The Stolen Generations: The effects did not end when the policies did.

In the quiet spaces between official records and family memory lies one of the most confronting truths of Australia’s modern history.

Between 1910 and the 1970s, it is estimated that as many as one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families under formal government policies of assimilation. These children would later become known as the Stolen Generations — though the term itself barely captures the scale, duration, and human cost of what occurred.

The removals were not accidents of history. They were deliberate, legal, and systematic. Under state and federal laws, Indigenous children were taken from their parents and placed into institutions, foster homes, or with non-Indigenous families. The stated aim was assimilation — to absorb Aboriginal children into white society by severing their connection to family, culture, language, and Country.

For decades, officials justified these actions as being “in the child’s best interests.” In reality, many children experienced neglect, abuse, loss of identity, and lifelong trauma. Parents were often given no explanation, no legal recourse, and no way to trace their children. Entire communities were left fractured.

The effects did not end when the policies did.

The trauma of forced removal continues to echo across generations, contributing to ongoing disparities in health, incarceration, education, and social outcomes. Survivors speak not only of what was taken — childhoods, families, language — but of what was never returned: a sense of belonging, safety, and trust in the state.

On 13 February 2008, the National Apology delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd marked a turning point. It was a moment of national acknowledgement — not of individual guilt, but of collective responsibility. The apology recognised that these policies caused “profound grief, suffering and loss,” and that their consequences are still felt today.

As National Apology Day approaches, the significance of remembering this history remains undiminished. Not to reopen wounds, but to refuse denial. Not to assign blame to those who did not enact the policies, but to honour those who lived through them — and to ensure the truth is neither softened nor forgotten.