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Permission to Take Them
Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines is established. The Governor can order the removal of any child to a reformatory or industrial school. The Protection Board can remove children from station families to be housed in dormitories. -
Period: to
Stolen Generation
Many Indigenous children were removed from their families as a result of various government policies. It was part of the Assimilation, which was an assumption of black inferiority and white superiority. It created the idea that Indigenous people should be allowed to 'die out' through natural elimination, or should be assimilated into the white community. -
Don't Need Permission
The NSW Aborigines Protection Board is given powers to remove Aboriginal children without a court hearing. This power is repealed in 1940, when the Board is renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board. -
Australian Citizenship
The Commonwealth Citizenship and Nationality Act gives the category of Australian Citizenship to all Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, for the FIRST time. At a state government level, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders still suffered discrimination. -
Right to Vote
The Commonwealth Electoral Act is amended to give the vote to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at Federal elections. It ensures all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections, without being pressured to. Despite this amendment, it was illegal under Commonwealth legislation to encourage Indigenous Australians to enrol to vote. -
Referendum: Giving power to the Australian Government
More than 90 per cent of Australians vote ‘Yes’ in a referendum to give the Australian Government the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. -
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children
The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families is established to examine the effects of separation, identify what should be done in response, find justification for any compensation and look at the laws of that time affecting child separation. -
Bring Them Home/Sorry Day
The Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families is tabled in Federal Parliament. The 'Bringing them home' Report revealed the extent of the forcible removal policies, which were passed and implemented for generations and into the 1970s. May 26 has since become known as National Sorry Day. -
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State Government is Apologetic
27 May 1997: Western Australia
28 May 1997: South Australia
3 June 1997: Queensland
17 June 1997: Australian Capital Territory
18 June 1997: New South Wales
13 August 1997: Tasmania
17 September 1997: Victoria
24 October 2001: Northern Territory -
Sympathetic
Federal Parliament issues a statement of deep and sincere regret over the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. -
Land Rights
On Australia Day, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was pitched outside Parliament House in Canberra. Activists were protesting against the McMahon Liberal Government’s statement where land rights were rejected in favour of 50-year leases to Aboriginal communities. The protesters issued a petition in February.