After many years of campaigning by Stolen Generations members and advocates, the Western Australian government announced a redress scheme on Tuesday morning.
At the Reconciliation Week Breakfast in Boorloo/Perth, WA Premier Roger Cook announced a fund will be established to provide redress/compensation packages to Stolen Generations survivors.
$85,000 will be available per person, for Stolen Generations survivors removed from their families before July 1st, 1972.
Mr Cook said the redress is "an acknowledgement of past injustices" and will be delivered in a trauma and culturally informed way.
"I am so grateful to be here… We as a government are serious about reconciliation," he said.
The premier acknowledged the "guts and determination" of Aboriginal people working for "true reconciliation".
"No matter what, the fight for justice and rights for First Nations people will continue," he said.
The redress scheme will start operating at the end of this year.
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As chairperson of Bringing Them Home WA, Tony Hansen has for many years called for a redress scheme, alongside many community and justice advocates.
In November 2022, a petition was presented to WA Parliament urging the establishment of a redress scheme for the state.
In May 2023, Stolen Generations survivors marked Sorry Day – the anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997 – with a renewed call for redress in WA.
On Monday, federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said she would continue to push state governments to take responsibility and provide compensation for Stolen Generations survivors, amid growing frustration over delays and inaction.
Queensland is now the only state without a redress scheme.
The policies that created the Stolen Generations operated for many decades and explicitly aimed to remove Indigenous children from their families on the basis of them having any European heritage.
Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, the systematic removal of children of one ethnic group to place with families of another ethnic group is an act of genocide.
One of the architects of the policies, longtime WA "Chief Protector" A.O. Neville, openly stated that the aim was to eliminate Aboriginal people all together by removing children and placing them with non-Indigenous families to "breed out" their Aboriginal heritage.
It is estimated that more than 50 per cent Aboriginal people living in Western Australia today have been directly impacted by the policies that created the Stolen Generations.
