The Stolen Generations do not have a single clear “end date”, but most historians and official institutions say the era effectively ended around 1969, with forced removals under those policies continuing in some places into the early 1970s.

Key timeline

  • From the early 1900s, Australian state and federal governments and church missions used laws and policies to remove many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, aiming to assimilate them into non-Indigenous society.
  • In New South Wales, for example, the Aborigines Protection Act, which underpinned child removals, was repealed in 1969, a date often cited as a technical end point for the Stolen Generations era.
  • Across Australia, similar policies and practices were rolled back through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, with mixed‑descent children still being taken in some areas during that decade.

Why there is no simple “end”

  • Different states and territories changed their laws at different times, so there is no single nationwide year when removals stopped.
  • Even after the most overt removal laws ended, Indigenous children continued to be over‑represented in child welfare and protection systems, and many Stolen Generations survivors and their descendants are still living with the intergenerational trauma of removals today.

Important later milestones

  • 1997: The Bringing Them Home report documented the history and impacts of the Stolen Generations and called for an official apology and reparations.
  • 13 February 2008: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the National Apology to the Stolen Generations and their families in the Australian Parliament, formally acknowledging the harm caused by these policies.

In short: the Stolen Generations era is generally said to have “ended” around 1969–early 1970s in legal and policy terms, but its effects have not ended for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.