Making Space for Indigenous Justice in the Child Welfare and Protection Context

Abstract

The Bringing Them Home report clearly demonstrates that colonial intrusion into Aboriginal family life is both a dark chapter in Australia’s shameful past and an ongoing problem for the Australian state. The report offered recognition of past injustices and symbolic atonement for the misdeeds of colonisation, while simultaneously calling for a transformation of the current policies and practices that operate to exclude Aboriginal people from decision-making processes relating to the care and protection of their children (National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families [NISATSIC] 1997, Recommendation 43). In so doing, it called attention to the fact that Aboriginal children remain significantly over-represented within the child protection system across all jurisdictions.