Grandmothers Against Removals NSW (GMAR) recently visited Dubbo to spread their message.

GMAR member Suellyn Tighe said more Aboriginal children were being forcibly removed by child welfare agencies now than ever before in Australia’s history.

More than 14,000 Indigenous children are in out-of-home care in Australia. In NSW, one in ten Aboriginal children have been taken away from their families, the organisations states.

Ms Tighe said first and foremost GMAR was about the safety of children but they wanted to stop kids going into care and get those who already were back with their families.

“We don’t want to have to live through the shame and the stain of the history of the stolen generations again,” she said. 

“I don’t want to have to see my grandchildren, or anyone else’s grandchildren grow up with the trauma we’ve already seen as in the Bringing Them Home Report.”

Part of that was changing what welfare agencies consider a family, Ms Tighe said.

“There’s a difference in what the Aboriginal people view as family and the European construct of family. European is mum, dad and 2.3 kids, whereas from an Aboriginal cultural perspective it’s much like the phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. That’s the closest way we can explain it,” she said.

GMAR has four key demands it wants enacted: to have its guiding principals- an outline of how child protection decision making is made in consultation with the Aboriginal community- rolled out across NSW, a fully funded independent family reunification process, an open and independent review of all Aboriginal children in care cases, and the establishment of a body to address the practices of welfare bodies. 

“We’ve made positive steps towards change and it’s all come about because of grassroots people,” Ms Tighe said.