The 26 May 2026 marks twenty-nine years since the findings of the Bringing Them Home Report was released. This significant report traced the history of forcible removal of Aboriginal children by successive governments and State institutions.
Since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia,’ stated the report, ‘Indigenous children have been forcibly separated from their families and communities’[1].
And the evidence of this government sanctioned practice is near infinite.
In 1934, the nationally and publicly discussed removal of approximately 100 children from their families in the Northern Territory is only one example of what is now termed the ‘Stolen Generations’. But it is unarguable proof of how Aboriginal children of mixed descent were systematically targeted, taken, and transferred to new ‘white’ families in distant places by a system that claimed to care for their welfare. A program that continued, on a national scale, well into the 1960s.
There is not a single Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander community that has not been forever changed.’ – Ciara Hain, SBS, 2024 [2]
According to the Bringing Them Home Report, this forcible removal was recognised as an act of ‘genocide contrary to the Convention on Genocide ratified by Australia in 1949’, outlining fifty-four recommendations directed at ‘healing and reconciliation, including the provision of reparations and improved services for Stolen Generation members.’[3]
Nearly three decades later, what can be said of the report?
So, nearly three decades later, what can be said of the Bringing Them Home Report’s recommendations for recognition, for accountability, for reparations, and for healing?
In 2025, The Healing Foundation published a follow-up inquiry claiming that by 2015 ‘a scorecard found…fewer than one in ten Bringing Them Home recommendations had been fully implemented with more than half assessed as having been implemented in a limited way or not at all.’[4] The initial 1997 Report made a ‘compelling case for a systematic response, designed around reparations and healing for survivors,’ states the Foundation, ‘since the National Apology [in 2008]…Stolen Generations survivors have testified at more than 20 inquiries, including royal commissions examining institutional responses to child sexual abuse, aged care and disability. Surely their case is made – the case for little or no action is not.’[5]
The report states that both Queensland and Western Australia had still yet to establish an approved Stolen Generations Redress or Reparations Scheme (as of 2025). No national data was given as to how many Stolen Generation victims have so far been financially compensated, though financial compensation was not the sole focus of The Healing Foundation’s inquiry. The onus on Aboriginal communities and First Peoples run institutions to redress the psychological, social, and familial impact of generations of stolen children and their descendants, has been another hurdle altogether.
An Artist’s Perspective on the Stolen Generations’ Impact
I have never understood why they took me away,
So so far away.
My identity and life was taken from me,
And raised in a culture that made no sense to me.
With no mum and dad to guide me through life,
Instead I’ve ended up in trouble and strife.
– Thomas Marks, Gunditjmara/Wotjobaluk Peoples [6]
This quote, drawn from a poem by Thomas Marks, Gunditjmara/Wotjobaluk artist from The Torch, is painted onto his work titled My Story 2018. The poem captures the emotional, psychological, and socioeconomic impact forcible removal had on the children torn from their families. Like a domino effect, this impact has carried on well into their adult lives.
Marks has openly discussed his ongoing journey as one of many Stolen Generations children. In an interview with 3KND in 2020, he told the program how ‘he wasn’t able to grow up on his traditional country’, yet, as an adult, ‘he is now reclaiming his Aboriginal identity through art’.[7]
The power of Mark’s work is the emphasis on both a deeply personal as well as collective healing.
This artwork tells a story of a group of Indigenous men sitting around a healing circle’, states Marks, about his painting titled Yarning and Healing 2021. ‘[Y]arning about growing up as a Stolen Generation child. They yarn about being survivors and becoming proud, black and deadly Aboriginal men today.’
Heavily ‘motivated by the injustices of his past’, Marks states, “[i]t wasn’t my choice, it’s something that was forced upon me, I not only get inspiration from my Stolen Generations background but through my subsequent life experiences in trying to connect back to my identity, culture and Aboriginality’. [8] And it’s been through painting and writing that Thomas Marks has retained focus on lessening the divide and healing the wound. ‘When I complete a painting, I feel I have achieved a little bit more of the healing process. It gives me a sense of belonging; a knowing of who I really am.’
[1] Various Authors, 1997. Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, NSW, p.22
[2] Hain, Ciara 2024. Stolen Generations survivors urge action on redress schemes, 14 June 2024.
[3] Hain, Ciara 2024. Stolen Generations survivors urge action on redress schemes, 14 June 2024.
[4] Various Authors, 2025. ‘Are you waiting for us to die?’ The unfinished business of Bringing Them Home, The Healing Foundation, p.13
[5] Various Authors, 2025. ‘Are you waiting for us to die?’ The unfinished business of Bringing Them Home, The Healing Foundation, p.4
[6] Artwork: Thomas ‘Marksey’ Marks, Wotjobaluk/Gunaikurnai peoples, My Story 2018, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 49 cm.
[7] (No Author Stated), 2020. Thomas ‘Marksey’ Marks is motivated by the injustices of his past as a stolen generation child, May 18, 2020.
[8] (No Author Stated), 2020. Thomas ‘Marksey’ Marks is motivated by the injustices of his past as a stolen generation child, May 18, 2020.