These policies use outdated and derogatory language and beliefs/theories like ‘half-caste’ or ‘assimilation’. These words and beliefs are highly offensive, however please note they are mentioned throughout this article in order to explain and understand the past and how it affects the present.
The history regarding the legislation and separation of Aboriginal children from family, community, Culture and Country in Victoria is outlined in the Bringing Them Home Report.6 The following section uses historical records to expand on the legislation that was in place from 1869 to remove Aboriginal children in Victoria with an understanding that removals occurred prior to this time. It is important to note that historical records do not detail a complete and accurate history of the numbers of Aboriginal children separated from family or the policies and practices that allowed removals. As such the information below is not a complete history of Stolen Generations in Victoria but that which could be located from a preliminary search of historical records held in various state and national archives.
Please be advised that some of the terminology within the quotes and references from the historical records used in this section may be considered derogatory or offensive. The terms used represent historical attitudes towards Aboriginal people and does not represent the current views of those involved in authoring this report.
Legislation, regulations, gazettes, committee reports, law
This listing describes the major provisions of Victorian legislation from the Aborigines' Protection Act of 1869 to the Aboriginal Lands Act of 1970. The Acts and their accompanying regulations, (until the repeal of the last of the protection acts in 1967 by the Aboriginal Affairs Act), state where Aboriginal people could live - or not live, and set out restrictions on movement, marriage, employment, earnings and ownership of property. In addition, children's welfare legislation underpinned the removal of Aboriginal children from their families and communities.
1915: NSW Government gains power to remove Aboriginal children from their families
Stolen Generations members Cecil Bowden, Manuel Ebsworth and Michael Welsh, accompanied by Jason Pitt and Pastor Ray Minniecon, in front of the gate from Kinchela Boys Home, at the National Museum of Australia
The 1915 amendments to the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 gave the New South Wales (NSW) Aborigines Protection Board the power to remove any Indigenous child at any time and for any reason.
The phrasing of one amendment was so broad as to enable any interpretation by the Board’s inspectors, and led to thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their parents on the basis of race alone.
This government-sanctioned practice was widespread across Australia, and created tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of what are now known as the Stolen Generations.
Section 13A, Aborigines Protection Amending Act, No.2 of 1915:
The Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best.
The Board for the Protection of Aborigines was established by the NSW Government on 2 June 1883. As described by then Premier Alex Stuart in a Cabinet minute, the Board was to fulfil:
the duty of the State to assist in any effort which is being made for the elevation of the race, by affording rudimentary instruction, and by aiding in the cost of maintenance or clothing where necessary, as well as by grants of land, gifts of boats, or implements of industrial work.i
The Board operated without legislative authority until 1909.
Initially, its activity was limited to those areas identified by the Premier, such as issuing rations (though the amounts issued were less than those issued to whites), clothing and blankets, and the creation of reserves for Indigenous people. It also purchased boats and fishing equipment for coastal Aboriginal people, and occasionally seed and farming equipment for those who lived on inland reserves.
The Board was keen to support the creation of reserves, especially if there was the potential for agricultural production, which they saw as a civilising activity.
Growing increasingly ambitious, the Board began to seek greater control over the lives of Indigenous people. It achieved this with the 1909 Act, which provided for all reserves and stations and all buildings to be vested in the Board.
The Board had the power to: move Aboriginal people out of towns; set up managers, local committees and local guardians (police) for the reserves; control reserves; prevent liquor being sold to Aboriginals; and to stop whites from associating with Aboriginals or entering the reserves. It even retained ownership of the blankets it distributed.
The Board had sought the power to remove children, but the 1909 Act only gave it the same powers that applied to neglected white children. The 1915 amendments gave it the power to remove any child at any time and for any reason.
The rationale for the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents was part of a broader policy framework known as assimilation.
Non-Indigenous Australians had convinced themselves that Aboriginal people were a ‘dying race’, and that those remaining, especially those of mixed parentage, would be better off assimilated into ‘white’ society.
Babies were sent to the United Aborigines Mission Home in Bomaderry; girls were sent to the Cootamundra Girls Home and boys to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home near Kempsey.
While the Board asserted that children received care and education at these institutions, oral histories from the children themselves show the homes to be harsh and desolate places, offering a limited future. The children were brought up to reject their Aboriginal heritage.
Many other children were sent to institutions, which received both ‘white’ and Aboriginal children. In such institutions, retention of Aboriginal identity was even more difficult and many children would have grown up unaware of their Aboriginal heritage.
Abuse of these children was widespread and commonplace.
Many children were fostered or adopted by white families, where most lost all connection to their Aboriginal identity and heritage and were even less likely to remain with their siblings.
One of the original front gates from the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home
The Act had a disastrous impact on Aboriginal families and culture. The 1997 Bringing Them Home report found that children removed from their families were disadvantaged in the following ways:
Because of poor record keeping, no one knows the precise number of children forcibly removed under the Act, or under other similar legislation deployed around the country. Estimates vary.
Peter Read, who has carried out extensive research on the removal of Indigenous children in Australia, has suggested a figure of up to 50,000 people ‘would not be unreasonable’.
The Bringing Them Home report suggests a maximum figure of one in three Indigenous children were removed and a minimum of one in 10, and stated that no Indigenous family is untouched by forced separation.iii
The lack of accurate records (some of which were deliberately destroyed or not created in the first place) also prevents many family members wishing to be reunited from finding each other.
One of the main recommendations from the Bringing Them Home report was for the government to make a national apology to the Stolen Generations. This finally took place on 13 February 2008 and is another featured moment.
The Aborigines Protection Act was finally repealed in 1969 but the legacy of the legislation and that of other states endures among the thousands of Stolen Generations in Australia. Many remain deeply traumatised by their experience as children. Because this trauma can be trans-generational, these policies continue to affect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community today.
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Over the last 100 years there have been several shifts in the policy relationship between the Australian Government and Australia’s Indigenous people. The notional citizenship ascribed to Aboriginal people upon first settlement at the end of the 18th century was eroded by colonial state governments in the 19th century—with dispossession from land being followed by dispossession from family.
With federation in 1901 there were few significant changes. State government policy and legislation had an overriding influence on Aboriginal Australians with the Commonwealth involved in a secondary manner through legislation that limited access to citizenship and welfare rights, often in terms of degree of descent and in legislative definitions of Aboriginality. In the mid 20th century a rhetorically more benign period of assimilation was ushered in, but laws, including laws framed by the Commonwealth Government that had responsibility for the Northern Territory—intended to ‘protect’ or advance people’s ‘welfare’ quickly became laws which further alienated Indigenous people. Indeed, during this period the removal of children from Indigenous parents shifted from being an ad hoc state practice to a strategy agreed on by all governments; state and federal.
In the 1960s, as more voices, particularly Indigenous ones, drew attention to the lack of rights and the meagre achievements of the assimilation policy, the Commonwealth began to reform the system within its own jurisdiction, removing various legal liabilities it had imposed, or let be placed, upon Indigenous Australians and sponsoring a referendum which cleared the way for greater Commonwealth involvement in the policy area. Successive Commonwealth governments then led policy in this area through phases underpinned by expressions such as ‘self-determination’, ‘self-management’, ‘reconciliation’, ‘practical reconciliation’ and the present ‘closing-the-gap’. These were punctuated with the setting up and dismantling of several different administrative and consultative mechanisms, and woven through with issues such as how to facilitate the gaining of socio-economic equality and the recognition of land and other rights.
This background note provides an overview of legal, administrative and political developments in the Commonwealth (and to less an extent in the state and international) Indigenous affairs arena from 1992 to the present day. A companion paper, Overview of Indigenous Affairs: Part 1: 1901 to 1991, traces developments prior to this period.
The paper is structured by year, with change of federal governments marked by a box offering a brief overview of developments during that government’s term. Entries have been chosen if they have been judged significant developments in public policy in the area of Indigenous affairs. Items under each year are not strictly chronological and to keep the focus on Commonwealth developments, state and international entries are generally mentioned at the end of each year section. Acts named can be assumed to be Commonwealth Acts unless the name of the state follows in parenthesis.
Broadly speaking, there were three types of spaces set aside by different governments specifically for Aboriginal people to live on. These definitions varied between each state and territory, but they can loosely be defined as:
Point McLeay Mission, 1860. The mission included a school, church and community housing. Photograph by Herbert Read, AIATSIS Collection READ.H05.DF-D00025887.
Missions were usually under the control of churches and missionaries while a station or reserve was typically run by the government. Missions, reserves and stations were often strict and harsh, with government ‘protectors’ controlling the lives of Aboriginal people.
The reserves and missions had strict rules regarding what Aboriginal people could and could not do. Aboriginal people were not allowed to speak language or continue traditions and ceremonies and were punished if they were seen doing these things. As a result, a lot of language, culture and traditions were taken from us by the acts of colonisers.
Resistance Fighters
Unit 1: Fronter wars & warriors 1780s - 1920s
001_01_frontier_war_warriors (0)
001_01_pemulwuy_case_study.pdf (2.73 MB)
001_01_study_notes.pdf (8.23 MB)
1830: The ‘Black Line’ – settler force attempts to corral Aboriginal people on the Tasman Peninsula
Residence of the Aborigines, Flinders Island by John Skinner Prout
From the first recorded contact between Europeans and Tasmania’s Aboriginal population in 1772, relations between the two peoples were hostile.
By 1830 a virtual state of war existed and many settlers were demanding that something decisive be done.
In response, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur ordered thousands of able-bodied settlers to form what became known as the ‘Black Line’, a human chain that crossed the settled districts of Tasmania.
The line moved south over many weeks in an attempt to intimidate, capture, displace and relocate the remaining Aboriginal people.
The plan failed in the short-term but it ultimately allowed Europeans to take control of the region.
Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania, George Arthur, September 1830:
The community being called upon to act en masse on the 7th October next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile tribes of the natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the settlers … Active operations will at first be chiefly directed against the tribes which occupy the country south of a line drawn from Waterloo Point east, to Lake Echo west …
Until about 12,000 years ago low sea levels meant that Tasmania was joined to the Australian mainland by a land bridge. The original Tasmanians settled the area by migrating from mainland Australia across this bridge an estimated 40,000 years ago.
When sea levels rose due to the vast melt that followed the end of the last ice age, the land bridge flooded to form Bass Strait. Tasmanians, on the island they called Trowunna, developed in isolation from other mainland Australian Aboriginal nations.
The environment was resource rich, providing excellent hunting grounds and fresh water sources for the Tasmanian Aborigines. Prior to European colonisation, there were up to 15,000 Aboriginal people living in nine nations.
While Abel Tasman was the first European to map parts of Tasmania, naming it Van Diemen’s Land in 1642, the first documented contact between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans occurred in 1772.
French sailors, led by Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, came ashore on the east coast of the island and encountered members of a coastal tribe. This first contact quickly became hostile, and at least one Aboriginal Tasmanian was killed.
Whaling and sealing were the first European industries in Australia after British colonists and convicts began arriving from 1788. The movement of ships through the Southern Ocean led to further contact between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans, especially on small islands off the coast.
These Europeans were responsible for introducing diseases into the Tasmanian community, as well as abducting women and children from coastal tribes to be used as ‘wives’ and labour on ships. This devastated the Aboriginal population.
The first permanent European settlement in Tasmania was at Risdon Cove in 1803. The British established the settlement not only to expand their Australian colony but because they were concerned that the French, with whom they were at war, might try to claim the island.
The British population in Tasmania consisted mainly of military personnel and convicts, and a small number of free settlers. The initial population numbered fewer than 3,000. However, by 1830 it had increased to about 23,500.
A rapidly growing British population in Tasmania and the ongoing destruction of Aboriginal tribes by disease, dispossession and violence led to intense conflict between the two groups. Tasmanian Aborigines were vehemently opposed to British expansion and its impact on their home and communities.
By the mid-1820s the situation had become desperate for Aboriginal people, whose numbers had fallen to fewer than 2,000 by about 1818.
Nearly one million sheep had been moved into prime grazing land that was also the native habitat of Aboriginal food sources like kangaroos and other native animals. The sheep destroyed local ecosystems and disrupted food and water sources.
In about 1824 the ‘Black War’ began. The most extensive conflict in Australian history, the Black War was extremely violent. Settlers drove Tasmanian Aborigines from their lands, murdering many. Tasmanian Aborigines also attacked and killed settlers and their families, raiding houses and farms for food and resources, and trying to drive out the British.
Most of the frontier conflict was concentrated on the traditional lands of four nations – the Oyster Bay, Big River, North Midlands and Ben Lomond peoples. The land in this region was extremely productive and was quickly occupied by European settlers.
Some of the most famous Aboriginal resistance leaders from these nations were Tongerlongter, Montpeliater, Mannalargenna, Umarrah and Wareternatterlargener.
Colonel George Arthur took up office as Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania in 1824, just as hostilities with Tasmanian Aborigines began to have a significant impact on the British population of the island.
Initially, Arthur dealt with Tasmanian Aborigine resistance-fighters by treating them as criminals and bringing them before the courts for punishment when they were caught.
By 1826 this approach was proving fruitless, and Arthur declared all Aboriginal resistance-fighters to be insurgents, meaning that soldiers and police could raid Aboriginal camps without provocation to arrest and detain any Tasmanian Aborigines they found.
Many Tasmanian Aborigines were shot on sight, including women and children, leading to further escalations in retaliatory violence.
In 1828 the fighting had become so vicious that Arthur declared martial law in the settled districts, labelling Tasmanian Aborigines as ‘open enemies’ of the state and giving them no protection under the law.
In 1830 Arthur issued his now famous proclamation (pictured below), implying equality under the law for both black and white citizens, in an attempt to calm the escalating situation. This equality was, however, non-existent, with white people seldom properly punished for the same crimes for which Tasmanian Aborigines were hanged.
By 1830 all attempts to quell the violence were failing. Arthur was openly criticised by settlers who felt he wasn’t doing enough to protect them and their assets, and the issue was often discussed with passion in the colony’s press.
In September 1830 under pressure from the advisory Aborigines Committee, made up of private citizens who threatened to take matters even further into their own hands, Arthur called for a leveé en masse (a large conscripted force of able-bodied men).
The leveé, soon called the ‘Black Line’, was designed to force the Oyster Bay, Big River, North Midlands and Ben Lomond nations from their lands.
Colonists would form a line stretching across the settled districts and move south, pushing the local Tasmanian Aborigines onto the Tasman Peninsula where they could be rounded up.
From there they would be relocated to Tasmania’s offshore islands, putting an end to their resistance.
The authorities had estimated that the number of Tasmanian Aborigines in these settled districts might be in the low thousands, based on the damage to European settlements they had done.
The reality was that most of the population had died or moved to other districts, and it is likely that fewer than 300 remained.
The Tasmanian Aborigines who were still on their traditional lands were very organised and used guerrilla warfare tactics to inflict high levels of damage despite their low numbers.
On 7 October 1830 more than 2,200 settlers, military, police and convicts, reported to seven prearranged locations across the settled districts. The largest force ever mobilised against Aboriginal people anywhere in Australia, the line represented about ten per cent of the European Tasmanian population.
The costs associated with this operation were huge, amounting to more than £30,000, about half of the revenue collected in the colony that year.
Over a number of weeks, three separate lines of men moved slowly across the Tasmanian landscape. While there were sightings of Tasmanian Aborigines, the line did not have much success in forcing them to the south, with most slipping back into their traditional lands.
Only two Tasmanian Aborigines were documented as captured, and the same number recorded as killed during the operation.
While the Black Line was considered a logistical failure, in the long term it did have the effect desired by government authorities and settlers.
The scale of the operation, along with ongoing violence and disruption from Europeans, troubled the Tasmanian Aborigines and they began to avoid living in the settled districts. Most were eventually persuaded to surrender to the authorities.
George Augustus Robinson, an Englishman whom Governor Arthur had appointed as conciliator to the Aboriginals in 1829, often negotiated this surrender.
Robinson learned some of the local Aboriginal languages, and attempted to form cordial relationships with people in the settled districts. He frequently travelled with other Aboriginal Tasmanians, like Truganini, using them as intermediaries and representatives who could convince groups to relocate.
The small population of about 200 Tasmanian Aborigines who remained in the settled districts after the line were gradually removed to Wybalenna, a settlement on Flinders Island in Bass Strait run by Robinson.
Confined to poor accommodation, exiled from their homes, suffering emotional trauma, plagued by disease and severely malnourished, most of those at the settlement died within a few years.
By 1847 only 40 people still survived at Wybalenna. Considered the ‘last remaining’ Tasmanian Aborigines, this small group was relocated to the Tasmanian mainland at Oyster Cove. By 1876 all but one of them had passed away.
Despite the savage reduction in their numbers and widespread attempts by settlers to remove all Tasmanian Aborigines from the colony of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Aborigine in the state today is thriving. According to the 2016 census 23,580 people in Tasmania identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
Culture and traditions, passed down by the Aboriginal survivors of early European violence, are alive and well. Traditional skills such as basket and necklace making and mutton birding are prominent in the community, who also participate in ceremony and learning and sharing language with younger generations.
