Missions, reserves and stations 1788-1968
The government often removed Aboriginal children from missions and reserves, with the aim of assimilating them into a ‘civilised life’. Children were often placed on government-controlled stations, into homes and into apprenticeships. Removing children under specific laws and policies for Aboriginal children persisted until the late 1960s.
Missions, stations, and reserves are areas of land where Aboriginal people lived under varying degrees of control by either religious missionaries or the government.
The early minutes of the Colonial Secretary in 1883 () indicate the policy position that Aboriginal children on Australian missions should be ‘trained to habits of industry’ and placed into homes, as opposed to growing up on the mission, in order for them to lead a ‘civilised life’. This was based on the opinion of the NSW Aborigines Protection Association that children living on missions were uncared for and ‘roaming wild’ ().
Records suggest children were removed from missions and placed in apprenticeships throughout the 1890s.
In 1909, the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) () gave the Aborigines Protection Board (APB) the authority to apprentice out Aboriginal children. In 1915 this expanded to allow it ‘to assume full control and custody’ of some Aboriginal children and remove them as they saw fit (). See SUB0087 for more on child removal by the APB.
The APB was also given control of reserves and managed stations, which were intended to ‘provide some education and training for the children’, such as the Warangesda Station, which held 300 Aboriginal girls removed from their families between 1893 and 1909 (, ).
Children living in camps or reserves were removed from their families throughout this time, with Parliamentarians expressing the view that it would be undesirable to allow them to live in those conditions: ‘it is not a question of stealing the children but of saving them’ ().
Where families refused to move from one reserve to another, the Bringing Them Home Report () suggests that the families would be threatened with removal of their children.
Case study records suggest the practice of removing children from missions and placing them into institutions occurred throughout the 1920s-1960s. For documents and analysis on the closure of missions, stations or reserves from 1969, see SUB0229.