First Nations

The legal system is built on a foundation of violence and dispossession, denial of sovereignty and humanity, with the colonial project continuing through policies of protection and assimilation’.

There were between 300,000 and 950,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia when the British arrived in 1788 with 260 distinct language groups and 500 dialects.  Fifteen months after the First Fleet landed, seventy per cent of the Aboriginal people in and around Sydney Cove were killed by smallpox, followed by up to a third of the population of the eastern Australian tribes as the pandemic spread.  With more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people killed in 403 massacres, other diseases and poor diet due to restricted access to traditional food (from land being fenced off, native animals being shot for sport, and the introduction of hoofed animals such as sheep (which trampled and destroyed native plants that had served as staple foodstuffs)), by 1900, the population of Indigenous people had fallen by 84 per cent to 117,000.

Missionaries often settled in remote areas where they would build churches, schools, and other facilities to convert souls and serve the local Aboriginal community. The first mission was established at Wellington Valley in New South Wales in 1832 by the Church Missionary Society. Life on the missions was strictly regulated with Indigenous residents typically required to attend religious services, adopt Western dress codes, and speak English.  Children were often separated from their families to be educated in mission schools, a practice that contributed to the loss of Indigenous languages and cultural practices.

To quell the violence on the frontiers of early Australia, to reduce devastation by disease and to provide Aborigines with a ‘humane’ environment while their race died out, colonial governments introduced systems of ‘protective’ legislation. The first was in 1860 in South Australia, where a Chief Protector was appointed to watch over the interests of Aboriginal people and to ‘smooth the dying pillow’. Similar legislation was passed in Victoria (1869), Queensland (1897), Western Australia (1905) and New South Wales (1909).

The Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 made Victoria the first colony to create an act that allowed the government to totally regulate the lives of Aboriginal people, including where they could live and work, who they could marry, and when they were allowed to go to the local towns. 

The Act changed the definition of ‘Aboriginal’ to exclude those who were ‘half-caste’ (only one parent was counted as Aboriginal), which led to half-caste children being removed from missions and placed in white families or institutions, leading to the start of the ‘Stolen Generations’. 

Between 1910 and 1970 thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families and communities by churches, welfare organisations and governments.  Whilst the exact number is not known, it is estimated that over 100,000 and anywhere from 1 in 10 to 1 in 3 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and fostered or adopted by non-Indigenous families or raised in institutions. Many experienced neglect, physical and sexual abuse and exploitative labour, and were denied contact with their families.

The landmark 1997 Bringing Them Home report by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, found that ‘in institutions and in foster care and adoptive families, the forcibly removed children's Aboriginality was typically either hidden and denied or denigrated. Their labour was often exploited. They were exposed to substandard living conditions and a poor and truncated education. They were vulnerable to brutality and abuse. Many experienced repeated sexual abuse’.

Ten years later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, particularly the Stolen Generations, on behalf of the nation at the Australian Parliament House. He acknowledged that ‘the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments had resulted in the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and ‘inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians’.

In echoes of the lack of consistent commitment of governments to progress the Closing the Gap targets, another eighteen years later, in 2025, the Healing Foundation found that only 6 per cent of the Bringing Them Home report recommendations have been clearly implemented.

Today, over 20,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have been removed from their families to go into out-of-home care.  They represent 43 per cent of the total number of children in out-of-home care.

In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report called for a process of national reconciliation. The Australian Parliament passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991, launching a process of national reconciliation and establishing the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation with the vision for ‘a united Australia which respects this land of ours; values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage; and provides justice and equity for all’.  But few of those proposals have been implemented, and Indigenous people continue to die at alarming rates in prison cells, police vans, or during arrest. 

In the middle of the 2025 Reconciliation Week, a young, disabled Warlpiri man died following a scuffle in a Coles supermarket in Alice Springs after he was “placed” on the floor by two plain-clothed policemen.

Since the Royal Commission, over 600 Indigenous Australians have died in custody.

In 2015, the sixteen member Referendum Council jointly appointed by the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, was set up to advise the government on steps towards a referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution, which led to the Final Report of the Referendum Council published on 30 June 2017 with the Uluru Statement as a preface.  The Uluru Statement states that sovereignty has never been ceded or extinguished and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.  It called for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution and a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations, as well as truth-telling about Indigenous history.

Then in October 2017, Prime Minister Turnbull issued a joint statement with the Attorney-General, George Brandis, and the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Nigel Scullion, rejecting the Uluru Statement, saying ‘the government does not believe such a radical change to our Constitution’s representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states’.  

Turnbill was right.  The 2023 Voice referendum failed to gain a majority in any State and nationally with less than forty per cent of Australians voting yes.  Despite the result, 86 per cent of Australians agree or strongly agree that ‘the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the wider Australian community is very important for Australia as a nation’. 

State governments offer more hope with Victoria leading the way.  

After more than four years and over 1,300 submissions, Australia's first Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry, Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commissionhanded down its final report. It found that the First Peoples of Victoria have endured crimes against humanity and genocide since the beginning of colonisation in Victoria, and they are still being impacted by systemic injustice today as a result. The Commission concluded that colonisation involved widespread massacres, cultural destruction, forced child removals and economic exclusion.

Shortly afterwards, the Victorian government became the first jurisdiction in Australia to sign a treaty with its Indigenous people.  The treaty includes a permanent representative and deliberative body for First Peoples in Victoria called Gellung Warl (‘tip of the spear’ or ‘pointed spear’ in Gunaikurnai language) comprising the continuation of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria; a new Outcomes and Justice Commission (called Nginma Ngainga Wara  - ‘you will do’ in Wadi Wadi language) to evaluate and monitor how effective the Victorian Government is in achieving better outcomes for First Peoples; and Nyerna Yoorrook Telkuna to continue the truth-telling and healing process.

Meanwhile, NSW, Tasmania and SA governments are progressing with their truth-telling and treaty processes, albeit at varying speeds. Following the defeat of Labor, Queensland repealed the Path to Treaty Act 2023, putting an end to the process.

Western Australia has not committed to a treaty process. However, the Noongar native title agreement could be seen as ‘Australia’s First Treaty’ with the Indigenous people receiving a $1.3 billion package relating to land, resources, governance, finance and cultural heritage in exchange for surrendering native title rights and interests.

Ultimately, the ongoing negative stereotyping, cultural bias, discrimination and racism towards our First Nations peoples emanates and perpetuates from our lack of education, engagement, awareness, recognition and appreciation for the Indigenous traditions, values and knowledge around us.  

Please take the actions below to find out how you can be inspired to close this gap.