Nearly 30 years after a landmark inquiry into tens of thousands of Aboriginal children being forcibly removed from their families, barely any recommendations aimed at healing and redress for their trauma have been enacted, according to a new report.
The report, Are You Waiting for us to Die?, commissioned by the Healing Foundation, which supports and advocates for Stolen Generations survivors and their families, found just 6% of recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report, tabled in 1997, have been implemented.
Among the recommendations was the recording of the oral testimony of survivors, the distribution of compensation and reparations for survivors and their descendants, state and territory police apologies for their role in removals, as well as Indigenous-led commemorations or memorials.
The Healing Foundation’s chief executive, Shannan Dodson, said many of the Stolen Generations survivors were ageing: “We have already lost too many survivors, even in the last few weeks,” Dodson said.
“There must also be ongoing support to the many Stolen Generations organisations across the country that have the expertise and knowledge to provide holistic, culturally safe and trauma-informed responses to the needs of survivors.”
Among the Healing Foundation’s 19 recommendations are improved records access, family tracing and reunification research with a call to ensure Indigenous data sovereignty and improved access for survivors and their families seeking government and church-held records.
The authors condemned Labor and Coalition governments’s failure to implement wide-ranging recommendations into improving the lives of Stolen Generations survivors and their families, labelling the response “woefully inadequate” that has created “further trauma and distress.”
It urged Western Australian and Queensland governments to enact reparation schemes for survivors, calling the recommendations “urgent unfinished business”, while calling on other jurisdictions to “revisit” their schemes to ensure survivors had appropriate eligibility and access to schemes.
The report said all governments, police, churches and other agencies and organisations must meet their moral obligations to support survivors of the Stolen Generations, many of whom have waited decades and have given evidence at repeated state, territory and national inquiries.
The Healing Foundation also urged state and territory police services to apologise over their role in implementing the policies that led to forced child removals.
The Northern Territory police commissioner apologised to Aboriginal people at the Garma festival last August while, in 2018, the WA police commissioner also issued a public apology for their “wrongful actions”.
The Healing Foundation’s chair, Prof Steve Larkin, said many survivors are ageing with complex health and wellbeing needs due to trauma with worse health and equity outcomes than other Australians.
“They are the gap within the gap. Yet we know survivors are often not accessing necessary services due to fear of re-traumatisation,” Larkin said.
The report refers to the Bringing Them Home’s 54 main recommendations but counted 83 total recommendations when all the individual recommendations are counted.
It said there were “systemic failures” in implementing the 83 recommendations from the inquiry, with only five clearly enacted, 45 not been implemented at all, while 21 of the recommendations were passably or somewhat enacted.
It found that the status of 10 recommendations were “unclear” and one is no longer applicable.
Aboriginal children were systematically taken from their families, communities and culture, many never to be returned, under assimilation laws and policies adopted by all Australian governments until 1970s.
Children were put into institutions, fostered or adopted out to non-Indigenous families. Many suffered harsh, degrading treatment and sexual abuse. It is estimated between one in 10 and possibly as many as one in three Indigenous children were removed from their families between 1910 and 1970.
