The Western Australian government has announced a redress scheme offering payments of up to $85,000 to survivors of the Stolen Generations, making WA the second-last Australian jurisdiction to provide such compensation.

Premier Roger Cook made the announcement Tuesday morning at the Reconciliation Week Breakfast in Boorloo/Perth.

“No amount of money could ever make up for the experience of Stolen Generations members and their families, and the ongoing effects on people’s lives,” Cook said.

The scheme will provide compensation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families in Western Australia before July 1, 1972. Until now, only WA and Queensland had not implemented a compensation scheme for these individuals.

The announcement follows years of advocacy from survivors and their supporters. The federal “Bringing Them Home” report, released in 1997 by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission), played a key role in bringing attention to the practice of “forced removals.”

However, the report has faced scrutiny in academic circles. Dr. Stephen Chavura, academic, author, and political commentator, said the report “was subject to very rigorous scholarly criticism” upon release. He noted that it failed to provide a comprehensive account of the circumstances surrounding child removals.

“There is hardly any mention in the report of the fact that the overwhelming majority of children were taken because they were being abused, neglected, even in some horrific instances, prostituted out,” Chavura said. “There were even accounts of—again, something that was very common in the 19th century—infanticide against half castes. And it wasn’t unusual for parents to willingly hand their children over because they knew they’d have a much better life outside of the Aboriginal camp.”

Historical figures such as Rev. John Brown Gribble were the first Europeans involved in responding to the plight of abused Indigenous women and mixed-race children. Gribble, a Christian missionary born in Cornwall in 1847, came to Australia to work among the Aboriginal population. He described their traditional lifestyle as “the lowest type” of savagery, though he criticised European settlers for introducing alcohol and other destructive influences.

Gribble observed that alcohol restrictions imposed on Aboriginal people led many Indigenous women to turn to prostitution in return for liquor, sometimes at the bidding of their tribesmen. Consequently, Indigenous women would give birth to “half-caste” children and were often pressured to either abandon their newborns or leave the tribe with them.

Gribble advocated for the establishment of mission stations, such as the Warangesda Mission, to offer shelter, food, and Christian instruction to vulnerable women and children.

Gribble recounts:

…these unfortunate children, many of them with well-formed and attractive features, and doubtless possessing minds capable of deep and thorough cultivation, are allowed to run as wild as the emu and kangaroo—and this state of things existing in a country which boasts a Christian Government, and whose churches contribute large sums annually towards the support of Missionary enterprises in far distant lands!

And again, quoting the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘I have recently visited some of their camps on Murrumbidgee, and found black women and numbers of their half-caste children in a state of the most melancholy destitution, deserted by the male members of the tribe; for I find that when the black girls are ruined by white men, so-called, they are then as a rule left to their own dread resources, without food, and nearly naked. And these poor creatures were at the mercy of every white scamp and vagabond. And what, I ask, is the consequence?

The up-rising of a race of wild half-castes in the very midst of a Christian community. And I speak within bounds when I say there are hundred of these young half-castes on the creeks and rivers of Riverina running wiles as the emu and kangaroo, with no idea of anything above or beyond themselves and their immediate surroundings. ‘Like brutes they live, And like brutes they must die,’ unless rescued by true Christian charity.

Rev. John B. Gribble, Black But Comely: Glimpses of Aboriginal Life in Australia

Gribble’s work was motivated by a belief in lifting Indigenous Australians out of what he saw as degradation through Christian faith and structured care. In one instance, Gribble once found a campsite of eleven abandoned women and children, who, in their desperation, accepted his offer to join him, even undertaking a 200-mile journey to escape their conditions. He took some of the young women into his own home for care, and this experience deepened his conviction to establish mission stations for the protection and welfare of abused and abandoned Aboriginal women and children.

Gribble noted that once word spread of the refuge at Warangesda—his “House of Mercy”—abandoned women and children began arriving in search of food and shelter. Despite limited space and resources, he admitted them out of compassion. Over time, more Aboriginal people came from across the region—including the Darling, Lachlan, Murray, and even the distant Naomi—drawn by the hope of safety and care. Many chose to stay.

The sad truth in Rev. Gribble’s account is that early Australians—both White and Indigenous—abandoned their children because of skin colour. But this goes beyond skin; it’s a matter of sin. What we must recognize is not only the universal brokenness of humanity but also the power of Christianity to overcome and remedy that sin.

It was Christianity that compelled Gribble to journey to Australia as a missionary to the Aboriginal people. It was Christianity that led him to see Indigenous Australians as equals, worthy of respect, care, and kindness. It was Christianity that motivated him to establish mission stations for abandoned women and children, and it was Christianity that transformed their lives for the better.

You can read more about Rev. Gribbles’ firsthand accounts here.