Mapping Stolen Generations Institutions

ABOUT

In 2024 The Healing Foundation began undertaking a redevelopment of the Map of Stolen Generations Institutions. The work of the map connects with the theme through its demonstration of both the foundational violence of settler nationhood, and ongoing sovereign Indigenous resistance. This resource, the only of its kind, attempts to map all known locations of institutionalisation of Stolen Generations children. The original map was an excellent starting point for locating and sharing integral information for many survivors and their personal history, as well as for Truth-Telling as a nation. However, the redevelopment has allowed The Healing Foundation to take the original two-dimensional map and build it out to allow the user to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of Stolen Generations survivors.

There were a few key dimensions of importance when redeveloping this map, including making the map and the data more enhanced, ensuring that users can be led to Stolen Generations Organisations across the country, and building more in-depth information about each site on the map. This process has gone through several key phases, internally and externally, in order to produce a map that survivors, The Healing Foundation, educators, the media and other users can find useful and is a source of truth.

The database used to build the map was created in collaboration with The Australian Centre. The data provides detailed information about each site and has provided valuable information for advocacy and historical work in this space. The map is interactive and allows the user to go on a journey of Truth-Telling and gain knowledge of the lived experiences of Stolen Generation survivors. Through consultation with the Stolen Generations sector The Healing Foundation has continued to prioritise the voices and needs of survivors in the redeveloped map.

PRESENTER

Shannan Dodson is a Yawuru woman, her family are from Broome, Western Australia. She is the CEO of The Healing Foundation; that provides a platform to amplify the voices and lived experience of Stolen Generations survivors and their families. She was previously the Deputy CEO of the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy (NASCA).

She has 20 years experience working in Indigenous affairs and is a strategic communications and engagement specialist. She has extensive skills in management, campaigning, public speaking, media, writing, and community engagement.

She was recently the Co-Chair of the National NAIDOC Committee and worked on the Australian Marriage Equality campaign. Shannan is passionate about First Nations' rights and understanding mental health issues, particularly intergenerational trauma for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

ACCESSIBILITY

If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au.

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THE SERIES

Settler Nationalism and its Discontents

In 2025, the Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series we will explore the fragility, incoherence and contradictions of contemporary settler-colonial nationalisms. We seek to understand the associated politics of race, sex/gender and identity, to analyse the connections between settler colonialism, settler nationalism, and neoliberalism.

Across the series, CPC25 will track the violence of settler nationalism within and beyond so-called Australia. This is a critical juncture. Neoliberalism is dead, but the new is not emerging. The climate catastrophes of colonialism and capitalism loom. Old imperial alliances are revived; new reactionary ones emerge. The nation and its borders are obsessively reasserted.

Sovereign Indigenous people have always been on the frontline of resisting the violence of settler nationalism. CPC25 will foreground trans/national solidarities against settler trans/nationalism, making space to explore resurgent projects of Indigenous Nation-building alongside other possibilities for living otherwise. The series will diagnose the disorders of ‘the nation’ in its present moment. In highlighting the empty, incoherent and contradictory nature of settler colonial nationalism, the series seeks to contribute to its unravelling.