the Stolen Generations.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia, Bringing Them Home remains
unfinished business.
151514
The work still hasn’t been done, it’s unfinished business
Why action is needed now
The number of people affected
It’s difficult to say exactly how many children were taken from their families or
how many Stolen Generations members are still alive today. The Bringing Them
Home report estimated that a minimum of one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people were forcibly removed from their families and communities in
the period up to 1970. This estimate is consistent with the most recent evidence
available, which found that 12 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people aged over 45 years in 2008 had personally been removed from their family
by ‘welfare, as part of government policy or taken away to a mission’.10 Applying
this proportion to the latest publicly available figures on the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander population suggests around 14,700 Stolen Generations members.11
While this number is falling as older members pass away, a proportion of the
seven per cent of people aged 15 to 44 in 2008 who reported being taken away
would also be Stolen Generations. Therefore, when we start to consider the wider
impact, a realistic estimate for the number of Stolen Generations members would
be 15,000 people, at minimum.
A further
38
per cent of people surveyed in 2008 reported having immediate
family who had been removed. This means an additional 160,000 Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people directly affected by the policies of forcible
removal.12 These figures are rough estimates, but give a broad picture of the
scale of the issue.
Continuing effects on the Stolen Generations
The failure to implement the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report
is reflected in a wide range of negative outcomes.
A recent study examined the health and wellbeing status of those who had
been removed themselves and those who had parents, grandparents/great-
grandparents or siblings who had been removed. This group, the Stolen
Generations and their immediate family and descendants:
… are around 50 per cent more likely to have been charged by police,
30
per cent less likely to report being in good health, 15 per cent more likely to
consume alcohol at risky levels and 10 per cent less likely to be employed.13
Let the healing begin
Today is an historic day.
It’s the day our leaders—across the political spectrum—have chosen
dignity, hope and respect as the guiding principles for the relationship with
our first nations’ peoples.
Through one direct act, Parliament has acknowledged the existence
and the impacts of the past policies and practices of forcibly removing
Indigenous children from their families.
And by doing so, has paid respect to the Stolen Generations. For their
suffering and their loss. For their resilience. And ultimately, for their dignity.
…The introductory words of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report remind
us of this. It reads:
…the past is very much with us today, in the continuing devastation of
the lives of Indigenous Australians. That devastation cannot be addressed
unless the whole community listens with an open heart and mind to
the stories of what has happened in the past and, having listened and
understood, commits itself to reconciliation.
By acknowledging and paying respect, Parliament has now laid the
foundations for healing to take place and for a reconciled Australia in
which everyone belongs.
For today is not just about the Stolen Generations—it is about every
Australian.
Today’s actions enable every single one of us to move forward together—
with joint aspirations and a national story that contains a shared past
and future.
Formal Response on behalf of the Stolen Generations to the
Parliament of Australia’s National Apology by Tom Calma,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner,
13 February 2008.
Tom Calma
1918 19
The comparison data utilised to undertake this research was other Indigenous
people across Australia. Given that we already know Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people have poorer health and social outcomes than the general
Australian population this indicates extreme vulnerability for Stolen Generations
and their descendants.
On an individual level, there is the personal cost to those who came forward to
the Inquiry, often at the risk of being re-traumatised through sharing and retelling
their stories. They took this risk on the trust that it would lead to significant
change. Many of these people ended their lives without that trust being repaid.
There have also been ongoing health and social effects for the Stolen Generations
and their families. They have significantly poorer physical health and over double
the rates of mental illness and alcohol abuse compared to that suffered by
those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were not removed. They
have also, on average, received a poorer education and are more likely to be
unemployed.14
The educational and economic consequences of forcible removal are important
to note, given the ideology holding that the removal of children was so that they
could get an education and ‘get ahead’ in mainstream society. The effects have
clearly been the opposite: on average, the Stolen Generations have received a
poorer education and are more likely to be unemployed than those Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people who were not removed.
The breakdown of family and social structures caused by removal decimated
communities. It deeply impacted Stolen Generations members. They did not
know where to go to seek support for anything; they no longer belonged to a
community, held no memories of belonging to one and were not able to draw
on the strengths of a community to help them. This disempowered Stolen
Generations members in being able to take action and seek assistance resulting in
many members feeling isolated and distressed. There has also been a considerable
community impact in terms of trauma experienced by those that were left behind
with many of their parents, grandparents and family members never recovering
from the distress of losing their children.
In all of the focus on healing there has been extremely limited focus on healing
the relationship between Stolen Generations and their communities and this has
fed lateral violence resulting in increasing isolation.
Intergenerational trauma
The trauma that people suffered removed their right to parent freely and receive
support to care safely for their children.
Many people suffered by not being able to show love to their families and lost the
enjoyment of accepting the love of their children. They lost the right to love their
children and were frightened to accept love. Many of them suffered in silence
and sacrificed their own wellbeing to keep their families together. Sometimes
they stayed in more difficult circumstances, such as marriages, where there was
violence, as they could not tolerate their families being broken up again, their
children growing up without a mother and a father.
This also meant that many did not seek support for any of their problems,
including their own mental health for fear of being judged unfit parents and their
children being taken. Men often missed out on being fathers as they sought to
use any means to dull the pain such as alcohol use.
As well as the negative effects felt by Stolen Generations members, the failure to
address the trauma created through forced removal policies has led to widespread
problems throughout the whole Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The increasing levels of contemporary child removal from Aboriginal families
was an issue that the Bringing Them Home report canvassed in depth. Numerous
participants acknowledged that while the intent of child removal practices today
is different to that experienced by the Stolen Generations, the effect is potentially
the same: a loss of identity and the exacerbation of intergenerational trauma.
The failure to implement the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement
Principles described at length in the Bringing Them Home recommendations was
a particular concern for the organisations consulted in the development of
this report.
The Bringing Them Home report found that in 1993 two per cent of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander children (nationally) were in care, almost seven and a
half times the rate for non-Indigenous children (page 372). The latest figures (for
2015) show a worsening situation: over five per cent of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander children are in care, almost 10 times the rate for non-Indigenous
children (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW 2016).
212120
It is well-established that adverse experiences in childhood can have lifelong
effects, including mental ill health, physical illness, poor educational and
employment outcomes, addiction, relationship difficulties, and increased contact
with the criminal justice system.15 What is emerging now is the evidence that such
traumatic experiences:
can be transferred from the first generation of survivors that have
experienced (or witnessed) it directly in the past to the second and further
generations of descendants of the survivors … [this] intergenerational
trauma … is defined as the subjective experiencing and remembering
of events in the mind of an individual or the life of a community, passed
from adults to children in cyclic processes as ‘cumulative emotional and
psychological wounding.16
Evidence for intergenerational trauma includes the testimonies and experience of
the Stolen Generations themselves, particularly as recorded in the Bringing Them
Home report which has many heart-rending reflections on the lasting effects of
trauma in their own families’ lives.
There are also the differential health and social outcomes experienced by the
Stolen Generations and their descendants: those who have been removed
themselves or whose immediate family were removed are significantly more
likely to be in contact with the police, have alcohol and gambling problems, have
poorer mental health and social skills or have children with increased risks of
emotional and behavioural difficulties.17
There is also powerful evidence for the effects of intergenerational trauma in a
number of key indicators of wellbeing in contemporary Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander life that are strongly linked to the experience of unresolved
intergenerational trauma, such as the high and rising rates of the contemporary
removal of children from their families, the incarceration of young people, and
family violence.
Mothers still live in fear that
their children are going to be
taken from them
22
Truth and healing
Underpinning all of the policies that led to the forced removal of Indigenous
children was a subscription to racism, including institutional racism.
The origin of the trauma has been the dispossession, exclusion and discrimination
suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and experienced
in particular by the Stolen Generations through being taken from their families
and communities. Added to this is the ongoing experience of racism. This can
be on a personal level (surveys show that the experience of racism is almost
universally reported amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people18) or on a
systemic level through practices and policies which disadvantage and marginalise
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being structured into how institutions
operate.19 There is a strong association between these experiences of racism and
poor mental health and drug use. For people bearing a burden of trauma, it is
also re-traumatising and can become a barrier to healing.
Racism can be countered by truth-telling. This is one of the most important
outcomes of what has occurred from the Bringing Them Home report for Stolen
Generations survivors. However, the legacy of these times continues to play out
within our society and we still battle the continuous impact of institutional racism
in our efforts to get the right policies to lead and develop change for Stolen
Generations members and their families.
Bringing Them Home: a missed opportunity
By documenting a part of Australia’s history that was previously ignored, the Bringing
Them Home report provided a basis for genuine reconciliation, and for addressing
issues of identity, trust and the experience of racism that continue to strongly affect
the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia today.
The report made recommendations for addressing the needs of Stolen Generations
members and their families, as well as other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people regarding language; culture and history; mental health; the contemporary
removal of children; and self-determination. It charted a way forward based on justice,
on the healing of past hurts, and of breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
There is no way of knowing what the contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander world would look like had there been a concerted effort to implement
the Bringing Them Home vision for the future. But it is clear that the failure
to properly implement this vision represents a significantly missed opportunity
to address trauma in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and to
provide a basis for genuine reconciliation in Australia.
Florence Onus is a descendant of the Birri-Gubba and Kairi/Bidjara clans of
north-east Queensland.
She is the fourth generation of women from her family to be forcibly
removed from land, culture and family.
“My grandmother and my mother were both trained and sent out as
domestic servants on properties. They weren’t allowed to speak their
native language or practice cultural ceremonies, or they would be severely
punished,” Florence said.
“And then I became part of the Stolen Generations when I was removed
from my family to be raised in a white foster home.”
Her two older sisters were sent to Rockhampton to live with nuns, while
Florence and her two other siblings went to Townsville foster homes.
There, Florence spent most of her childhood.
“I embarked on my healing journey when at 21 my mother attempted
suicide and I became her full time carer and together we began the journey
of healing.”
“It wasn’t until I started doing my own research and had access to policies
that I truly realised that my mother was suffering from the impacts of
intergenerational trauma.”
Florence has four adult daughters and she is a grandmother. She is
passionate about breaking the cycle of trauma through healing, education,
cultural identity and spiritual nurturing.
Florence is an educator and an advocate for social justice. Her maternal
grandfather died in custody in the early 60s following his arrest as
an agitator.
Florence has carried on his fight for social justice, with a particular focus on
the impact of Black Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generation issues.
“There needs to be an increase in healing resources for the Stolen
Generations and our families to heal from the trauma, pain and suffering
that we’re still dealing with today,” she said.
Florence Onus
2524 25
While we note that both federal and state governments over the past 20 years
have made responses to the Bringing Them Home report it has been neither
adequate in resources or the commitment required to create real change.
The 20th anniversary of Bringing Them Home, in 2017, represents an important
opportunity to revisit the continuing needs and rights of Stolen Generations
members and their families, and to recommit to the original recommendations.
Stolen Generations members are aging, and there is an urgent need to ensure
they, and their families, don’t face further trauma by a failure to achieve justice
in their lifetime.
This review provides a set of actions to help Stolen Generations members reach
some peace, and to meet their continuing and emerging needs, along with the
future needs of their families.
• Action one – comprehensive response for Stolen Generations: Ensuring
the holistic needs of the Stolen Generations are met, including dedicated
needs-based funding and a universal, culturally safe and trauma-informed
financial redress scheme.
• Action two – healing intergenerational trauma: Addressing the serious,
widespread, and worsening effects of unresolved intergenerational trauma
arising from the processes of colonisation and from the forcible removal of
children, as the driver of many health, social and wellbeing issues affecting
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples including the Stolen Generations,
their families and descendants.
• Action three – creating an environment for change: Creating a policy
response to the rights and needs of Stolen Generations members and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that is based on the principles
underlying Bringing Them Home as a basis for reconciliation in Australia.
An action plan for making
things right
Action one: comprehensive response for
Stolen Generations
The Bringing Them Home report made a case for a comprehensive package
of reparations to the Stolen Generations, including acknowledgment and
apology, guarantees against repetition, restitution, rehabilitation and monetary
compensation (financial redress). As documented above, such reparation has only
been partly made.
1. Meeting the healing needs of the Stolen Generations
Assessing the level of need
There are an estimated 175,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who
are either Stolen Generations themselves or directly affected by the processes of
forcible removal (see ‘the number of people affected’, p19). Given the negative
social, health and wellbeing effects of removal, this represents a substantial level
of need within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. It may also
be the case that the Stolen Generations are experiencing accumulating levels of
disadvantage as new needs emerge or intensify, for example due to the fact that
they are ageing, or as a result of the non-implementation of the Bringing Them
Home recommendations.
A national needs assessment process is therefore required. This will document
the contemporary experience of Stolen Generations members and their families,
identify their existing and emerging needs, describe the appropriate service
models to meet those needs and recommend funding reforms to support those
services, including a dedicated needs-based Australian Government funding
stream.20
272726
Dedicated needs-based funding
The Bringing Them Home report recognised adequate resourcing as a key principle
to underpin government responses to the Stolen Generations. However, the
Australian Government’s response to Bringing Them Home has not maintained
a focus on their specific needs and no dedicated funding stream has provided
services to them. The Bringing Them Home counsellor positions originally funded
in 1997 are now expected to provide general social and emotional wellbeing
services for the whole Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The lack of focus on the specific needs of Stolen Generations members and their
families is exacerbated by the large amount of funding for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander mental health and social support services now being funnelled by
the Australian Government’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) to non-
Indigenous NGOs, and in some cases to church-run organisations. This is creating
barriers for Stolen Generations members and their descendants to access services
because in a number of cases the services are provided by the same churches who
ran the institutions where the children were forcibly removed and traumatised.
Consideration should be given to funding for community-healing responses to
assist Stolen Generations members create renewed connections to the places
they are now living. This could take the form of healing forums that the Healing
Foundation has been leading throughout the country. These forums are enabling
communities to reflect on the negative impact of colonisation and to create
solutions that bring harmony and balance back to community relationships.
For example, funding that has been provided both under the New South Wales
and South Australian compensation schemes has allowed for direct funding
to Stolen Generations and their families for healing. This has included a pool
of funding that can be accessed for collective healing initiatives that include
memorials, healing centres, healing camps and groups, reunions of institutions.
This is enabling Stolen Generations and their families to access healing that is
meaningful to them and chosen by them—thereby implementing one of the key
principles of the Bringing Them Home report, self-determination.
Doreen Webster is a Barkindji woman, born in Wilcannia, in the north west
of New South Wales.
“I remember happy times with my parents before I was taken. My dad
worked on a station. I loved it. I had a younger sister. She was a baby when
she was taken.”
Doreen and her brother John were taken to the local police station and
locked up in cell. The next day she was put on a train to Sydney, where at
Central Station, Doreen was separated from her brother.
“A man was waiting there for my brother, from Kinchela Boys Home. I said
‘Where are you going?’ And I was pulling at him, trying to pull him back,”
she said. “Here I am on the station, a little eight year old, screaming and
crying because they were taking my brother away.”
Doreen was taken to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for
Aboriginal Girls.
“When I got up to Cootamundra I was thinking, ‘What’s going on here?
Where am I?’ I had no idea where I was or what was happening to me.
I was screaming for my mum and dad. When we got there we were
treated so cruelly—so cruelly,” Doreen said.
She recalls the matron asking a police office to punish her.
“I was sitting down on the ground and he got me by the hair of the head
and just pulled me up, straight up to my feet—lifted me off the ground
and stood me on my feet—and then he stood on my foot. I had no shoes
on. I was screaming out in agony. It was just horrifying. I used to run away
all the time,” she said.
Doreen is now a vocal advocate of appropriate aged care for the Stolen
Generations. On the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report,
she wants the survivors of Cootamundra, and the infamous Kinchela Boys
Home, to have their own joint aged care facility, so they can spend their
last years together.
“For when we get older, a place where we can be. We are family, we
are sisters to the Kinchela boys. They are brothers to us. And there is a
closeness. That is our family.”
Doreen Webster
2928
Developing a trauma informed public policy environment
Appropriate support for Stolen Generations members and their descendants
cannot be provided without a good understanding of the historical and living
trauma that they are experiencing.
Inadequate education about this history is impairing the ability of governments,
service providers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to
effectively meet their needs. While trauma limits the ability of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people to engage confidently with mainstream health and
welfare services.
Existing training does not support police, welfare services, health and mental
health providers and institutions such as aged care facilities to respond effectively
to the increasing distress Stolen Generations and their descendants might
experience by coming into contact with these services, often agents of harm from
their past.
In addition, trauma informed training that is currently available does not cover the
trauma experienced by our Stolen Generations members and their families, and
often does not come from a cultural perspective.
The development of a suite of trauma training packages that are designed with
Stolen Generations survivors would ensure governments, professionals and
services are learning the skills and the means to respond effectively to Stolen
Generations survivors without causing more harm.
Trauma-informed organisations use a strengths-based approach based on an
understanding of the impact of trauma; emphasise the physical, psychological,
and emotional safety of clients and staff; and help people affected by trauma to
rebuild a sense of control and empowerment.21
People need to go
through healing
themselves before
they can help others
30
2. Supporting healing approaches
Since the Bringing Them Home report was tabled two decades ago, considerable
knowledge about healing approaches for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people has been developed. Evidence shows that such approaches can lead to
improved resilience, mental health, and reduced risk of disease. The creation of
healing centres in Canada, in response to the intergenerational impacts of child
removal practices there, has led to significant reductions in socially damaging
problems including suicide.22
The Canadian Healing Foundation was provided over $800 million to lead their
healing responses and this allowed significant effort across the country to achieve
these outcomes. They also did this work within the context of a treaty that
politically supported funding and progressive policy initiatives that enabled self-
determination for Aboriginal communities.
Healing approaches are diverse, responding to the particular needs of the
communities in which they are embedded. However they generally aim to build
individual, family and community capacity through western methodologies and
traditional healing. Continuing and expanding support for healing approaches,
and sharing the theory and evidence for their effectiveness, is important to
address the traumatic legacy of the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children from their families.
Healing centres are an important new approach for Stolen Generations members
and their descendants. For many of our Stolen Generations who have nowhere to
call home they are creating a place of healing and renewal and helping to support
members to have a culturally safe place to seek sanctuary and support.
An example of this is the healing centre at Kinchela. Kinchela Boys Home
Aboriginal Corporation was established by the survivors of Kinchela Aboriginal
Boys Training Home, a ‘home’ run by the NSW Government for over 50 years.
Led by survivors and their families, the Corporation encourages and supports
sustainable healing programs that address the legacy of physical, sexual,
psychological and cultural abuse experienced by the survivors as well as the
intergenerational trauma experienced by their descendants.
Currently the Corporation is developing concepts and plans for a museum on the
site of the home and a healing centre at South West Rocks, a place where the
boys felt safe during their time at Kinchela.
The concept for the healing centre includes governance structures and
government training, program design, management and evaluation for programs
to be run at the centre. This would also include the archiving of cultural
knowledge and materials to preserve historical records, including oral histories.
No records often means
no reunion
32
Kinchela Boys Home inflicted significant pain on survivors, their families and
communities, and they need a safe place where they can gather and support
each other as a fundamental part of the healing process. The healing centre will
provide a retreat for the community, a safe place to participate in reunions and
workshops, and offer ways to reconnect families and reclaim cultural heritage.
3. Ensuring Stolen Generations have a voice in service
delivery
Over time, the focus of the Australian Government’s Bringing Them Home
counselling funding provided in response to the report has shifted away from
the specific needs of the Stolen Generations towards the social and emotional
wellbeing needs of the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The recent transfer of funding to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has
contributed to this process. States and territories also need to investigate their
responses and ensure they are in line with supporting Stolen Generations to have
self-determination within healing processes that are funded and supported.
As well as a dedicated funding stream for Stolen Generations organisations,
formal governance mechanisms are required for organisations with Stolen
Generations clients to ensure that Stolen Generations members have input into
the design and delivery of their services. This will assist organisations to meet the
specific service needs of Stolen Generations and their families.
For example, organisations that provide services for Stolen Generations, that are
not specific Stolen Generations led organisations, can establish mechanisms such
as reference groups to ensure that Stolen Generations members service needs are
adequately met.
4. Reporting on the needs of the Stolen Generations
Currently, many government reporting processes do not specifically include
sections on the Stolen Generations. The specific needs of the Stolen Generations
should be included in key government reports and strategies to maintain a
national focus on their needs and how these are being met over time.
Australians are being denied
a part of their history
34
5. Access to records
The Bringing Them Home report looked specifically at access to individual
and family records of the Stolen Generations as a vital part of assisting in the
process of locating and reunifying families. Despite the Australian Government’s
response to Bringing Them Home prioritising family reunion, problems accessing
records have persisted. A review of access to records at all levels of government,
including states and territories, and non-government agencies is needed and the
implementation of the report’s recommendations is required.
6. Education
The Bringing Them Home report identified education as an important part of
the reparation process; with awareness of the history of child removal key to
preventing the repetition of such human rights violations. Despite some progress,
for example the inclusion of information about the Stolen Generations in the
national curriculum, 83 per cent of Australians believe it is important to know
more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.23 Education
about the history of the Stolen Generations therefore remains important, starting
with early learning centres and schools, continuing up to professional training
of those who may work with, or make decisions affecting, Stolen Generations
members and their families. The Healing Foundation has been working with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander curriculum writers to develop classroom
resources for K-9. This has been supported by a number of peak bodies who have
recommended that all state education departments support further development
of these learning tools. State and territory education departments can show
leadership by ensuring that these resources are used by teachers throughout their
education systems.
Ian Hamm is a Yorta Yorta man from Shepparton in central Victoria. In
1964, he was separated from his family when he was three weeks old. He
grew up just 50 kilometres away from them, unaware of their existence.
That changed when he went to college and met an Aboriginal education
officer who asked him if he knew where he came from. Ian replied his birth
name was Andrew James. The person said: “Yeah. I think I know who you
are. I’ll get back to you.”
Six months later a worker from the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency
visited Ian in Bendigo. She told him his birth family, the James family, was
a big Aboriginal family in Shepparton. Ian then realised he’d already met
some of his birth family, but was unaware of their relationship.
“It blows you away. She told me I was one of five, ‘you have two sisters
and two brothers’. And I asked about my mother. She said my mother died
in 1966, when I was two,” he said.
“I’ve only got a few photos of my mum. It’s enormously frustrating when
people say to me I’m like my mother. I don’t know what that means. It puts
into perspective where you fit in. Or don’t fit in as the case may be,” he
said. “The hard part of this is I didn’t meet any of them until I was in my
twenties. You’ve only known each other as adults,” Ian said.
“It will be the same for anybody who’s been through this experience, the
thing that’s the most confronting, the one that you live with every day.
That you’ve had to start a relationship as an adult. How do you create
those relationships? How do you make them work?”
He described the uncertainty of identity he felt as the only Aboriginal man
growing up in Yarrawonga.
“People would tell me I’m Aboriginal, but what does that mean? My
only source of information was what people told me and what I saw on
television. This is the ‘60s and the ‘70s, and that wasn’t great.”
Over the years, moving forward has had its own challenges, especially in
finding a way of getting on with things. “When I say heal, for me, I don’t
think you get over it, you just get used to it. It’s how I get by.”
Ian says he’s largely made peace with his past, but it’s more like a cessation
of hostilities than a lasting peace.
“There are days when sometimes it just gets to me. I get this overwhelming
sense of sadness. And I know exactly what it is. It’s that ‘where do I fit in’.”
Ian Hamm
3736 37
7. Financial redress
The Bringing Them Home report made monetary compensation a central
component of redress for Stolen Generations members and their families. It is
not the intent of this report to say who is responsible for providing monetary
compensation, but it must be addressed by all levels of government across
the country.
A universal, safe and culturally appropriate scheme for financial redress is
justified as acknowledgement of past wrongs; as redress for health and social
disadvantage resulting from removal; as financial assistance given the lifelong
socioeconomic effects of forcible removal; and as acknowledgement that native
title and land rights schemes have not significantly advantaged the Stolen
Generations due to their removal from family and country.
Despite the Bringing Them Home recommendations—and a later Senate
Inquiry recommending the establishment of a reparations tribunal to address
the provision of monetary compensation24—the Australian Government has
consistently refused to establish a national scheme, arguing that responsibility
for compensation lies with the institutions involved and/or state and territory
governments. The lack of a national process for compensation means that the
adversarial court system remains the only avenue for most Stolen Generations
members to seek financial compensation for the wrongs done to them.
The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
has recommended the establishment of a redress scheme for all those who have
been sexually abused while in institutional care.25 The Australian Government
has in this case recognised the importance of a nationally consistent process
for redress including monetary compensation, and has agreed to lead the
development of such an approach.26 This provides an important opportunity
to advocate for the Australian Government to adopt a similar responsibility in
relation to redress for the Stolen Generations. As acknowledged in the Bringing
Them Home report itself, reparation processes need to minimise the risk of
re-traumatising people who are applying for financial redress.
There is also a lot of distress from some Stolen Generations members that if
they die before any compensation becomes available their families may miss
out. To date, no nationally implemented redress scheme has addressed this issue
and most have explicitly stated they will not provide compensation to deceased
descendants. While this is probably considered complex, a policy should be
developed to address this and could be part of the national needs assessment.
Failure to address it is causing ongoing trauma in these families, as they feel their
family member is forgotten and their pain overlooked.
If they don’t put compensation
in place across the country,
they’re just going to continue
to lose credibility
38
Action two: healing intergenerational trauma
1. A national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
trauma strategy
Given the widespread, serious effects of unresolved intergenerational trauma,
a national strategy on addressing intergenerational trauma is needed. Such a
strategy should link to existing national strategies, in particular the National
Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children and the National Plan to Reduce
Violence Against Women and their Children.
A national strategy to address trauma and appropriately resource healing would
acknowledge and respect the cultural knowledge and expertise of Stolen
Generations members and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and
endorse the principles underpinning the Bringing Them Home report.
Such a strategy would:
• address the challenges of building Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
workforce capability within and across diverse organisations, communities and
locations
• support the funding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to
deliver healing responses to Stolen Generations and their families
• provide a platform for integrating responses to the historical and continuing
impact of trauma for both Stolen Generations and their descendants
• set out principles and processes for collaboration at both policy and service
levels
• acknowledge the broader social, economic and political processes required
to address collective trauma and make links with initiatives to address socio-
economic disadvantage and promote reconciliation
• provide a culturally appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework to
support the effective implementation of healing responses, promote continuous
improvement and improve outcomes for Stolen Generations and their families
• identify key government and non-government stakeholders to support the
development and implementation of the national strategy.
Michael Welsh is a Wailwan man from Coonamble in New South Wales.
He was eight when he and his brother Barry were taken from his mother
and five of his siblings.
Michael was told that his other brothers and sisters would follow on the
next train. He knew it was a lie.
He was taken to the notorious Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home.
An institution near Kempsey on the New South Wales mid north coast,
Kinchela was renowned for its physical, sexual, psychological and cultural
abuse of aboriginal children.
The children weren’t allowed to use names. Instead they were given
numbers. Michael was number 36.
Michael said the aim of Kinchela “was to degrade us and set us up for
reprogramming our brains”.
For decades afterwards, Michael struggled with the trauma he experienced
at Kinchela. He finally reached a stage where he couldn’t hold the pain
back any longer.
He made contact with the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation
(KBHAC), an organisation established by Kinchela survivors to support
them and their descendants.
“When we get together as a group of brothers who’ve gone through
that place, it feels good. The fear that was there is not there anymore,”
Michael said.
Michael is passionate about ending the cycle of intergenerational trauma
in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
“I’m not the only one who feels this pain, I’ve got eight children and they
all feel the same,” he said.
“We do not want this hate to go to our children or to our grandchildren
and great grandchildren.”
“Our children need to be connected to this healing process too. Our
journey’s almost over, our children’s journeys are only just beginning.”
Michael Welsh
4140
2. Addressing contemporary child removal
The original Inquiry was asked to look at the legacy of removal through examining
the contemporary removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from
their families. Today’s removal of children and the processes related to removal
are different to the experience of the Stolen Generations who had no legislation,
rights or ability to make complaint about what occurred to them. The effects in
perpetuating intergenerational trauma and undermining the identity of children
are similar.
This is particularly true for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are
removed from their families and placed in environments that do not support
their identity. Despite the fact that all Australian jurisdictions have now adopted
the Indigenous Child Placement Principles in legislation (as recommended by the
Bringing Them Home report), only two-thirds (66 per cent) of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families are placed in Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander environments. In some jurisdictions it is much less.27
Addressing the rising numbers of children being removed from their families, and
the limited application of the Indigenous Child Placement Principles is complex,
but a vital part of bringing the cycle of intergenerational trauma to an end. This
may include the setting of targets for the reduction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children being removed from their families to be included in the ‘Close
the Gap’ measures.
However, it should be noted that many states and territories are making gains in
this area. For example, Queensland is implementing Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander led family and child wellbeing centres across the state to ensure holistic
supports for families within a culturally safe, trauma informed model. These
models are being designed, developed and implemented by Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander organisations across the state.
Victoria has started implementing the transfer of guardianship of Aboriginal children
in care to Aboriginal agencies. This means for the first time Aboriginal people will
be in charge of making the decisions over the future of their own children without
ongoing state intervention. Meanwhile, New South Wales has begun the transfer
of all children in out of home care from non-Indigenous NGO’s to Aboriginal-run
agencies across the state. This has a training and development plan attached to
support the development of Aboriginal agencies and their success.
These are promising examples of change occurring but they need sustained
implementation over time. Long-term vision and commitment to these initiatives,
along with bi-partisan support, is needed to create the scale and impact that is
required to reduce the growing numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
children in care.
3. Adequate mental health, social and emotional
wellbeing funding
The Report of the National Review of Mental Health Programs and Services found
numerous barriers to social and emotional wellbeing and mental health services
for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including a lack of a clear funding
processes for preferred community controlled, culturally capable models of care.28
Secure and dedicated funding for such mental health and social and emotional
wellbeing services for the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community is
therefore critical, in recognition of the widespread social and emotional wellbeing
and mental health issues prevalent in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities and the inappropriate nature of many mainstream service responses.
4. Describing the intergenerational experience of trauma
There is a lack of research about how the specific experiences of Stolen
Generations members relate to general descriptions of trauma as experienced
by survivors of other human rights abuses such as forced adoption, torture, or
genocide. Research is needed to establish the specific effects of intergenerational
trauma amongst the Stolen Generations. Such research needs to involve, at all
stages, Stolen Generations members and their families.
434342
Action three: create an environment for change
The Bringing Them Home report called for a coherent policy response to the needs
of the Stolen Generations and the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
community. The recent Senate Inquiry into the Indigenous Advancement Strategy
found, current policy and funding processes are marked by a lack of consultation,
rushed processes with poor transparency, significant administrative challenges for
community organisations, uncertainty for providers, and gaps in service delivery.29
Such findings are strongly supported by almost universal experience of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander organisations working to ‘close the gap’.30
1. A return to underlying principles
The Bringing Them Home report recognised that:
The history we have documented has had a profound impact on every
aspect of the lives of Indigenous communities. … An adequate response
to this history and its effects will challenge the sensitivity, the goodwill and
the creativity of all governments. It requires a whole-of-government policy
response with immediate targets, long-term objectives and a continuing
commitment.31
This is a challenge that Australian governments have not yet met, despite some
successes such as the delivery of apologies from all governments.
Any meaningful government response to the rights and needs of the Stolen
Generations must return to and be explicitly based on the principles that
underpinned the Bringing Them Home report: self-determination, non-
discrimination, cultural renewal, a coherent policy base and adequate resources.
The principles outlined in the original report were from international human
rights agreements to which Australia is a signatory. This includes the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Since 1997, additional weight has been
given to these principles by Australia’s ratification of the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which contains several
articles of specific relevance to the Stolen Generations including Article 8 (the
right of Indigenous Peoples not to be subjected to forced assimilation, and to have
access to redress where such actions occur) and Article 19 (the right of Indigenous
Peoples to be consulted and to consent before the adoption of legislation or
policies affecting them).32
Richard Campbell is a Dunghutti/Gumbayngirr man from Bowraville on the
New South Wales mid north coast.
At Richard’s Catholic School the nuns thwarted several attempts by the
Aboriginal Protection Board to remove the Aboriginal kids. Then on
October 12, 1966 the school was caught unaware.
“All of a sudden they grabbed our younger sisters. Threw them in the back
of the car, you could hear them screaming,” Richard remembered.
He and his older brother were also forced into the waiting police car. The
five children were taken to court, where they were charged with neglect.
“We weren’t neglected! We had a life. We had culture, we had language.
We had a way of living.”
Richard and his brother were taken to the notoriously cruel Kinchela
Aboriginal Boys Training Home where their identities were systematically
stripped from them. Richard said they were given numbers, not names,
and were severely punished if they used their Aboriginal language.
“We were told not to speak it. And not to look for your parents because
they’re dead. And they sayin’ you’re not Richard Campbell, you’re now
number 28. And you are not black, you are white.”
Richard suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse in Kinchela.
He says trauma followed all the boys out of the institution.
“So the next step for us was incarceration in a bigger jail .. straight into
Long Bay, Goulburn, Grafton Gaol .. you could see them travel through
their lives, through drugs, alcohol, stealing, things like that.”
Richard is now Secretary of the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal
Corporation, and has only recently begun to tell his story. He is deeply
distressed about the continued removal of Aboriginal kids into out of home
care, including four of his own grandchildren.
Richard wants governments to stop taking Aboriginal children away from
their families, and offer more support to Indigenous parents. He says
intergenerational trauma must be better understood.
“Time is not on our side. We have lost four men this year alone and this …
means they cannot be part of their families’ healing … who are left living
with the pain of questions unanswered.”
Richard Campbell
4544 45
2. Truth, healing and reconciliation
The Bringing Them Home report was founded on the knowledge that true
reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous
Australians depended on a truthful examination of a painful and unjust past.
In this way, although it did not use the term itself, the Inquiry operated as a ‘truth
commission’, one of many set up around the world from the 1980s onwards
to investigate and come to terms with nations’ past human rights violations.
While government responses to such truth commissions have frequently been
disappointing, they nevertheless have had positive effects, for example through
the mobilisation of political demands around their recommendations; through a
continued struggle for accountability and reparations; and through becoming a
focal point for national conversations about history, power and justice.33
Consistent with this international experience, and despite the poor government
record of implementation, Bringing Them Home has been a major and
lasting achievement. Almost 20 years on, implementation of the report’s
recommendations remains a crucial step on the path to genuine reconciliation
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. In recommending a new
and more comprehensive Australian Government response to the Bringing Them
Home report, Reconciliation Australia found that:
Australia’s lack of historical acceptance is a potential barrier to reconciliation.
Until we accept our past, make amends for injustices and pledge to ensure
that these wrongs are never repeated, Australia will not achieve true
reconciliation … There is a continued perception by Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people that past wrongs have not been righted. This is a major
barrier to reconciliation. The data supports this perception and shows that
efforts to repair past wrongs have been slow, piecemeal, largely ignored, or
are getting worse.34
The 20th anniversary of the release of the Bringing Them Home report in 2017
represents an important opportunity to revisit the continuing rights and needs
of the Stolen Generations, and to recommit to the implementation of the
recommendations made in 1997 as a basis for true reconciliation in Australia.
3. Monitoring and accountability
The Australian Government rejected the model for monitoring the implementation
of its recommendations made by the Bringing Them Home report. No sustained
system was ever put in place. This has undoubtedly contributed to the poor
record of implementation of the report’s recommendations. This goes beyond
the Bringing Them Home report with the non-implementation of key Inquiry
recommendations a dominant theme over many years:
In the past 25 years—a generation in fact—we have had the Royal
Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Bringing Them Home
report and Reconciliation: Australia’s Challenge: the final report of the
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. These reports, and numerous other
Coroner and Social Justice Reports, have made over 400 recommendations,
most of which have either been partially implemented for short term periods
or ignored altogether.35
This would suggest a national dialogue is needed on creating sustainable
structures to monitor the implementation of recommendations from systemic
inquiries into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage, including the
recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report.
474746
Lorraine Peeters is a Gamilaroi and Wailwun woman from Wailwan country
in central west New South Wales.
At the age of four she was forcibly taken from her family in Brewarrina.
Along with hundreds of other girls she was placed in the Cootamundra
Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.
“We were brainwashed to act, speak, dress and think white and we were
punished if we didn’t,” said Aunty Lorraine. “We were not allowed to talk
in our language or about culture or about our families. It wasn’t until I was
in my fifties that I suffered a mental health issue, trauma. There was an
Aboriginal person inside, screaming to get out.”
As a result of undertaking her own healing journey, Lorraine developed the
Marumali Program™, which is based on the Marumali Journey of Healing
Model. It’s a unique program to increase the quality of support available to
Stolen Generations members.
“When you’ve been through as much as we have, the trauma can easily
be reactivated by those who don’t understand it. To prevent this, trauma-
informed training should be mandatory for everyone working with
our mob, especially Stolen Generations members and their families, as
recommended by the Bringing them Home report.”
Lorraine works with survivors, service providers and health practitioners and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates within correctional centres—
delivering the program to more than 3000 participants.
Lorraine says Western style counselling is not appropriate for the Stolen
Generations. “Collective healing is so important for institutionalised
people, you don’t have to tell or explain your story to anybody, we just
know the trauma that everyone has experienced.”
Lorraine played a key role in the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations,
presenting the Prime Minister with a glass coolamon, a vessel traditionally
used to carry babies, as a symbol of hope.
Lorraine says on the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report
Australia needs to understand it’s not just the Stolen Generations that have
been affected by trauma.
“Behaviour is learnt. If my children are watching me have anxiety, fear,
drinking issues to numb the pain, that behaviour is learnt by little people.
That will continue. We have to revisit the recommendations that haven’t
been implemented,” she said.
Lorraine Peeters
48
Theme Key elements Reccs.
Acknowledgment
and Apology
All parliaments, police forces and
churches acknowledge, apologise and
make reparation for past wrongs
5 a – b and 6
Reparation Reparation should be made to
people who were forcibly removed,
family members, communities and
descendants
Monetary compensation be provided
through a national compensation fund
3, 4, 14, 15,
16 a and b,
17, 18, 19,
20 and 41
Records, Family
Tracing and
Reunion
Funding Indigenous agencies to
record, preserve and provide access to
Indigenous testimonies
Funding Indigenous community-based
family and reunion services (Link-Ups)
to provide tracing and reunion services
Record taskforces be established to
assist with accessing records under
minimum access standards
1, 11, 13,
21, 22 a – b,
23, 24, 25,
27, 28,
29 a – b,
30 a – b, 31,
38 a – b – c
and 39
Rehabilitation All services and programs provided
for survivors of forcible removal to
emphasise local healing and wellbeing
perspectives
Funding for preventative and primary
mental health be directed to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander community-
based services
Funding for parenting and family
wellbeing programs to relevant
Indigenous organisations
32,
33 a – b – c,
36 and 40
Appendix 1: key themes and
recommendations from the
Bringing Them Home report
Theme Key elements Reccs.
Education and
Training
Arrange for a National Sorry Day each
year
Ensure primary and secondary school
curricula include compulsory modules
on the history and effects of forcible
removal
Professionals working with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander children,
families and communities receiving
training about the history and effects of
forcible removal
Undergraduates and trainees in relevant
professions receiving training about the
history and effects of forcible removal
Expand the funding of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander language, culture
and history centres
7, 8 a – b,
9 a – b, 12,
28, 34
and 35
Guarantees
Against
Repetition
Adequate funding to Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander health and mental
services to establish preventative
mental health programs in prisons and
detention centres
National framework legislation for the
implementation of self-determination in
relation to the well-being of Indigenous
children and young people
37, 42, 43,
44, 45, 46,
47, 48, 49,
50, 53
and 54
Contemporary
Separation
National-standards legislation provide
that the placement of an Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander child must
conform with the Indigenous Child
Placement Principle
51 and 52
Consultation,
Monitoring and
Coordination
COAG develop a process for
the implementation of the
recommendations
A National Inquiry audit unit
in HREOC be established to
monitor implementation of the
recommendations with an annual
report to COAG
All Governments to provide information
to the National Inquiry audit unit
annually
2 a – d
515150
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organsations (2016). The Redfern Statement.
Sydney.
Aboriginal Healing Foundation (Canada) (2006). Final report of the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation. Ottowa, Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Anda R F and Felitti V J. (2012). “Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Relationship
to Adult Well-being and Disease: Turning gold into lead.” The National Council Webinar,
August 27, 2012 Retrieved 22 March 2016, 2016, from http://www.thenationalcouncil.
org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Natl-Council-Webinar-8-2012 .
Atkinson J (2013). Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care for Indigenous
Australian children. Canberra / Melbourne, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare &
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The Health and
Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010.”
Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/
lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2013). “3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Australians, June 2011.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://
www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3238.0.55.001.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2016). Child protection Australia 2014-
15. Canberra, AIHW.
Bakiner O (2016). Truth Commissions: memory, power and legitimacy. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cunningham J, Cass A and Arnold P C (2005). “Bridging the treatment gap for Indigenous
Australians. Demands for efficiency should not be met at the expense of equity.” Med J
Aust 182(10): 505-506.
Dockery A M (2012). Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of
Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey Analysis for Indigenous
Policy in Australia: Social Science Perspectives. Boyd Hunter and Nicholas Biddle, Australian
National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Research Monograph
No. 32.
Dudgeon P, Milroy H and Walker R, Eds. (2014). Working Together: Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing Principles and Practice (2nd Edition). Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
Ferdinand A, Paradies Y and M. Kelaher (2012). Mental Health Impacts of Racial
Discrimination in Victorian Aboriginal Communities: The Localities Embracing and
Accepting Diversity (LEAD) Experiences of Racism Survey. Melbourne, The Lowitja Institute.
Finance and Public Administration References Committee of the Australian Senate (2016).
Commonwealth Indigenous Advancement Strategy tendering processes. Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
Bibliography
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997b). Bringing Them
Home: Community Guide, HREOC.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (2007). Us Taken-Away Kids:
Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report. Canberra.
Ministerial Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (2003). Evaluation of
Responses to Bringing Them Home Report: Final Report, Success Works.
National Mental Health Commission (2014). The National Review of Mental Health
Programmes and Services, Volume 1. Sydney, NMHC.
Porter C and Brandis G. (2016). “Developing a national approach to redress for survivors
of institutional child sexual abuse (Media Release 29 January 2016).” Retrieved 24 August
2016, from http://christianporter.dss.gov.au/media-releases/developing-a-national-
approach-to-redress-for-survivors-of-institutional-child-sexual-abuse.
Reconciliation Australia (2016). The State of Reconcilation in Australia, Reconciliation
Australia.
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2015). Consultation
paper: Redress and civil litigation. Sydney, Commonwealth of Australia.
Rule J and Rice E (2015). Bringing Them Home Scorecard Report 2015. Canberra, National
Sorry Day Committee.
Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) (2013). Overview of
the Implementation of the Bringing Them Home Report Recommendations. Melbourne,
SNAICC.
Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee (2000). Healing: A Legacy of
Generations – The report of the inquiry into the federal government’s implementation
of recommendations made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
in ‘Bringing them home’. Department of the Senate, Parliament House, Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
United Nations. (2007). “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
from http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html.
Wilczynski A, Reed-Gilbert K, Milward K, Tayler B, Fear J and Schwartzkoff J (2007).
Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous Mental Health Programs. Canberra,
Report prepared by Urbis Keys Young for the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Health, Department of Health and Ageing.
535352
1 The Review was carried out by Edward Tilton and Pat Anderson AO with the guidance
of senior staff at the Healing Foundation and the leadership of the Foundation’s Stolen
Generations Reference Group. Conducted between June and October 2016, it was
informed by consultations with Stolen Generations organisations, beginning with the
Stolen Generations Reference Group. While time and resource constraints meant that
it was not possible to carry out consultations at the community level, the consultation
process included a sample of Stolen Generations organisations across Australia.
2 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney. page 31
3 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997b). Bringing Them
Home: Community Guide, HREOC.page 10
4 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney.page 276-280
5 Ministerial Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (2003). Evaluation of
Responses to Bringing Them Home Report: Final Report, Success Works.
6 See for example Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee (2000). Healing:
A Legacy of Generations – The report of the inquiry into the federal government’s
implementation of recommendations made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission in ‘Bringing Them Home’. Department of the Senate, Parliament House,
Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia.page 281 Wilczynski A, Reed-Gilbert K, Milward K,
Tayler B, Fear J and Schwartzkoff J (2007). Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous
Mental Health Programs. Canberra, Report prepared by Urbis Keys Young for the Office for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, Department of Health and Ageing. page 27
7 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (2007). Us Taken-Away Kids:
Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report. Canberra.page
7
8 Wilczynski A, Reed-Gilbert K, Milward K, Tayler B, Fear J and Schwartzkoff J (2007).
Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous Mental Health Programs. Canberra,
Report prepared by Urbis Keys Young for the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Health, Department of Health and Ageing.
9 Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) (2013). Overview of
the Implementation of the Bringing Them Home report recommendations. Melbourne,
SNAICC, Rule J and Rice E (2015). Bringing Them Home Scorecard Report 2015. Canberra,
National Sorry Day Committee.
10 Figures from the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey
(NATSISS) in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The Health
and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010.”
Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/
lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010.
11 According to the 2011 Census figures, there were an estimated 122,435 Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people 45 years or older at that time. See Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS). (2013). “3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Australians, June 2011.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3238.0.55.001.
Notes
12 Dockery A M (2012). Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of
Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey Analysis for Indigenous
Policy in Australia: Social Science Perspectives. Boyd Hunter and Nicholas Biddle, Australian
National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Research Monograph
No. 32.
13 2008 NATSISS figures in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The
Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct
2010.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.
nsf/lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010. In 2011, there were an estimated 429,000
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 or over. See Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS). (2013). “3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Australians, June 2011.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/
abs@.nsf/mf/3238.0.55.001.
14 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The Health and
Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010.”
Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/
lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010.
15 Anda R F and Felitti V J. (2012). “Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Relationship
to Adult Well-being and Disease: Turning gold into lead.” The National Council Webinar,
August 27, 2012 Retrieved 22 March 2016, 2016, from http://www.thenationalcouncil.
org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Natl-Council-Webinar-8-2012 .
16 Atkinson J (2013). Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care for Indigenous
Australian children. Canberra / Melbourne, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare &
Australian Institute of Family Studies. page 5
17 Dockery A M (2012). Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of
Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey Analysis for Indigenous
Policy in Australia: Social Science Perspectives. Boyd Hunter and Nicholas Biddle, Australian
National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Research Monograph
No. 32.
18 Ferdinand A, Paradies Y and M. Kelaher (2012). Mental Health Impacts of Racial
Discrimination in Victorian Aboriginal Communities: The Localities Embracing and
Accepting Diversity (LEAD) Experiences of Racism Survey. Melbourne, The Lowitja Institute.
19 Cunningham J, Cass A and Arnold P C (2005). “Bridging the treatment gap for Indigenous
Australians. Demands for efficiency should not be met at the expense of equity.” Med J
Aust 182(10): 505-506.
20 The needs assessment could also provide an updated estimate of the numbers of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were either forcibly removed, or directly
affected by the forcible removal of a family member, using the 2014 National Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) and figures from the 2016 Census which
are not publically available at the time of writing).
21 Atkinson J (2013). Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care for Indigenous
Australian children. Canberra / Melbourne, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare &
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
555554
22 Aboriginal Healing Foundation (Canada) (2006). Final report of the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation. Ottowa, Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
23 Reconciliation Australia (2016). The State of Reconcilation in Australia, Reconciliation
Australia.
24 Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee (2000). Healing: A Legacy of
Generations – The report of the inquiry into the federal government’s implementation
of recommendations made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
in ‘Bringing Them Home’. Department of the Senate, Parliament House, Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
25 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2015). Consultation
paper: Redress and civil litigation. Sydney, Commonwealth of Australia.
26 Porter C and Brandis G. (2016). “Developing a national approach to redress for survivors
of institutional child sexual abuse (Media Release 29 January 2016).” Retrieved 24 August
2016, from http://christianporter.dss.gov.au/media-releases/developing-a-national-
approach-to-redress-for-survivors-of-institutional-child-sexual-abuse.
27 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2016). Child protection Australia 2014-
15. Canberra, AIHW.
28 National Mental Health Commission (2014). The National Review of Mental Health
Programmes and Services, Volume 1. Sydney, NMHC.
29 Finance and Public Administration References Committee of the Australian Senate (2016).
Commonwealth Indigenous Advancement Strategy tendering processes. Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organsations (2016). The Redfern Statement.
Sydney.
31 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney. page 279
32 United Nations. (2007). “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
from http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html.
33 Bakiner O (2016). Truth Commissions: memory, power and legitimacy. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press.
34 Reconciliation Australia (2016). The State of Reconcilation in Australia, Reconciliation
Australia.
35 Ibid. page 5
56
Bringing Them Home
2
0 years on:
an action plan for healing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Healing Foundation
Bringing Them Home
20 years on:
an action plan for healing
Executive summary 4
Background 6
The Stolen Generations 7
The Bringing Them Home report
1
0
Responding to Bringing Them Home 14
Why action is needed now 19
An action plan for making things right 26
Action one: comprehensive response for
Stolen Generations members 27
Action two: healing intergenerational trauma 40
Action three: creating an environment for change 45
Appendix 1: key themes and recommendations
from the Bringing Them Home report 50
Bibliography 52
Notes 54
Contents
We acknowledge Stolen Generations members across Australia, including
those who have passed on, for their courage in sharing their stories and
wisdom in the Bringing Them Home report.
This report, written by Pat Anderson and Edward Tilton, was guided by
the Healing Foundation’s Stolen Generations Reference Committee. The
Committee’s efforts were central to ensuring that this report reflects
the experience of Stolen Generations and for forming the critical
recommendations to bring about change in Australia.
We acknowledge and thank all other contributors who were consulted
for this report.
1
…the past is very much with
us today, in the continuing
devastation of the lives of
Indigenous Australians.
That devastation cannot be
addressed unless the whole
community listens with an
open heart and mind to the
stories of what has happened
in the past and, having listened
and understood, commits itself
to reconciliation.
Extract from the 1997 Bringing Them Home report
2
On 26 May 1997 the landmark Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal
Parliament. The report was the result of a national inquiry that investigated the
forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. This marked a pivotal
moment in the healing journey of many Stolen Generations members. It was
the first time their stories—stories of being taken from their families—were
acknowledged in such a way.
It was also the first time it was formally reported that what governments did to
these children was inhumane and the impact has been lifelong.
Most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been affected by the
Stolen Generations. The resulting trauma has been passed down to children
and grandchildren, contributing to many of the issues faced in Indigenous
communities, including family violence, substance abuse and self harm.
Two decades on and the majority of the Bringing Them Home recommendations
have not yet been implemented. For many Stolen Generations members, this has
created additional trauma and distress.
Failure to act has caused a ripple effect to current generations. We are now seeing
an increase in Aboriginal people in jails, suicide is on the rise and more children
are being removed.
Addressing the underlying trauma of these issues through healing is the only way
to create meaningful and lasting change.
Commemorative events, like the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home
report, are an important part of the healing process, for Stolen Generations
members, their families and the broader community. In order to change, you have
to remember.
The anniversary presents an opportunity to reset—to secure sustainable support to
help reduce the impact of trauma. This report makes three key recommendations:
1 A comprehensive assessment of the contemporary and emerging needs of
Stolen Generations members, including needs-based funding and a financial
redress scheme.
2 A national study into intergenerational trauma to ensure that there is real
change for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the future.
3 An appropriate policy response that is based on the principles underlying the
1997 Bringing Them Home report.
Executive summary
While this report might primarily detail the response from government to the
Bringing Them Home report, it is not a report to government about government.
This is a report for everyone, and outlines as a whole how we can actively
support healing for Stolen Generations and their descendants. There needs to be
commitment to making change. We all have a responsibility to do this together.
The price of not acting on the recommendations means an increased burden
for Australia as a whole. It’s time for action. We need to address the unfinished
business—for the sake of our Elders, our young ones, for our entire communities
and all Australians.
554
In 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Bringing Them
Home (BTH) report was made public. The report was a significant milestone for
the Stolen Generations members, their families, and the broader Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander community. It was also important for Australia as a whole.
In the testimonies it recorded and the recommendations it made, the Bringing
Them Home report provided a basis for addressing the rights and needs of Stolen
Generations members and for progressing reconciliation based on a genuine
acknowledgement of Australia’s past.
Despite progress in some areas, there has never been a collaborative and
systematic attempt to address the recommendations the report made. Most have
never been implemented.
To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the release of the Bringing Them Home
report in 2017, the Healing Foundation commissioned this review to revisit
the principles and its recommendations of the report, and to examine their
advancement in the contemporary policy landscape.1
This review outlines a plan of action to meet the continuing and emerging
needs and rights of Stolen Generations members and their families, based
on the priorities of the Stolen Generations, the evidence of the effects of the
failure to implement the Bringing Them Home recommendations, the report’s
recommendations and underlying principles, namely:
• self-determination
• non-discrimination
• cultural renewal
• coherent policy base
• provision of adequate resources.
This review is intended to mark the start of a conversation led by Stolen
Generations members to inform the continuing process of acknowledging and
making reparation for the wrongs of the past.
The forcible removal of children
The effects of colonisation on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
of Australia have been catastrophic. The histories of colonisation are highly
diverse, unfolding at different times and in locally and regionally specific ways.
Nevertheless, the common experience for Indigenous people was one of
devastation caused by introduced disease, frontier violence, dispossession from
land and its resources, and the disruption and suppression of traditional cultures.
Added to these factors was the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children from their families. These children have become known as the
Stolen Generations. The practice of removal became a systematic part of the
policy of assimilation adopted by all Australian governments in the 20th century,
and while the number of children forcibly removed under this policy is not known,
the estimate provided by the work of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families was that:
… between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were
forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from
approximately 1910 until 1970. In certain regions and in certain periods
the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in 10. In that time not
one Indigenous family has escaped the effects of forcible removal… Most
families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible
removal of one or more children.2
Children were moved to institutions run by churches and non-government
organisations, adopted by non-Indigenous families, or placed with non-Aboriginal
households to work as domestic servants and farm hands. Many children suffered
very harsh, degrading treatment (including sexual abuse), limited or no contact
with families, and were frequently indoctrinated to believe in the inferiority of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culture.
Background The Stolen Generations
776
The laws of those times
are still impacting on
our people today …
it is time to finish
this business
The campaign for recognition
Laws supporting the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
on the basis of race were repealed across Australia by the 1970s. As self-
determination replaced assimilation as the dominant policy approach, the Stolen
Generations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations began to force
a re-appraisal of the practice of forcible removal. In 1995 this led to the Australian
Government asking the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to
carry out a national inquiry to:
• examine the past laws, practices and policies of forcible separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and their effects
• identify what should be done in response, including any changes in current
laws, practices and policies with a focus on locating and reunifying families
• examine the justification for any compensation for those affected by the
forcible separations
• look at then current laws, policies and practices affecting the placement and
care of Indigenous children.
8
The Inquiry held extensive consultations across Australia, taking evidence
from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, government and church
representatives, foster and adoptive parents, health professionals, academics,
and police, as well as receiving hundreds of written submissions. The final report
of the Inquiry was tabled in the Australian Parliament on 26 May 1997.
The report extensively documented the experience of the Stolen Generations,
finding that a deliberate policy of assimilation underlay the removal process
and that:
the forcible removal of Indigenous children was a gross violation of their
human rights. It … was an act of genocide contrary to the Convention on
Genocide ratified by Australia in 1949.3
It concluded that those affected had a right to reparations, including an
acknowledgment of the truth and an apology; guarantees these human rights
would not be breached again; the return of what had been lost where possible;
rehabilitation; and compensation. The report also made findings about the
contemporary removal of children from their families.
Principles
The Bringing Them Home report proposed a set of key principles to underlie
government responses to those affected by the forcible removal of children4:
1 Self-determination – the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,
Stolen Generations members and their families to exercise autonomy in their
own affairs and make their own decisions.
2. Non-discrimination – the right to be free of racial discrimination, and to be able
to access services which are appropriate to their particular needs.
3. Cultural renewal – the right to participate in cultural activities, recognising the
diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and the need to repair
the damaged family and cultural ties resulting from the removal of children.
4. A coherent policy base – the need for an agreed set of services to begin the
process of healing and redress, with agreed objectives and goals.
5. Adequate resources – appropriate funding to enable services to address the
diverse effects of removal on individuals, families and communities.
The Bringing Them Home
report
Recommendations
Stemming from its findings and founded on those principles, the report made 54
recommendations:
• acknowledgment and formal apology with all parliaments, police forces and
churches to acknowledge, apologise and make reparation for past wrongs
• reparation for people who were forcibly removed including monetary
compensation through a national compensation fund
• records, family tracing and reunion, including funding community-based
Link-Up services to help families reconnect, and the establishment of records
taskforces
• rehabilitation for survivors of forcible removal, including local healing and
wellbeing approaches
• education and training, including a National Sorry Day and the inclusion of
compulsory modules on the Stolen Generations in school curricula
• guarantees against repetition, including the implementation of self-
determination approaches to the well-being of Indigenous children and young
people
• addressing contemporary separation, with national standards legislation to
ensure compliance with the Indigenous Child Placement Principle
• a national process for coordination and monitoring the implementation of the
recommendations.
111110
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen_summary/stolen13.html
Finally the truth was out there
The Australian Government response,
1997 – 2007
Following the tabling of the report, the immediate response of the Australian
Government of the day was to reject many of the key principles and
recommendations linked to them, in particular the need for a formal apology
and for reparations. However, the government did provide funding ($63 million
over four years) including for regional social and emotional wellbeing centres,
counselling positions, Link-Up services, culture and language maintenance
programs, and family support and parenting programs.5 Much of this funding was
made permanent in 2001-2002, initially as part of the Department of Health’s
budget and more recently within the Indigenous Advancement Strategy under the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
While the Bringing Them Home recommendations for a national process for
monitoring implementation were not agreed to, between 2000 and 2007 there
were a number of attempts to evaluate the government response to the report.
The results of these inquiries were generally highly critical, finding that the
Australian Government’s response in particular had been under-funded, badly
directed, poorly coordinated, and insufficiently targeted to the needs of the Stolen
Generations.6 In 2007, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Commissioner reflected on the decade since the report was made public:
For Aboriginal people, the years since the Bringing Them Home report
have been filled with great hope as well as lost opportunities. While there
have been positive developments and initiatives, many opportunities for
governments to work with our communities and advance the goal of
national reconciliation have been lost. Ten years on, the recommendations of
the Bringing Them Home report still stand as the starting point for a national
reconciliation process.7
Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous
Mental Health Programs (2007)
The Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health within the then
Department of Health and Ageing commissioned Urbis Keys Young to carry out
an evaluation of the implementation of the Link-Up program, the Bringing Them
Home counsellors program, the Social and Emotional Wellbeing Regional Centre
Program, and the funding of mental health service delivery projects in Aboriginal
Community Controlled Health Organisations.
Responding to
Bringing Them Home
It found that the funded organisations (Link-Ups, ACCHOs and others) had
delivered a number of important achievements but faced a number of limitations,
including a lack of focus on first generation Stolen Generations survivors, variable
skills and qualifications of staff, a lack of consistency in service delivery, and
limited geographical coverage. More broadly it found that:
The Government’s response to the Bringing Them Home report has been
insufficiently documented, poorly coordinated and insufficiently targeted
to meet the needs of the Stolen Generations, as concluded by reports
examining this issue. This is consistent with the findings of this evaluation.
There has been insufficient prioritisation of the needs of first generation
Stolen Generations members.8
The Apology (2008) and beyond
Under a new Australian Government, the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous
Peoples was passed by the Australian Parliament on 13 February 2008. As well as
delivering on one of Bringing Them Home’s central, unfulfilled recommendations,
the Apology also marked a shift in the policy response back towards some of its
underlying principles. It also led to the establishment of the Healing Foundation.
However, the Australian Government continued to oppose establishing national
processes for compensation, and continued a response based on funding of
services, though once again these were often aimed at the broader Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander community, rather than the Stolen Generations in particular.
In the absence of any formal monitoring process, two non-government agencies have
recently carried out their own assessment of the response to the Bringing Them Home
report.9 These found very limited implementation of the recommendations: less than
one in 10 were identified as having been fully implemented.
The Bringing Them Home report created some positive change: it provided the
opportunity for Stolen Generations members to put their stories on the public
record; it led to the Apology; it foreshadowed a greater focus on social and
emotional wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; and it
led to increased support for Link-Up services and the establishment of the Healing
Foundation.
However, the great majority of its recommendations have yet to be implemented,
and the principles that underlay them are yet to form a coherent basis for a
national response to the historical trauma suffered by the Stolen Generations.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia, Bringing Them Home remains
unfinished business.
151514
The work still hasn’t been done, it’s unfinished business
Why action is needed now
The number of people affected
It’s difficult to say exactly how many children were taken from their families or
how many Stolen Generations members are still alive today. The Bringing Them
Home report estimated that a minimum of one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people were forcibly removed from their families and communities in
the period up to 1970. This estimate is consistent with the most recent evidence
available, which found that 12 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people aged over 45 years in 2008 had personally been removed from their family
by ‘welfare, as part of government policy or taken away to a mission’.10 Applying
this proportion to the latest publicly available figures on the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander population suggests around 14,700 Stolen Generations members.11
While this number is falling as older members pass away, a proportion of the
seven per cent of people aged 15 to 44 in 2008 who reported being taken away
would also be Stolen Generations. Therefore, when we start to consider the wider
impact, a realistic estimate for the number of Stolen Generations members would
be 15,000 people, at minimum.
A further
38
per cent of people surveyed in 2008 reported having immediate
family who had been removed. This means an additional 160,000 Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people directly affected by the policies of forcible
removal.12 These figures are rough estimates, but give a broad picture of the
scale of the issue.
Continuing effects on the Stolen Generations
The failure to implement the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report
is reflected in a wide range of negative outcomes.
A recent study examined the health and wellbeing status of those who had
been removed themselves and those who had parents, grandparents/great-
grandparents or siblings who had been removed. This group, the Stolen
Generations and their immediate family and descendants:
… are around 50 per cent more likely to have been charged by police,
30
per cent less likely to report being in good health, 15 per cent more likely to
consume alcohol at risky levels and 10 per cent less likely to be employed.13
Let the healing begin
Today is an historic day.
It’s the day our leaders—across the political spectrum—have chosen
dignity, hope and respect as the guiding principles for the relationship with
our first nations’ peoples.
Through one direct act, Parliament has acknowledged the existence
and the impacts of the past policies and practices of forcibly removing
Indigenous children from their families.
And by doing so, has paid respect to the Stolen Generations. For their
suffering and their loss. For their resilience. And ultimately, for their dignity.
…The introductory words of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report remind
us of this. It reads:
…the past is very much with us today, in the continuing devastation of
the lives of Indigenous Australians. That devastation cannot be addressed
unless the whole community listens with an open heart and mind to
the stories of what has happened in the past and, having listened and
understood, commits itself to reconciliation.
By acknowledging and paying respect, Parliament has now laid the
foundations for healing to take place and for a reconciled Australia in
which everyone belongs.
For today is not just about the Stolen Generations—it is about every
Australian.
Today’s actions enable every single one of us to move forward together—
with joint aspirations and a national story that contains a shared past
and future.
Formal Response on behalf of the Stolen Generations to the
Parliament of Australia’s National Apology by Tom Calma,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner,
13 February 2008.
Tom Calma
1918 19
The comparison data utilised to undertake this research was other Indigenous
people across Australia. Given that we already know Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people have poorer health and social outcomes than the general
Australian population this indicates extreme vulnerability for Stolen Generations
and their descendants.
On an individual level, there is the personal cost to those who came forward to
the Inquiry, often at the risk of being re-traumatised through sharing and retelling
their stories. They took this risk on the trust that it would lead to significant
change. Many of these people ended their lives without that trust being repaid.
There have also been ongoing health and social effects for the Stolen Generations
and their families. They have significantly poorer physical health and over double
the rates of mental illness and alcohol abuse compared to that suffered by
those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were not removed. They
have also, on average, received a poorer education and are more likely to be
unemployed.14
The educational and economic consequences of forcible removal are important
to note, given the ideology holding that the removal of children was so that they
could get an education and ‘get ahead’ in mainstream society. The effects have
clearly been the opposite: on average, the Stolen Generations have received a
poorer education and are more likely to be unemployed than those Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people who were not removed.
The breakdown of family and social structures caused by removal decimated
communities. It deeply impacted Stolen Generations members. They did not
know where to go to seek support for anything; they no longer belonged to a
community, held no memories of belonging to one and were not able to draw
on the strengths of a community to help them. This disempowered Stolen
Generations members in being able to take action and seek assistance resulting in
many members feeling isolated and distressed. There has also been a considerable
community impact in terms of trauma experienced by those that were left behind
with many of their parents, grandparents and family members never recovering
from the distress of losing their children.
In all of the focus on healing there has been extremely limited focus on healing
the relationship between Stolen Generations and their communities and this has
fed lateral violence resulting in increasing isolation.
Intergenerational trauma
The trauma that people suffered removed their right to parent freely and receive
support to care safely for their children.
Many people suffered by not being able to show love to their families and lost the
enjoyment of accepting the love of their children. They lost the right to love their
children and were frightened to accept love. Many of them suffered in silence
and sacrificed their own wellbeing to keep their families together. Sometimes
they stayed in more difficult circumstances, such as marriages, where there was
violence, as they could not tolerate their families being broken up again, their
children growing up without a mother and a father.
This also meant that many did not seek support for any of their problems,
including their own mental health for fear of being judged unfit parents and their
children being taken. Men often missed out on being fathers as they sought to
use any means to dull the pain such as alcohol use.
As well as the negative effects felt by Stolen Generations members, the failure to
address the trauma created through forced removal policies has led to widespread
problems throughout the whole Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The increasing levels of contemporary child removal from Aboriginal families
was an issue that the Bringing Them Home report canvassed in depth. Numerous
participants acknowledged that while the intent of child removal practices today
is different to that experienced by the Stolen Generations, the effect is potentially
the same: a loss of identity and the exacerbation of intergenerational trauma.
The failure to implement the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement
Principles described at length in the Bringing Them Home recommendations was
a particular concern for the organisations consulted in the development of
this report.
The Bringing Them Home report found that in 1993 two per cent of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander children (nationally) were in care, almost seven and a
half times the rate for non-Indigenous children (page 372). The latest figures (for
2015) show a worsening situation: over five per cent of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander children are in care, almost 10 times the rate for non-Indigenous
children (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW 2016).
212120
It is well-established that adverse experiences in childhood can have lifelong
effects, including mental ill health, physical illness, poor educational and
employment outcomes, addiction, relationship difficulties, and increased contact
with the criminal justice system.15 What is emerging now is the evidence that such
traumatic experiences:
can be transferred from the first generation of survivors that have
experienced (or witnessed) it directly in the past to the second and further
generations of descendants of the survivors … [this] intergenerational
trauma … is defined as the subjective experiencing and remembering
of events in the mind of an individual or the life of a community, passed
from adults to children in cyclic processes as ‘cumulative emotional and
psychological wounding.16
Evidence for intergenerational trauma includes the testimonies and experience of
the Stolen Generations themselves, particularly as recorded in the Bringing Them
Home report which has many heart-rending reflections on the lasting effects of
trauma in their own families’ lives.
There are also the differential health and social outcomes experienced by the
Stolen Generations and their descendants: those who have been removed
themselves or whose immediate family were removed are significantly more
likely to be in contact with the police, have alcohol and gambling problems, have
poorer mental health and social skills or have children with increased risks of
emotional and behavioural difficulties.17
There is also powerful evidence for the effects of intergenerational trauma in a
number of key indicators of wellbeing in contemporary Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander life that are strongly linked to the experience of unresolved
intergenerational trauma, such as the high and rising rates of the contemporary
removal of children from their families, the incarceration of young people, and
family violence.
Mothers still live in fear that
their children are going to be
taken from them
22
Truth and healing
Underpinning all of the policies that led to the forced removal of Indigenous
children was a subscription to racism, including institutional racism.
The origin of the trauma has been the dispossession, exclusion and discrimination
suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and experienced
in particular by the Stolen Generations through being taken from their families
and communities. Added to this is the ongoing experience of racism. This can
be on a personal level (surveys show that the experience of racism is almost
universally reported amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people18) or on a
systemic level through practices and policies which disadvantage and marginalise
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being structured into how institutions
operate.19 There is a strong association between these experiences of racism and
poor mental health and drug use. For people bearing a burden of trauma, it is
also re-traumatising and can become a barrier to healing.
Racism can be countered by truth-telling. This is one of the most important
outcomes of what has occurred from the Bringing Them Home report for Stolen
Generations survivors. However, the legacy of these times continues to play out
within our society and we still battle the continuous impact of institutional racism
in our efforts to get the right policies to lead and develop change for Stolen
Generations members and their families.
Bringing Them Home: a missed opportunity
By documenting a part of Australia’s history that was previously ignored, the Bringing
Them Home report provided a basis for genuine reconciliation, and for addressing
issues of identity, trust and the experience of racism that continue to strongly affect
the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia today.
The report made recommendations for addressing the needs of Stolen Generations
members and their families, as well as other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people regarding language; culture and history; mental health; the contemporary
removal of children; and self-determination. It charted a way forward based on justice,
on the healing of past hurts, and of breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
There is no way of knowing what the contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander world would look like had there been a concerted effort to implement
the Bringing Them Home vision for the future. But it is clear that the failure
to properly implement this vision represents a significantly missed opportunity
to address trauma in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and to
provide a basis for genuine reconciliation in Australia.
Florence Onus is a descendant of the Birri-Gubba and Kairi/Bidjara clans of
north-east Queensland.
She is the fourth generation of women from her family to be forcibly
removed from land, culture and family.
“My grandmother and my mother were both trained and sent out as
domestic servants on properties. They weren’t allowed to speak their
native language or practice cultural ceremonies, or they would be severely
punished,” Florence said.
“And then I became part of the Stolen Generations when I was removed
from my family to be raised in a white foster home.”
Her two older sisters were sent to Rockhampton to live with nuns, while
Florence and her two other siblings went to Townsville foster homes.
There, Florence spent most of her childhood.
“I embarked on my healing journey when at 21 my mother attempted
suicide and I became her full time carer and together we began the journey
of healing.”
“It wasn’t until I started doing my own research and had access to policies
that I truly realised that my mother was suffering from the impacts of
intergenerational trauma.”
Florence has four adult daughters and she is a grandmother. She is
passionate about breaking the cycle of trauma through healing, education,
cultural identity and spiritual nurturing.
Florence is an educator and an advocate for social justice. Her maternal
grandfather died in custody in the early 60s following his arrest as
an agitator.
Florence has carried on his fight for social justice, with a particular focus on
the impact of Black Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generation issues.
“There needs to be an increase in healing resources for the Stolen
Generations and our families to heal from the trauma, pain and suffering
that we’re still dealing with today,” she said.
Florence Onus
2524 25
While we note that both federal and state governments over the past 20 years
have made responses to the Bringing Them Home report it has been neither
adequate in resources or the commitment required to create real change.
The 20th anniversary of Bringing Them Home, in 2017, represents an important
opportunity to revisit the continuing needs and rights of Stolen Generations
members and their families, and to recommit to the original recommendations.
Stolen Generations members are aging, and there is an urgent need to ensure
they, and their families, don’t face further trauma by a failure to achieve justice
in their lifetime.
This review provides a set of actions to help Stolen Generations members reach
some peace, and to meet their continuing and emerging needs, along with the
future needs of their families.
• Action one – comprehensive response for Stolen Generations: Ensuring
the holistic needs of the Stolen Generations are met, including dedicated
needs-based funding and a universal, culturally safe and trauma-informed
financial redress scheme.
• Action two – healing intergenerational trauma: Addressing the serious,
widespread, and worsening effects of unresolved intergenerational trauma
arising from the processes of colonisation and from the forcible removal of
children, as the driver of many health, social and wellbeing issues affecting
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples including the Stolen Generations,
their families and descendants.
• Action three – creating an environment for change: Creating a policy
response to the rights and needs of Stolen Generations members and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that is based on the principles
underlying Bringing Them Home as a basis for reconciliation in Australia.
An action plan for making
things right
Action one: comprehensive response for
Stolen Generations
The Bringing Them Home report made a case for a comprehensive package
of reparations to the Stolen Generations, including acknowledgment and
apology, guarantees against repetition, restitution, rehabilitation and monetary
compensation (financial redress). As documented above, such reparation has only
been partly made.
1. Meeting the healing needs of the Stolen Generations
Assessing the level of need
There are an estimated 175,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who
are either Stolen Generations themselves or directly affected by the processes of
forcible removal (see ‘the number of people affected’, p19). Given the negative
social, health and wellbeing effects of removal, this represents a substantial level
of need within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. It may also
be the case that the Stolen Generations are experiencing accumulating levels of
disadvantage as new needs emerge or intensify, for example due to the fact that
they are ageing, or as a result of the non-implementation of the Bringing Them
Home recommendations.
A national needs assessment process is therefore required. This will document
the contemporary experience of Stolen Generations members and their families,
identify their existing and emerging needs, describe the appropriate service
models to meet those needs and recommend funding reforms to support those
services, including a dedicated needs-based Australian Government funding
stream.20
272726
Dedicated needs-based funding
The Bringing Them Home report recognised adequate resourcing as a key principle
to underpin government responses to the Stolen Generations. However, the
Australian Government’s response to Bringing Them Home has not maintained
a focus on their specific needs and no dedicated funding stream has provided
services to them. The Bringing Them Home counsellor positions originally funded
in 1997 are now expected to provide general social and emotional wellbeing
services for the whole Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The lack of focus on the specific needs of Stolen Generations members and their
families is exacerbated by the large amount of funding for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander mental health and social support services now being funnelled by
the Australian Government’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) to non-
Indigenous NGOs, and in some cases to church-run organisations. This is creating
barriers for Stolen Generations members and their descendants to access services
because in a number of cases the services are provided by the same churches who
ran the institutions where the children were forcibly removed and traumatised.
Consideration should be given to funding for community-healing responses to
assist Stolen Generations members create renewed connections to the places
they are now living. This could take the form of healing forums that the Healing
Foundation has been leading throughout the country. These forums are enabling
communities to reflect on the negative impact of colonisation and to create
solutions that bring harmony and balance back to community relationships.
For example, funding that has been provided both under the New South Wales
and South Australian compensation schemes has allowed for direct funding
to Stolen Generations and their families for healing. This has included a pool
of funding that can be accessed for collective healing initiatives that include
memorials, healing centres, healing camps and groups, reunions of institutions.
This is enabling Stolen Generations and their families to access healing that is
meaningful to them and chosen by them—thereby implementing one of the key
principles of the Bringing Them Home report, self-determination.
Doreen Webster is a Barkindji woman, born in Wilcannia, in the north west
of New South Wales.
“I remember happy times with my parents before I was taken. My dad
worked on a station. I loved it. I had a younger sister. She was a baby when
she was taken.”
Doreen and her brother John were taken to the local police station and
locked up in cell. The next day she was put on a train to Sydney, where at
Central Station, Doreen was separated from her brother.
“A man was waiting there for my brother, from Kinchela Boys Home. I said
‘Where are you going?’ And I was pulling at him, trying to pull him back,”
she said. “Here I am on the station, a little eight year old, screaming and
crying because they were taking my brother away.”
Doreen was taken to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for
Aboriginal Girls.
“When I got up to Cootamundra I was thinking, ‘What’s going on here?
Where am I?’ I had no idea where I was or what was happening to me.
I was screaming for my mum and dad. When we got there we were
treated so cruelly—so cruelly,” Doreen said.
She recalls the matron asking a police office to punish her.
“I was sitting down on the ground and he got me by the hair of the head
and just pulled me up, straight up to my feet—lifted me off the ground
and stood me on my feet—and then he stood on my foot. I had no shoes
on. I was screaming out in agony. It was just horrifying. I used to run away
all the time,” she said.
Doreen is now a vocal advocate of appropriate aged care for the Stolen
Generations. On the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report,
she wants the survivors of Cootamundra, and the infamous Kinchela Boys
Home, to have their own joint aged care facility, so they can spend their
last years together.
“For when we get older, a place where we can be. We are family, we
are sisters to the Kinchela boys. They are brothers to us. And there is a
closeness. That is our family.”
Doreen Webster
2928
Developing a trauma informed public policy environment
Appropriate support for Stolen Generations members and their descendants
cannot be provided without a good understanding of the historical and living
trauma that they are experiencing.
Inadequate education about this history is impairing the ability of governments,
service providers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to
effectively meet their needs. While trauma limits the ability of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people to engage confidently with mainstream health and
welfare services.
Existing training does not support police, welfare services, health and mental
health providers and institutions such as aged care facilities to respond effectively
to the increasing distress Stolen Generations and their descendants might
experience by coming into contact with these services, often agents of harm from
their past.
In addition, trauma informed training that is currently available does not cover the
trauma experienced by our Stolen Generations members and their families, and
often does not come from a cultural perspective.
The development of a suite of trauma training packages that are designed with
Stolen Generations survivors would ensure governments, professionals and
services are learning the skills and the means to respond effectively to Stolen
Generations survivors without causing more harm.
Trauma-informed organisations use a strengths-based approach based on an
understanding of the impact of trauma; emphasise the physical, psychological,
and emotional safety of clients and staff; and help people affected by trauma to
rebuild a sense of control and empowerment.21
People need to go
through healing
themselves before
they can help others
30
2. Supporting healing approaches
Since the Bringing Them Home report was tabled two decades ago, considerable
knowledge about healing approaches for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people has been developed. Evidence shows that such approaches can lead to
improved resilience, mental health, and reduced risk of disease. The creation of
healing centres in Canada, in response to the intergenerational impacts of child
removal practices there, has led to significant reductions in socially damaging
problems including suicide.22
The Canadian Healing Foundation was provided over $800 million to lead their
healing responses and this allowed significant effort across the country to achieve
these outcomes. They also did this work within the context of a treaty that
politically supported funding and progressive policy initiatives that enabled self-
determination for Aboriginal communities.
Healing approaches are diverse, responding to the particular needs of the
communities in which they are embedded. However they generally aim to build
individual, family and community capacity through western methodologies and
traditional healing. Continuing and expanding support for healing approaches,
and sharing the theory and evidence for their effectiveness, is important to
address the traumatic legacy of the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children from their families.
Healing centres are an important new approach for Stolen Generations members
and their descendants. For many of our Stolen Generations who have nowhere to
call home they are creating a place of healing and renewal and helping to support
members to have a culturally safe place to seek sanctuary and support.
An example of this is the healing centre at Kinchela. Kinchela Boys Home
Aboriginal Corporation was established by the survivors of Kinchela Aboriginal
Boys Training Home, a ‘home’ run by the NSW Government for over 50 years.
Led by survivors and their families, the Corporation encourages and supports
sustainable healing programs that address the legacy of physical, sexual,
psychological and cultural abuse experienced by the survivors as well as the
intergenerational trauma experienced by their descendants.
Currently the Corporation is developing concepts and plans for a museum on the
site of the home and a healing centre at South West Rocks, a place where the
boys felt safe during their time at Kinchela.
The concept for the healing centre includes governance structures and
government training, program design, management and evaluation for programs
to be run at the centre. This would also include the archiving of cultural
knowledge and materials to preserve historical records, including oral histories.
No records often means
no reunion
32
Kinchela Boys Home inflicted significant pain on survivors, their families and
communities, and they need a safe place where they can gather and support
each other as a fundamental part of the healing process. The healing centre will
provide a retreat for the community, a safe place to participate in reunions and
workshops, and offer ways to reconnect families and reclaim cultural heritage.
3. Ensuring Stolen Generations have a voice in service
delivery
Over time, the focus of the Australian Government’s Bringing Them Home
counselling funding provided in response to the report has shifted away from
the specific needs of the Stolen Generations towards the social and emotional
wellbeing needs of the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The recent transfer of funding to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has
contributed to this process. States and territories also need to investigate their
responses and ensure they are in line with supporting Stolen Generations to have
self-determination within healing processes that are funded and supported.
As well as a dedicated funding stream for Stolen Generations organisations,
formal governance mechanisms are required for organisations with Stolen
Generations clients to ensure that Stolen Generations members have input into
the design and delivery of their services. This will assist organisations to meet the
specific service needs of Stolen Generations and their families.
For example, organisations that provide services for Stolen Generations, that are
not specific Stolen Generations led organisations, can establish mechanisms such
as reference groups to ensure that Stolen Generations members service needs are
adequately met.
4. Reporting on the needs of the Stolen Generations
Currently, many government reporting processes do not specifically include
sections on the Stolen Generations. The specific needs of the Stolen Generations
should be included in key government reports and strategies to maintain a
national focus on their needs and how these are being met over time.
Australians are being denied
a part of their history
34
5. Access to records
The Bringing Them Home report looked specifically at access to individual
and family records of the Stolen Generations as a vital part of assisting in the
process of locating and reunifying families. Despite the Australian Government’s
response to Bringing Them Home prioritising family reunion, problems accessing
records have persisted. A review of access to records at all levels of government,
including states and territories, and non-government agencies is needed and the
implementation of the report’s recommendations is required.
6. Education
The Bringing Them Home report identified education as an important part of
the reparation process; with awareness of the history of child removal key to
preventing the repetition of such human rights violations. Despite some progress,
for example the inclusion of information about the Stolen Generations in the
national curriculum, 83 per cent of Australians believe it is important to know
more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.23 Education
about the history of the Stolen Generations therefore remains important, starting
with early learning centres and schools, continuing up to professional training
of those who may work with, or make decisions affecting, Stolen Generations
members and their families. The Healing Foundation has been working with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander curriculum writers to develop classroom
resources for K-9. This has been supported by a number of peak bodies who have
recommended that all state education departments support further development
of these learning tools. State and territory education departments can show
leadership by ensuring that these resources are used by teachers throughout their
education systems.
Ian Hamm is a Yorta Yorta man from Shepparton in central Victoria. In
1964, he was separated from his family when he was three weeks old. He
grew up just 50 kilometres away from them, unaware of their existence.
That changed when he went to college and met an Aboriginal education
officer who asked him if he knew where he came from. Ian replied his birth
name was Andrew James. The person said: “Yeah. I think I know who you
are. I’ll get back to you.”
Six months later a worker from the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency
visited Ian in Bendigo. She told him his birth family, the James family, was
a big Aboriginal family in Shepparton. Ian then realised he’d already met
some of his birth family, but was unaware of their relationship.
“It blows you away. She told me I was one of five, ‘you have two sisters
and two brothers’. And I asked about my mother. She said my mother died
in 1966, when I was two,” he said.
“I’ve only got a few photos of my mum. It’s enormously frustrating when
people say to me I’m like my mother. I don’t know what that means. It puts
into perspective where you fit in. Or don’t fit in as the case may be,” he
said. “The hard part of this is I didn’t meet any of them until I was in my
twenties. You’ve only known each other as adults,” Ian said.
“It will be the same for anybody who’s been through this experience, the
thing that’s the most confronting, the one that you live with every day.
That you’ve had to start a relationship as an adult. How do you create
those relationships? How do you make them work?”
He described the uncertainty of identity he felt as the only Aboriginal man
growing up in Yarrawonga.
“People would tell me I’m Aboriginal, but what does that mean? My
only source of information was what people told me and what I saw on
television. This is the ‘60s and the ‘70s, and that wasn’t great.”
Over the years, moving forward has had its own challenges, especially in
finding a way of getting on with things. “When I say heal, for me, I don’t
think you get over it, you just get used to it. It’s how I get by.”
Ian says he’s largely made peace with his past, but it’s more like a cessation
of hostilities than a lasting peace.
“There are days when sometimes it just gets to me. I get this overwhelming
sense of sadness. And I know exactly what it is. It’s that ‘where do I fit in’.”
Ian Hamm
3736 37
7. Financial redress
The Bringing Them Home report made monetary compensation a central
component of redress for Stolen Generations members and their families. It is
not the intent of this report to say who is responsible for providing monetary
compensation, but it must be addressed by all levels of government across
the country.
A universal, safe and culturally appropriate scheme for financial redress is
justified as acknowledgement of past wrongs; as redress for health and social
disadvantage resulting from removal; as financial assistance given the lifelong
socioeconomic effects of forcible removal; and as acknowledgement that native
title and land rights schemes have not significantly advantaged the Stolen
Generations due to their removal from family and country.
Despite the Bringing Them Home recommendations—and a later Senate
Inquiry recommending the establishment of a reparations tribunal to address
the provision of monetary compensation24—the Australian Government has
consistently refused to establish a national scheme, arguing that responsibility
for compensation lies with the institutions involved and/or state and territory
governments. The lack of a national process for compensation means that the
adversarial court system remains the only avenue for most Stolen Generations
members to seek financial compensation for the wrongs done to them.
The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
has recommended the establishment of a redress scheme for all those who have
been sexually abused while in institutional care.25 The Australian Government
has in this case recognised the importance of a nationally consistent process
for redress including monetary compensation, and has agreed to lead the
development of such an approach.26 This provides an important opportunity
to advocate for the Australian Government to adopt a similar responsibility in
relation to redress for the Stolen Generations. As acknowledged in the Bringing
Them Home report itself, reparation processes need to minimise the risk of
re-traumatising people who are applying for financial redress.
There is also a lot of distress from some Stolen Generations members that if
they die before any compensation becomes available their families may miss
out. To date, no nationally implemented redress scheme has addressed this issue
and most have explicitly stated they will not provide compensation to deceased
descendants. While this is probably considered complex, a policy should be
developed to address this and could be part of the national needs assessment.
Failure to address it is causing ongoing trauma in these families, as they feel their
family member is forgotten and their pain overlooked.
If they don’t put compensation
in place across the country,
they’re just going to continue
to lose credibility
38
Action two: healing intergenerational trauma
1. A national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
trauma strategy
Given the widespread, serious effects of unresolved intergenerational trauma,
a national strategy on addressing intergenerational trauma is needed. Such a
strategy should link to existing national strategies, in particular the National
Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children and the National Plan to Reduce
Violence Against Women and their Children.
A national strategy to address trauma and appropriately resource healing would
acknowledge and respect the cultural knowledge and expertise of Stolen
Generations members and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and
endorse the principles underpinning the Bringing Them Home report.
Such a strategy would:
• address the challenges of building Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
workforce capability within and across diverse organisations, communities and
locations
• support the funding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to
deliver healing responses to Stolen Generations and their families
• provide a platform for integrating responses to the historical and continuing
impact of trauma for both Stolen Generations and their descendants
• set out principles and processes for collaboration at both policy and service
levels
• acknowledge the broader social, economic and political processes required
to address collective trauma and make links with initiatives to address socio-
economic disadvantage and promote reconciliation
• provide a culturally appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework to
support the effective implementation of healing responses, promote continuous
improvement and improve outcomes for Stolen Generations and their families
• identify key government and non-government stakeholders to support the
development and implementation of the national strategy.
Michael Welsh is a Wailwan man from Coonamble in New South Wales.
He was eight when he and his brother Barry were taken from his mother
and five of his siblings.
Michael was told that his other brothers and sisters would follow on the
next train. He knew it was a lie.
He was taken to the notorious Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home.
An institution near Kempsey on the New South Wales mid north coast,
Kinchela was renowned for its physical, sexual, psychological and cultural
abuse of aboriginal children.
The children weren’t allowed to use names. Instead they were given
numbers. Michael was number 36.
Michael said the aim of Kinchela “was to degrade us and set us up for
reprogramming our brains”.
For decades afterwards, Michael struggled with the trauma he experienced
at Kinchela. He finally reached a stage where he couldn’t hold the pain
back any longer.
He made contact with the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation
(KBHAC), an organisation established by Kinchela survivors to support
them and their descendants.
“When we get together as a group of brothers who’ve gone through
that place, it feels good. The fear that was there is not there anymore,”
Michael said.
Michael is passionate about ending the cycle of intergenerational trauma
in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
“I’m not the only one who feels this pain, I’ve got eight children and they
all feel the same,” he said.
“We do not want this hate to go to our children or to our grandchildren
and great grandchildren.”
“Our children need to be connected to this healing process too. Our
journey’s almost over, our children’s journeys are only just beginning.”
Michael Welsh
4140
2. Addressing contemporary child removal
The original Inquiry was asked to look at the legacy of removal through examining
the contemporary removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from
their families. Today’s removal of children and the processes related to removal
are different to the experience of the Stolen Generations who had no legislation,
rights or ability to make complaint about what occurred to them. The effects in
perpetuating intergenerational trauma and undermining the identity of children
are similar.
This is particularly true for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are
removed from their families and placed in environments that do not support
their identity. Despite the fact that all Australian jurisdictions have now adopted
the Indigenous Child Placement Principles in legislation (as recommended by the
Bringing Them Home report), only two-thirds (66 per cent) of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families are placed in Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander environments. In some jurisdictions it is much less.27
Addressing the rising numbers of children being removed from their families, and
the limited application of the Indigenous Child Placement Principles is complex,
but a vital part of bringing the cycle of intergenerational trauma to an end. This
may include the setting of targets for the reduction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander children being removed from their families to be included in the ‘Close
the Gap’ measures.
However, it should be noted that many states and territories are making gains in
this area. For example, Queensland is implementing Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander led family and child wellbeing centres across the state to ensure holistic
supports for families within a culturally safe, trauma informed model. These
models are being designed, developed and implemented by Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander organisations across the state.
Victoria has started implementing the transfer of guardianship of Aboriginal children
in care to Aboriginal agencies. This means for the first time Aboriginal people will
be in charge of making the decisions over the future of their own children without
ongoing state intervention. Meanwhile, New South Wales has begun the transfer
of all children in out of home care from non-Indigenous NGO’s to Aboriginal-run
agencies across the state. This has a training and development plan attached to
support the development of Aboriginal agencies and their success.
These are promising examples of change occurring but they need sustained
implementation over time. Long-term vision and commitment to these initiatives,
along with bi-partisan support, is needed to create the scale and impact that is
required to reduce the growing numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
children in care.
3. Adequate mental health, social and emotional
wellbeing funding
The Report of the National Review of Mental Health Programs and Services found
numerous barriers to social and emotional wellbeing and mental health services
for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including a lack of a clear funding
processes for preferred community controlled, culturally capable models of care.28
Secure and dedicated funding for such mental health and social and emotional
wellbeing services for the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community is
therefore critical, in recognition of the widespread social and emotional wellbeing
and mental health issues prevalent in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities and the inappropriate nature of many mainstream service responses.
4. Describing the intergenerational experience of trauma
There is a lack of research about how the specific experiences of Stolen
Generations members relate to general descriptions of trauma as experienced
by survivors of other human rights abuses such as forced adoption, torture, or
genocide. Research is needed to establish the specific effects of intergenerational
trauma amongst the Stolen Generations. Such research needs to involve, at all
stages, Stolen Generations members and their families.
434342
Action three: create an environment for change
The Bringing Them Home report called for a coherent policy response to the needs
of the Stolen Generations and the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
community. The recent Senate Inquiry into the Indigenous Advancement Strategy
found, current policy and funding processes are marked by a lack of consultation,
rushed processes with poor transparency, significant administrative challenges for
community organisations, uncertainty for providers, and gaps in service delivery.29
Such findings are strongly supported by almost universal experience of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander organisations working to ‘close the gap’.30
1. A return to underlying principles
The Bringing Them Home report recognised that:
The history we have documented has had a profound impact on every
aspect of the lives of Indigenous communities. … An adequate response
to this history and its effects will challenge the sensitivity, the goodwill and
the creativity of all governments. It requires a whole-of-government policy
response with immediate targets, long-term objectives and a continuing
commitment.31
This is a challenge that Australian governments have not yet met, despite some
successes such as the delivery of apologies from all governments.
Any meaningful government response to the rights and needs of the Stolen
Generations must return to and be explicitly based on the principles that
underpinned the Bringing Them Home report: self-determination, non-
discrimination, cultural renewal, a coherent policy base and adequate resources.
The principles outlined in the original report were from international human
rights agreements to which Australia is a signatory. This includes the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Since 1997, additional weight has been
given to these principles by Australia’s ratification of the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which contains several
articles of specific relevance to the Stolen Generations including Article 8 (the
right of Indigenous Peoples not to be subjected to forced assimilation, and to have
access to redress where such actions occur) and Article 19 (the right of Indigenous
Peoples to be consulted and to consent before the adoption of legislation or
policies affecting them).32
Richard Campbell is a Dunghutti/Gumbayngirr man from Bowraville on the
New South Wales mid north coast.
At Richard’s Catholic School the nuns thwarted several attempts by the
Aboriginal Protection Board to remove the Aboriginal kids. Then on
October 12, 1966 the school was caught unaware.
“All of a sudden they grabbed our younger sisters. Threw them in the back
of the car, you could hear them screaming,” Richard remembered.
He and his older brother were also forced into the waiting police car. The
five children were taken to court, where they were charged with neglect.
“We weren’t neglected! We had a life. We had culture, we had language.
We had a way of living.”
Richard and his brother were taken to the notoriously cruel Kinchela
Aboriginal Boys Training Home where their identities were systematically
stripped from them. Richard said they were given numbers, not names,
and were severely punished if they used their Aboriginal language.
“We were told not to speak it. And not to look for your parents because
they’re dead. And they sayin’ you’re not Richard Campbell, you’re now
number 28. And you are not black, you are white.”
Richard suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse in Kinchela.
He says trauma followed all the boys out of the institution.
“So the next step for us was incarceration in a bigger jail .. straight into
Long Bay, Goulburn, Grafton Gaol .. you could see them travel through
their lives, through drugs, alcohol, stealing, things like that.”
Richard is now Secretary of the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal
Corporation, and has only recently begun to tell his story. He is deeply
distressed about the continued removal of Aboriginal kids into out of home
care, including four of his own grandchildren.
Richard wants governments to stop taking Aboriginal children away from
their families, and offer more support to Indigenous parents. He says
intergenerational trauma must be better understood.
“Time is not on our side. We have lost four men this year alone and this …
means they cannot be part of their families’ healing … who are left living
with the pain of questions unanswered.”
Richard Campbell
4544 45
2. Truth, healing and reconciliation
The Bringing Them Home report was founded on the knowledge that true
reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous
Australians depended on a truthful examination of a painful and unjust past.
In this way, although it did not use the term itself, the Inquiry operated as a ‘truth
commission’, one of many set up around the world from the 1980s onwards
to investigate and come to terms with nations’ past human rights violations.
While government responses to such truth commissions have frequently been
disappointing, they nevertheless have had positive effects, for example through
the mobilisation of political demands around their recommendations; through a
continued struggle for accountability and reparations; and through becoming a
focal point for national conversations about history, power and justice.33
Consistent with this international experience, and despite the poor government
record of implementation, Bringing Them Home has been a major and
lasting achievement. Almost 20 years on, implementation of the report’s
recommendations remains a crucial step on the path to genuine reconciliation
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. In recommending a new
and more comprehensive Australian Government response to the Bringing Them
Home report, Reconciliation Australia found that:
Australia’s lack of historical acceptance is a potential barrier to reconciliation.
Until we accept our past, make amends for injustices and pledge to ensure
that these wrongs are never repeated, Australia will not achieve true
reconciliation … There is a continued perception by Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people that past wrongs have not been righted. This is a major
barrier to reconciliation. The data supports this perception and shows that
efforts to repair past wrongs have been slow, piecemeal, largely ignored, or
are getting worse.34
The 20th anniversary of the release of the Bringing Them Home report in 2017
represents an important opportunity to revisit the continuing rights and needs
of the Stolen Generations, and to recommit to the implementation of the
recommendations made in 1997 as a basis for true reconciliation in Australia.
3. Monitoring and accountability
The Australian Government rejected the model for monitoring the implementation
of its recommendations made by the Bringing Them Home report. No sustained
system was ever put in place. This has undoubtedly contributed to the poor
record of implementation of the report’s recommendations. This goes beyond
the Bringing Them Home report with the non-implementation of key Inquiry
recommendations a dominant theme over many years:
In the past 25 years—a generation in fact—we have had the Royal
Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Bringing Them Home
report and Reconciliation: Australia’s Challenge: the final report of the
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. These reports, and numerous other
Coroner and Social Justice Reports, have made over 400 recommendations,
most of which have either been partially implemented for short term periods
or ignored altogether.35
This would suggest a national dialogue is needed on creating sustainable
structures to monitor the implementation of recommendations from systemic
inquiries into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage, including the
recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report.
474746
Lorraine Peeters is a Gamilaroi and Wailwun woman from Wailwan country
in central west New South Wales.
At the age of four she was forcibly taken from her family in Brewarrina.
Along with hundreds of other girls she was placed in the Cootamundra
Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.
“We were brainwashed to act, speak, dress and think white and we were
punished if we didn’t,” said Aunty Lorraine. “We were not allowed to talk
in our language or about culture or about our families. It wasn’t until I was
in my fifties that I suffered a mental health issue, trauma. There was an
Aboriginal person inside, screaming to get out.”
As a result of undertaking her own healing journey, Lorraine developed the
Marumali Program™, which is based on the Marumali Journey of Healing
Model. It’s a unique program to increase the quality of support available to
Stolen Generations members.
“When you’ve been through as much as we have, the trauma can easily
be reactivated by those who don’t understand it. To prevent this, trauma-
informed training should be mandatory for everyone working with
our mob, especially Stolen Generations members and their families, as
recommended by the Bringing them Home report.”
Lorraine works with survivors, service providers and health practitioners and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates within correctional centres—
delivering the program to more than 3000 participants.
Lorraine says Western style counselling is not appropriate for the Stolen
Generations. “Collective healing is so important for institutionalised
people, you don’t have to tell or explain your story to anybody, we just
know the trauma that everyone has experienced.”
Lorraine played a key role in the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations,
presenting the Prime Minister with a glass coolamon, a vessel traditionally
used to carry babies, as a symbol of hope.
Lorraine says on the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report
Australia needs to understand it’s not just the Stolen Generations that have
been affected by trauma.
“Behaviour is learnt. If my children are watching me have anxiety, fear,
drinking issues to numb the pain, that behaviour is learnt by little people.
That will continue. We have to revisit the recommendations that haven’t
been implemented,” she said.
Lorraine Peeters
48
Theme Key elements Reccs.
Acknowledgment
and Apology
All parliaments, police forces and
churches acknowledge, apologise and
make reparation for past wrongs
5 a – b and 6
Reparation Reparation should be made to
people who were forcibly removed,
family members, communities and
descendants
Monetary compensation be provided
through a national compensation fund
3, 4, 14, 15,
16 a and b,
17, 18, 19,
20 and 41
Records, Family
Tracing and
Reunion
Funding Indigenous agencies to
record, preserve and provide access to
Indigenous testimonies
Funding Indigenous community-based
family and reunion services (Link-Ups)
to provide tracing and reunion services
Record taskforces be established to
assist with accessing records under
minimum access standards
1, 11, 13,
21, 22 a – b,
23, 24, 25,
27, 28,
29 a – b,
30 a – b, 31,
38 a – b – c
and 39
Rehabilitation All services and programs provided
for survivors of forcible removal to
emphasise local healing and wellbeing
perspectives
Funding for preventative and primary
mental health be directed to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander community-
based services
Funding for parenting and family
wellbeing programs to relevant
Indigenous organisations
32,
33 a – b – c,
36 and 40
Appendix 1: key themes and
recommendations from the
Bringing Them Home report
Theme Key elements Reccs.
Education and
Training
Arrange for a National Sorry Day each
year
Ensure primary and secondary school
curricula include compulsory modules
on the history and effects of forcible
removal
Professionals working with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander children,
families and communities receiving
training about the history and effects of
forcible removal
Undergraduates and trainees in relevant
professions receiving training about the
history and effects of forcible removal
Expand the funding of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander language, culture
and history centres
7, 8 a – b,
9 a – b, 12,
28, 34
and 35
Guarantees
Against
Repetition
Adequate funding to Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander health and mental
services to establish preventative
mental health programs in prisons and
detention centres
National framework legislation for the
implementation of self-determination in
relation to the well-being of Indigenous
children and young people
37, 42, 43,
44, 45, 46,
47, 48, 49,
50, 53
and 54
Contemporary
Separation
National-standards legislation provide
that the placement of an Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander child must
conform with the Indigenous Child
Placement Principle
51 and 52
Consultation,
Monitoring and
Coordination
COAG develop a process for
the implementation of the
recommendations
A National Inquiry audit unit
in HREOC be established to
monitor implementation of the
recommendations with an annual
report to COAG
All Governments to provide information
to the National Inquiry audit unit
annually
2 a – d
515150
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535352
1 The Review was carried out by Edward Tilton and Pat Anderson AO with the guidance
of senior staff at the Healing Foundation and the leadership of the Foundation’s Stolen
Generations Reference Group. Conducted between June and October 2016, it was
informed by consultations with Stolen Generations organisations, beginning with the
Stolen Generations Reference Group. While time and resource constraints meant that
it was not possible to carry out consultations at the community level, the consultation
process included a sample of Stolen Generations organisations across Australia.
2 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney. page 31
3 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997b). Bringing Them
Home: Community Guide, HREOC.page 10
4 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney.page 276-280
5 Ministerial Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (2003). Evaluation of
Responses to Bringing Them Home Report: Final Report, Success Works.
6 See for example Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee (2000). Healing:
A Legacy of Generations – The report of the inquiry into the federal government’s
implementation of recommendations made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission in ‘Bringing Them Home’. Department of the Senate, Parliament House,
Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia.page 281 Wilczynski A, Reed-Gilbert K, Milward K,
Tayler B, Fear J and Schwartzkoff J (2007). Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous
Mental Health Programs. Canberra, Report prepared by Urbis Keys Young for the Office for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, Department of Health and Ageing. page 27
7 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (2007). Us Taken-Away Kids:
Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report. Canberra.page
7
8 Wilczynski A, Reed-Gilbert K, Milward K, Tayler B, Fear J and Schwartzkoff J (2007).
Evaluation of Bringing Them Home and Indigenous Mental Health Programs. Canberra,
Report prepared by Urbis Keys Young for the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Health, Department of Health and Ageing.
9 Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) (2013). Overview of
the Implementation of the Bringing Them Home report recommendations. Melbourne,
SNAICC, Rule J and Rice E (2015). Bringing Them Home Scorecard Report 2015. Canberra,
National Sorry Day Committee.
10 Figures from the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey
(NATSISS) in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The Health
and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010.”
Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/
lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010.
11 According to the 2011 Census figures, there were an estimated 122,435 Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people 45 years or older at that time. See Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS). (2013). “3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Australians, June 2011.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3238.0.55.001.
Notes
12 Dockery A M (2012). Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of
Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey Analysis for Indigenous
Policy in Australia: Social Science Perspectives. Boyd Hunter and Nicholas Biddle, Australian
National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Research Monograph
No. 32.
13 2008 NATSISS figures in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The
Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct
2010.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.
nsf/lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010. In 2011, there were an estimated 429,000
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 or over. See Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS). (2013). “3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Australians, June 2011.” Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/
abs@.nsf/mf/3238.0.55.001.
14 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2011). “4704.0 – The Health and
Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010.”
Retrieved 25 August 2016, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/
lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct+2010.
15 Anda R F and Felitti V J. (2012). “Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Relationship
to Adult Well-being and Disease: Turning gold into lead.” The National Council Webinar,
August 27, 2012 Retrieved 22 March 2016, 2016, from http://www.thenationalcouncil.
org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Natl-Council-Webinar-8-2012 .
16 Atkinson J (2013). Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care for Indigenous
Australian children. Canberra / Melbourne, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare &
Australian Institute of Family Studies. page 5
17 Dockery A M (2012). Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of
Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS. Survey Analysis for Indigenous
Policy in Australia: Social Science Perspectives. Boyd Hunter and Nicholas Biddle, Australian
National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Research Monograph
No. 32.
18 Ferdinand A, Paradies Y and M. Kelaher (2012). Mental Health Impacts of Racial
Discrimination in Victorian Aboriginal Communities: The Localities Embracing and
Accepting Diversity (LEAD) Experiences of Racism Survey. Melbourne, The Lowitja Institute.
19 Cunningham J, Cass A and Arnold P C (2005). “Bridging the treatment gap for Indigenous
Australians. Demands for efficiency should not be met at the expense of equity.” Med J
Aust 182(10): 505-506.
20 The needs assessment could also provide an updated estimate of the numbers of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were either forcibly removed, or directly
affected by the forcible removal of a family member, using the 2014 National Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) and figures from the 2016 Census which
are not publically available at the time of writing).
21 Atkinson J (2013). Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care for Indigenous
Australian children. Canberra / Melbourne, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare &
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
555554
22 Aboriginal Healing Foundation (Canada) (2006). Final report of the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation. Ottowa, Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
23 Reconciliation Australia (2016). The State of Reconcilation in Australia, Reconciliation
Australia.
24 Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee (2000). Healing: A Legacy of
Generations – The report of the inquiry into the federal government’s implementation
of recommendations made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
in ‘Bringing Them Home’. Department of the Senate, Parliament House, Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
25 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2015). Consultation
paper: Redress and civil litigation. Sydney, Commonwealth of Australia.
26 Porter C and Brandis G. (2016). “Developing a national approach to redress for survivors
of institutional child sexual abuse (Media Release 29 January 2016).” Retrieved 24 August
2016, from http://christianporter.dss.gov.au/media-releases/developing-a-national-
approach-to-redress-for-survivors-of-institutional-child-sexual-abuse.
27 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2016). Child protection Australia 2014-
15. Canberra, AIHW.
28 National Mental Health Commission (2014). The National Review of Mental Health
Programmes and Services, Volume 1. Sydney, NMHC.
29 Finance and Public Administration References Committee of the Australian Senate (2016).
Commonwealth Indigenous Advancement Strategy tendering processes. Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organsations (2016). The Redfern Statement.
Sydney.
31 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997a). Bringing Them
Home. Sydney, Spinney. page 279
32 United Nations. (2007). “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
from http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html.
33 Bakiner O (2016). Truth Commissions: memory, power and legitimacy. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press.
34 Reconciliation Australia (2016). The State of Reconcilation in Australia, Reconciliation
Australia.
35 Ibid. page 5
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