Please be aware that this site contains photographs and references to deceased persons—our apologies to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Please also note that, due to the historic nature of some of the content, the views that are expressed may not reflect the position of KBHAC.
We all realised that when we stepped through that gate, that that little boy didn't exist anymore. He was finished there. He was slowly, slowly put away.
From 1924 to 1970, under the authority of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board, and its successor the Aborigines Welfare Board, between 400 and 600 young boys (and a small number of girls in its first year of operation) were forcibly removed from their families and incarcerated at the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home (Kinchela Boys Home) on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. They were deliberately re-programmed to assimilate them into white Australian society, an act tantamount to cultural genocide.
Kinchela Boys Home is one of the most notorious institutions associated with the Stolen Generations. Conditions within the institution were harsh and hostile. This was a place where physical hardship, punishment, cruelty, alienation and abuse (cultural, physical, psychological and sexual) are documented as having been part of the daily life endured by boys who were kept and made to work there.
It’s estimated that as many as one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
The forcible removal of children from their families and communities occurred because of race-based policies set up by both State and Federal Governments. These children were either put into institutions, adopted or fostered out to non-Indigenous families.
They suffered a huge amount of grief and trauma — losing their connections to family, identity, land, language and culture; most experienced psychological, sexual, emotional, physical and cultural abuses — grief that continues today.
These Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have become known as the Stolen Generations. The Kinchela Boys Home Survivors prefer the term kidnapped.
This map traces the locations of the kidnappings between 1924 and 1969. Each dot represents a boy and where he was taken from.
Note: The information on this map is based on incomplete KBH Admission Records, from which the location of at least 21 children is not accounted for.
The following list has been compiled from available records. We are lucky to have more detailed information on some Survivors, such as photographs, videos and oral histories. Tap the tile to see each Survivor's personal page.
If you would like to add to a Survivor's record, or clarify any details, then please get in touch using one of the methods detailed below.
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