Survivors want students to be taught lessons about the Stolen Generations

Members say that very little has been taught about this part of Australian history - particularly from an Indigenous perspective.

Ian Hamm is the Chair of the First Nations Foundation. Source: HF

A government-funded survivors group has created classroom resources to encourage school students to learn more about the Stolen Generations.

Tens of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and the 1970s under government policies aimed at assimilation.

Making the shameful chapter of Australian history a compulsory part of school curricula was one of the sidelined recommendations from the 1997 landmark report Bringing Them Home.

Now the peak body for Stolen Generations survivors, the Healing Foundation, has developed lesson plans on the painful subject in consultation with survivors, teachers, parents and curriculum writers.

The group has made the plans available to download from its website and offered $700 grants for schools to hold related events to coincide with National Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC Week.

Ian Hamm, a Yorta Yorta man who was removed from his family in 1964, said the kit would help share “real stories” about the Stolen Generations.

"At three weeks of age, I was separated from my birth family and, even though they lived just 50km away, I never knew they existed," he said.

"I never met my mum and it pains me to this day. There are thousands of Aboriginal people just like me and our stories have never been heard.”