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In most cases of forcible removal government officials and agents were responsible for the removal under legislation or regulations. However, there were early cases of removal of children by missionaries without the consent of the parents. In Victoria the absence of government oversight of welfare services enabled churches and other non-government agencies to remove children from their families…

This report is a tribute to the strength and struggles of many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people affected by forcible removal. We acknowledge the hardships they endured and the sacrifices they made. We remember and lament all the children who will never come home.

My family went to Cherbourg. They volunteered to go there during the Depression. So I would have been about 6 months old when grandfather, who was, I mean, he was independent. He had eight kids all birthed out in the trees you know, under the stars. My mother spoke her own language. She had me with the promise to marry my father. And then when the Depression came they talked to the policeman. He…

Hobart December 4,7,8 Flinders Island December 4-5 Cape Barren Island December 4-5 Wybalenna December 6 Bringing them Home Launceston December 11,13 Burnie December 12

Amended by Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 (NSW) Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act 1918 (NSW) Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act 1936 (NSW) Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act 1940 (NSW) Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act 1943 (NSW) Repealed by Aborigines Welfare Ordinance 1954 (Cth).

Lots of white kids do get taken away, but that's for a reason - not like us. We just got taken away because we was black kids, I suppose - half-caste kids. If they wouldn't like it, they shouldn't do it to Aboriginal families. Confidential evidence 357, South Australia.

I was born on Cape Barren. At the time I was taken the family comprised mum, my sister and [my two brothers]. And of course there was my grandmother and all the other various relatives. We were only a fairly small isolated community and we all grew up there in what I considered to be a very peaceful loving community. I recall spending most of my growing up on the Island actually living in the…

1936 it was. I would have been five. We went visiting Ernabella the day the police came. Our great-uncle Sid was leasing Ernabella from the government at that time so we went there.

I was born in May 1964. My Mother and I lived together within an inner suburb of Melbourne. At the age of five and a half months, both my Mother and I became ill. My Mother took me to the Royal Children's Hospital, where I was admitted.

State and Territory legislation, programs and policies in the areas of child welfare, adoption and juvenile justice are intended to provide a non-discriminatory framework for the administration of services. In many cases, programs are designed with the objective of reducing the extent of contemporary removals of Indigenous children and young people. In spite of this, the over-representation of…

My grandmother was taken from up Tennant Creek. What gave them the right to just go and take them? They brought her down to The Bungalow [at Alice Springs]. Then she had Uncle Billy and my Mum to an Aboriginal Protection Officer. She had no say in that from what I can gather. And then from there they sent her out to Hermannsburg - because you know, she was only 14 when she had Uncle Billy, 15…

Adoption is the transfer, generally by order of a court, of all parental rights and obligations from the natural parent(s) to the adoptive parent(s). In Australia, legal adoption is relatively recent. It was first introduced in 1928 in Victoria, for example. Until very recently adoption involved near-total secrecy, partly in deference to the desire of adoptive parents to present the child as…

The Government has to explain why it happened. What was the intention? I have to know why I was taken. I have to know why I was given the life I was given and why I'm scarred today. Why was my Mum meant to suffer? Why was I made to suffer with no Aboriginality and no identity, no culture? Why did they think that the life they gave me was better than the one my Mum would give me?

I am a part Aboriginal woman, who was adopted out at birth. I was adopted by a white Australian family and came to live in New Zealand at the age of 6 months. I grew up not knowing about my natural Mother and Father. The only information my adoptive parents had about my birth, was the surname of my birth Mother.

Indigenous Inquiry Commissioners Annette Peardon, Marjorie Thorpe, Dr Maryanne Bin Salik, Sadie Canning, Olive Knight, Kathy Mills, Anne Louis, Laurel Williams, Jackie Huggins, Josephine Ptero-David and Professor Marcia Langton and Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner John Briton assisted with hearings and in the development of the report and its recommendations. They provided strong…

1. That the Council of Australian Governments ensure the adequate funding of appropriate Indigenous agencies to record, preserve and administer access to the testimonies of Indigenous people affected by the forcible removal policies who wish to provide their histories in audio, audio-visual or written form.

Family law plays a role in the `placement and care' of Indigenous children when parenting disputes come before the Family Court of Australia (except in WA where the State Family Court deals with all family law matters) or those lower courts, presided over by magistrates, which have power to deal with them. The parents do not have to be married: children born outside marriage are treated in the…

Indigenous mental health is finally on the national agenda. As participants in the National Mental Health Strategy, States and Territories acknowledge the importance of the issue. Some of the effects of removal including loss and grief, reduced parenting skills, child and youth behavioural problems and youth suicide are increasingly recognised.