A class action settlement for descendants of the Stolen Generations in the Northern Territory has received final approval in the NSW Supreme Court, with the Commonwealth to pay family members more than $50 million in compensation.
The class action, which has an estimated 1,200 members, will see complainants receive a portion of $50.45 million in compensation for the trauma caused by the process of forced removal during the Stolen Generations.
The class action was launched against the Commonwealth in 2021 and a settlement was agreed upon in August of last year.
On Monday, the action was officially deemed successful.
The settlement includes a specific group of people, defined as the kinship of deceased members of the Stolen Generations.
It does not include grandchildren of members of the Stolen Generations.
Complainants were categorised into three groups, which under the settlement would each receive differing amounts of financial compensation.
Following the finalisation in the NSW Supreme Court, Shine Lawyers, who represented the complainants, issued a statement that said the case was an opportunity to confront "appalling race based policies" in Australia's past.
"The Stolen Generation is one of the darkest chapters in our country's history, which no amount of money will ever make up for," Vicky Antzoulatos, the firm's head of class actions, said.
"It's our hope though that this settlement will go some way towards helping with the healing process."
In court on Monday, Shine Lawyers barrister Lachlan Armstrong KC said financial compensation could in no way redress the trauma of Stolen Generations descendants, but it was the best the court could do.
"The plaintiffs' lawyers are very conscious that there is something artificial, and perhaps in one sense it might even be thought insulting, in trying to put into money terms the trauma that a person will have suffered when a government agency forcibly removes a child or sibling from that family unit," he said.
The class action was funded by Litigation Lending Service, which said the settlement was an "important step towards a more just and equitable future for all Australians".
A 'long, hard battle'
For Eileen Cummings, the end of the class action process has been a long time coming.
In 1948, when Ms Cummings was four, she was taken from her family home in Arnhem Land and did not see her mother for 15 years.
She said the trauma of being torn from her family at such a young age was still with her.
"To tell me I wasn't allowed to practise [culture] anymore, I wasn't allowed to speak my language, I wasn't allowed to connect with my mother and my people – that's what the government did to us ... of course we're going to be traumatised," she said.
"That still hurts, you know."
She received some financial compensation through a government redress scheme, but said that only making reparations with living survivors of the Stolen Generations did not go far enough.
Ms Cummings, who was the lead plaintiff in the class action, said she believed deceased members of the Stolen Generations deserve just as much recognition as the living.
"[They] went through the same things ... as we did. Even though we've managed to survive, those people didn't, and I didn't think it was fair that the Commonwealth just looked at the living," she said.
"I felt that it was their responsibility to do something for the children of the deceased."
Ms Cummings said news of the class action being finalised was exciting because it had been a "long, hard battle" and signified something greater than the financial settlement.
"We weren't really looking for money, we were looking for the Commonwealth to acknowledge and take responsibility of what they've done to us as children," she said.
