The NLA’s Bringing Them Home Oral History Project was established in the wake of the Bringing Them Home inquiry, aiming to record “the diverse experiences of people directly affected by Indigenous child separation and to shed light on the policy and legislative frameworks that supported the separations”. Initially this project, a recommended outcome of the BTH Inquiry, was intended to include the testimonies of Indigenous people; however then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs John Herron insisted that the collection include white perspectives on child removal, suggesting that the Bringing Them Home inquiry had not provided a “rounded” account of the history of the Stolen Generations. This political intervention has, possibly inadvertently, resulted in creating a resource for researchers on the attitudes and values of white Australians which underpinned child removal policies and practices in the Stolen Generations era.

This paper explores the contested narratives about the Stolen Generations era held in this collection. While providing valuable insights into the experiences and attitudes of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and the vast gulf that separates their perceptions of this era of Australian history, the collection also highlights some of the limitations of the project: whose stories are missing and remain untold?