Call for territories compensation to include Stolen Generation families

A compensation scheme for members of the Stolen Generation has one glaring omission.

The redress scheme covers living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were removed from their families by governments and church missions.

But it does not extend to families of Stolen Generation members who have died, a Senate committee has heard.

In tearful statements on Friday, NT Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Maisie Austin and chairwoman Eileen Cummings said the scheme should be available to descendants of the Stolen Generation.

The one-off payment of $82,000 is for Indigenous people who were taken from their families as children and put into institutions in the Northern Territory and the ACT.

But it doesn’t apply to their children and grandchildren.

“We’re losing people on a regular basis, they’re all saying we’re never going to live to see any compensation,” Ms Austin said.

“They of course suffered, and they should be given that recognition in the form of some compensation, even if it’s posthumously given to their families.”

“A lot of them are concerned about funeral costs. They all are pensioners. Funeral costs are so exorbitant: a lot of them have to go looking for money when their parent passes away.”

Law Council of Australia representative Tony McAvoy SC said expanding the scheme to include family of the deceased would be “a proper way to acknowledge the nature of intergenerational trauma”.

Ms Cummings, who is a survivor of the Stolen Generation, spoke of her own experience after she was removed from her family as a child.

“The community didn’t know what happened to us and for many years people were looking for us,” she said.

“Many of us had to go back to our communities had to go back to our communities, looking for our mothers and looking for our people.

“Our mothers and our people didn’t have any rights at that time, and it was so sad that many of them died with broken hearts because they never reconnected with their children.”

The redress scheme also includes an opportunity for survivors to share their story and receive a personal apology from government.

It was part of a $1 billion Closing the Gap package announced on August 5.