In 1997, the Human Rights Commission made the most notorious
accusation ever directed against Australia. It accused this
country of committing genocide against the Aborigines by
stealing their children. The purported intention of governments
and welfare officials was to institutionalize and assimilate the
children into white society and thus rid Australia of its
Aboriginal people. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized
to Aboriginal people for these policies. This book is based on
an exhaustive examination of the archival records of child
removals and of government policies and laws. It also
scrutinizes the work of the historians on whom the Human Rights
Commission relied. It finds the historical research that created
this interpretation was shoddy and untrustworthy. Aboriginal
children were never removed from their families in order to put
an end to Aboriginality or, indeed, for any improper government
policy or program. The small numbers of Aboriginal child
removals in the twentieth century were almo