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This timeline focuses on one particular aspect of the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families. This material identifies some significant laws and practices that made removal lawful and includes writing and artwork from members of the Stolen Generations and their families which illustrate their experiences of these policies. This section uses as its primary resource Bringing them home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.

The contributors to this publication come from every part of Australia. They are sons and daughters, mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers. They are orphans, scholars, single parents, teachers, prisoners, healers, jillaroos and football stars. Many continue to suffer the effects of removal, manifesting in drug abuse, incarceration and mental illness. Thank you for sharing your stories with us, and shedding more light on what was up until recently, a taboo topic in Australia’s history. Each of you took a great risk.

The Australian Human Rights Commission would like to thank all the people who generously contributed their stories, artwork, poetry and time to make this publication possible; Jo Ritale and Angelo at the State Library of Queensland and the communities of Cherbourg, Mapoon Mission,  Monamona and Mornington Island for giving us permission to reproduce photographs from the State Library of Queensland’s exhibition, ‘Broken Links’, 2007; Murray Wilcox and Joanna Richardson for providing valuable insights into the cases in which they were involved; Siobhan

After the Native Welfare Act 1954 Aboriginal children were removed under the Child Welfare Act 1947 and subsequent child welfare legislation. However the Commissioner for Native Affairs remained the legal guardian of all ‘native’ children, except those made wards under the Child Welfare Act, until 1963.