Apmerengentyele—Our Systems, Our Children, Our Safety, Our Wellbeing

Abstract

Western systems of child protection cannot protect First Nations children. Australia’s current child protection systems were born from a legislated and explicit intention of destroying the culture, language and identity of First Nations children, with the aim of assimilating and eliminating First Nations people. The ongoing overrepresentation of our children in ‘child protection’ systems does not so much reflect inherent risks in our families as it does the systemic failures and harm being imposed on our children and families. To ensure the safety of our children, we need to end the systemic and structural racism within Australia’s child protection systems, empower self-determination and commit to addressing the social, economic and cultural determinants that underpin child safety and protection. To achieve this, we need an effective system of care for our children that is best achieved through First Nations systems of child wellbeing and safety that are leading practice. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle (ATSICPP), which recognises our systems of kinship care, is one such mechanism. However, it is currently compromised, undermined and underutilised across all Australian jurisdictions. Self-determination requires placing full control and decision-making over the well-being and safety of our children into our hands. Our systems have evolved over 65,000 years and are guided by strict obligations and cultural protocol, and laws. As such, they provide the strong foundation needed for the care and protection of our children. This paper uses a First Nations, rights-based analysis of literature to interrogate the historical foundations and ongoing impact of Australia’s child protection systems on First Nations children and families. It then centres First Nations systems of knowledge and practice as the foundation for a call to replace our current child protection systems with a First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system.

1. Introduction

The ongoing shattering overrepresentation of our children in Australia’s ‘child protection’ systems is not driven by inherent risks in our families, but rather by the risks, intentions, failures and harm the system imposes on our families and children (Krakouer 2023; Cripps et al. 2025) The national rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care is alarmingly high and increasing (Productivity Commission 2025) The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) have both reported that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are disproportionately removed from their families not because of higher rates of abuse, but due to poverty, housing instability, systemic disadvantage, intergenerational trauma and institutional racism, all factors deeply rooted in the long-term effects of colonisation (AIHW 2022b; AIFS 2020).

In Australia, current child protection systems were born from a historically legislated and explicit intention to harm our children by destroying our culture, languages, families and identity. The aim was to achieve the assimilation and elimination of us as peoples (CoA 1937; HREOC 1997). Australia’s child protection laws were used as a weapon against our people, with the practice of forcibly removing our children from their families laying the foundation, standards and practices that perpetuate an ongoing crisis (Krakouer 2023). In Australia, any reform of the child protection systems has been limited to culturally responsive practices and policies aimed only at mainstream child protection systems.

However, both nationally and internationally, there has been strong advocacy for a more substantive reform that would employ a First Nations designed and led system aligned with the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (Paki Paki et al. 2024). The Yoorrook for Justice: Report into Victoria’s Child Protection and Criminal Justice System for example, highlighted the ongoing failings and harm of the current system, and recommended reform leading to full control of child services by Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCO) with legislative changes informed by UNDRIP to protect cultural safety (Yoorrook Justice Commission 2023). Until these systems centre our sovereign practices and culture as a critical preventative and protective factor, our children and families will continue to experience preventable harm and trauma (Beaufils et al. 2025; Krakouer et al. 2022).

To understand how best to reform government-designed child protection systems, we must understand the history that created them, and the instrumental standards and practices used by Australia’s First Peoples in child protection, care and development. This paper explores Australia’s history of child ‘welfare and protection’ policies, which produced a genocidal structure for our peoples rather than one founded on the protection of children. It compares this with the foundation of our sovereign systems of care and protection, and the cultural practices and standards that lead to best practice in the safety and well-being of children and families.

2. Research Design and Method

This paper employed a critical First Nations, rights-based and sovereign analysis of the literature to interrogate the historical foundations and ongoing impact of Australia’s child protection systems on First Nations children and families.

First Nations people have been the subjects rather than leaders of research and evaluation about us in different forms since colonisation (Smith 2021; Rigney 1999). A sovereign analysis situates this inquiry within our First Nations worldviews of law, kinship, and collective responsibility (Wilson 2008; Martin and Mirraboopa 2003; Rigney 1999).

This aligns with broader Indigenous scholarship that critiques the colonial logics embedded within research and policy structures. In particular, Anderson et al. (2025) emphasise that self-determined practice requires not just inclusion of Indigenous voices, but a fundamental reorientation toward rights-based methodologies that prioritise sovereignty, self-determination, and cultural accountability (Anderson et al. 2025).

This analysis foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty as central to examining how colonial structures of surveillance, assimilation, and forced removal continue to undermine First Nations systems of child safety and wellbeing (Atkinson 2002; Libesman 2015; Libesman 2013). This contributes to dismantling institutional racism and embedding self-determination within Western research structures (Anderson et al. 2025).

Our research draws on publicly available sources, including:

• Legal and policy documents: Aborigines Protection Acts (1869–1969), the 1937 Commonwealth-State Aboriginal Welfare Conference proceedings, and the Bringing Them Home report (1997).
• National datasets and evaluations: Productivity Commission’s Closing the Gap Dashboard, AIHW reports on child protection, and SNAICC’s Family Matters reports.
• International legal frameworks: UN Charter (1945), Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
• Indigenous-led knowledge systems: Arrernte (First Nations) framework Apmerengentyele (Turner 2023), First Nations authored books and frameworks articulating cultural world views.
• Peer-reviewed academic literature: Research on colonisation, race, child welfare, and Indigenous resistance.

This research design aligns with Indigenous research methodologies that prioritise Indigenous knowledges and concepts of self-determination, and resist colonial epistemological dominance (Smith 2021; Smith et al. 2019; Walter and Andersen 2013; Maldonado-Torres 2007; Moreton-Robinson 2015). It centres First Nations systems of knowledge that are transferred through lived and oral practice (Marika 1999; Marika et al. 2009; Rubuntja and Green 2002; Wallace and Lovell 2009; Kral and Ellis 2020; Rigney 1999; Wilson 2008; Kovach 2021). Using a lens of human rights and justice, this research aligns with calls for state accountability and international law compliance in the protection of Indigenous children (United Nations 1989, 2009).

This paper responds to two core research questions (RQ):

RQ 1. What was the intent of Australia’s historical genocidal policies and practices, and its legacy as expressed in current child protection systems, for First Nations children and families?

RQ 2. What sovereign foundations should underpin a First Nations transformation of child protection systems?

This study drew on secondary data sources selected for their historical, legal and cultural relevance, including legal, policy and rights documents and frameworks; national inquiries; peer-reviewed academic papers; First Nations published and oral cultural knowledge systems. These materials are cited in accordance with Indigenous data sovereignty principles (Maiam nayri Wingara 2018).

This research used a two-part analytic strategy:

(1)

A critical historical and policy analysis to deconstruct and contextualise the genocidal intent and impact of key legislation and policy (Cunneen and Libesman 2000)

(2)

A cultural systems synthesis and analysis, utilising the cultural study of Apmerengentyele (Turner 2023), to produce an alternative sovereign system of child protection.

This research did not require ethics committee approval. It followed ethical guidelines for Indigenous research, including the recognition of cultural intellectual property, the non-extraction of sacred or restricted knowledge, and the right of Indigenous communities to define, control and represent their own knowledges (AIATSIS 2020; NACCHO 2019).

3. Findings

Mainstream Western ‘child protection’ systems were designed to respond to the economic oppression of children and families created by capitalist societies focused on individual profit and competition (Thompson 1963; Humphries 2010).

Wright et al. (2025) extend these critiques into the realm of psychology. They argue that Western attachment theory models, when misapplied and misrepresenting First Nations caregiving, show that Western knowledge systems are inflicting harm by suppressing and devaluing First Nations knowledge, perspectives, and ways of knowing and being (Wright et al. 2025). They argue that despite attachment theory’s purported accommodation of cultural diversity, its mainstream application in policy and practice fails to understand, reflect, or respect Aboriginal relational world view and practices.

Western systems and knowledge have been used as weapons of colonisation, consciously and unconsciously, to dismantle First Peoples’ cultural laws and ways of living (Broome 1996; Hunter 2014; Butlin 2010; Wright et al. 2025).

In contrast to Western systems, First Nations collective interests are valued over the individual. Child care and protection is underpinned by this collective system, which shapes cultural values and responsibilities, social and political laws and structures. It is centred in First Nations peoples’ connection to Country and kinship, and prioritising responsibility and accountability through strict and layered laws and lores (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003; Watson et al. 2025).

3.1. Historical Legacy—The Era of Genocidal Intent

RQ 1. What was the intent of Australia’s historical genocidal policies and practices, and its legacy as expressed in current child protection systems, for First Nations children and families?

Australia’s current child protection systems were founded through violent colonisation, accompanied by a range of laws and policies that collectively established the intentional genocide of Australia’s First Peoples. We call this period the ‘era of genocidal intent’, and it ran from the point of invasion through to 1975 when Tasmania followed other jurisdictions and repealed its Cape Barren Island Reserve Act 1912 (Harman 2024).

The Doctrine of Discovery (Pope Nicholas V, 1455) and Terra Nullius (1788–1992) were originally used by the British to legitimise the dispossession and violent removal of Aboriginal lands and cultures (Quaker Indigenous Rights Committee 2015; Aboriginal Legal Service 2010). The Frontier Wars and massacres (1788–1930s) of First Peoples were commonplace, and justified as necessary for maintaining order and the protection of ‘settlers’ enforcing colonial expansion (Ryan 2025; Deadly Story n.d.). ‘Dispersing’ Aboriginal people was an authorised practice that affected every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nation, and resulted in violence, massacres, rape, chaining, hunting, imprisonment, lynching, torture, poisoning and killing. With more than 400 recorded massacre sites, tens of thousands of First Peoples were killed between 1788 and 1934 (The Guardian 2025; Ryan 2025). Self-defense and formal laws were legal mechanisms used to protect authorities (National Museum of Australia n.d.; Deadly Story n.d.).

The Frontier Wars transitioned towards a system of Aboriginal Protection Acts (1869–1969), which were enforced across jurisdictions to assume full legal control over First Peoples. Child protection provisions were used to dismantle families and culture. Confined to missions and reserves, with restricted freedom of movement and enforced segregation, First Peoples were denied access to education, health care and employment, creating the foundations of oppression and disadvantage that are still used today to continue the removal of children (HREOC 1997; Kidd 2006; McGrath 1984).

Children were raised in families where adults were forced into slave labour for the colonists. They were denied wages and subjected to economic exploitation. Women were used as sex slaves, and men, women and children commonly experienced threats, exploitation, violence, degradation and coercive practices (Allbrook 2022). The forced removal of children was a threat and reality faced daily, a pervasive trauma and truth highlighted decades later in the Bringing Them Home Report (HREOC 1997).

The brutal policies of child protection were enabled by the exclusion of First Peoples from political life, with no right to vote in Australian federal elections until the passing of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 (CoA 1962). The Act also gave the Commonwealth Government power to make policies and decisions nationally about Aboriginal affairs. Although the 1967 Referendum led to a marked increase in the rights and recognition of First Nations peoples, political voice and power remained elusive, and did not secure our self-determination or structural representation (Chesterman and Galligan 1997; Gardiner-Garden 1994; Australian Electoral Commission 2023a).

Many First Peoples today still fail to enjoy full citizenship rights and participation in political life due to limited political representation and the absence of national or regional bodies elected by First Nations people (Dodson 2017; Pearson 2020; Australian Human Rights Commission 2023). This lack of political influence is highlighted by the recent failed Referendum on the Voice to Parliament, and directly impacts critical policies such as child protection (Langton and Calma 2021; Australian Electoral Commission 2023b).

3.1.1. ‘Child Protection’ as the Driver of Genocide

Across Australia, child ‘protection’ was used as a reason to enact the first Assimilation Policy, introduced at the 1937 Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities, which promoted the assimilation of Aboriginal people into white society (CoA 1937; HREOC 1997; Haebich 2000).

“Assimilation means, in practical terms, that, in the course of time, it is expected that all persons of Aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia will live like other white Australians do.” (Hasluck in HREOC 1997, p. 16).

Key resolutions ratified at the Conference included:

• Assimilation Policy. Aimed to eradicate Indigenous identity by structurally designing intermarriage and enforcing the removal of Aboriginal children to be raised in white households (CoA 1937, p. 21).
• Distinction Between ‘Full-Bloods’ and ‘Half-Castes’. Full bloods were considered a ‘dying race’ to eventually ‘disappear’ and Half-castes to be managed through assimilation (CoA 1937, p. 34).
• Forced Child Removal. Reinforced practices of removing Aboriginal children from their families under the guise of providing them with education and opportunities for assimilation (CoA 1937, p. 12). The chief protectors argued that removing children at a young age was essential to break their connection with culture and community.
  Are we going to have one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia? AO Neville (CoA 1937, p. 11).
• Control Over Aboriginal Lives. Continued restrictive measures that allowed governments to control many aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives, including through movement (reserves and permits), employment and marriages to non-Indigenous partners (CoA 1937, p. 8).
• Uniform National Policy. Creation of a uniform national Aboriginal policy ensuring that states followed a consistent approach to assimilation and Aboriginal management (CoA 1937, p. 21).
• Control of Aboriginal Women. Encouraging Aboriginal women of mixed descent to marry non-Indigenous men (CoA 1937, p. 9) as a means of ‘breeding out’ Aboriginal traits over generations. Broad powers granted legalised forced sterilisation of Aboriginal women.

This period of legislation included legal guardianship and control of First Nations children, and legislated child removal policies that resulted in the Stolen Generations (HREOC 1997; Haebich 2000; Read 1981). As a direct result of this, generational harm continues today, with many survivors of the Stolen Generations suffering from psychological trauma, depression, substance misuse, incarceration and suicide, all compounded by the stigma and shame attached to their removal (HREOC 1997; Atkinson 2002; AIHW 2018; Lyons 2022).

While these national policies were progressively repealed or amended by the 1970s, the structural foundations and systemic culture for First Nations child removal remained. It should be noted that up until 1984, Queensland governments continued to provide sweeping powers enabling the Director of Aboriginal Affairs to declare children as ‘neglected’ or ‘uncontrollable’, authorising removal without court oversight (QATSICPP 2018).

Through the period of self-determination in the 1970s, we were hopeful. The Commonwealth Government officially adopted the Policy of Self-Determination (1972), which aimed to recognise the right of Aboriginal people to manage our own affairs and governance. This included the establishment of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and Indigenous-run services (Rowse 2000; Sanders 2002), which played a critical role in progressing self-determination for our people (Panaretto et al. 2014). Our ACCOs continue to play a critical role in voice, self-determination and culturally safe service systems. However, as they were designed under the authority of Western systems and governance structures, and subject to the power of the Commonwealth, some are at risk of perpetuating assimilated service system structures that are still Western-based (Coombs 2023).

During this time, Western systems of governance infiltrated our communities, weakening the authority of Elders and the laws of our land. Western systems have privileged a few and embedded individual structures of power against collective responsibility. ACCOs have been positioned by governments as the authorising structure for our people, assimilating and displacing our sovereign governance and laws for Western structures. As First Peoples, we need to ensure our governance systems are not eroded and displaced by organisational structures. Self-determination for our people and our systems resides in our cultural authority.

A move towards funded Aboriginal Child and Family Services, child-centred frameworks and Children (Care and Protection) Acts occurred in the late 1970s into the early 1980s. However, these largely remained devoid of Aboriginal cultural or self-determination principles at a systemic level (SNAICC 2022; Libesman 2015).

In May 1997, the Bringing Them Home report—the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families—was tabled in Parliament (HREOC 1997). The report formally recognised Australia’s gross violation of human rights through its racially discriminatory and deliberate intent to destroy First Nations families, culture and identity.

The report found that Australia had breached several international laws and conventions, all of which it had voted on and ratified, with acts constituting cultural genocide. These included the United Nations Charter (1945), Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

“The Australian practice of indigenous child removal involved both systematic racial discrimination and genocide as defined by international law. Yet it continued to be practised as official policy long after being clearly prohibited by treaties to which Australia had voluntarily subscribed.”

(HREOC 1997, p. 266).

The Bringing Them Home report called on the Australian Government to issue an apology to those who had been forcibly removed from their families. In 2008, the national apology to the Stolen Generations formally acknowledged the state-sanctioned removal of First Nations children and expressed regret for the pain, suffering and trauma caused. While the apology had emotional and symbolic impacts and was potentially a catalyst for reconciliation, scholars have argued that it did not lead to substantial policy reforms or systemic redress for survivors, and that its impact has been limited by a lack of systemic follow-through on the report’s recommendations (HREOC 1997; Behrendt 2009; Walter and Andersen 2013).

A 2017 review of the report—Bringing Them Home 20 years on—highlighted the lack of progress towards implementing its recommendations (Healing Foundation 2017). As of 2025, only five of the 83 (6%) original report’s recommendations have been clearly implemented, thereby reaffirming the significant gaps in reparations, culturally safe child welfare, and accountability systems (Healing Foundation 2025).

The impact of genocide, control and oppression created enough enduring social and economic environments of risk (poverty) for children and families to perpetuate the ‘justifiable’ conditions for ongoing child removals. Despite significant human rights violations, our legitimacy as a people to manage our own lives and protect our children through kinship and cultural structures continues to be denied. Our legitimacy as parents to our children is under constant surveillance and threat. Our cultural systems continue to be disrupted and eroded. The impact of these historical policies persists today with systemic racism and government failure to invest in the rights and resources needed to ensure dignity and equity for First Peoples and the safety of their children.

3.1.2. Contemporary ‘Child Protection’ Policies and Practices

While general child welfare laws replaced race-based laws throughout the 1960s–70s, we are now living in the period of ‘legacy of genocidal intent’. First Nations children continue to face disproportionate removals due to the ongoing impacts of systemic racism and structural oppression (AIHW 2023a; Krakouer 2023). This is driven by a system that focuses resources on removal rather than prevention, with 85% of child-protection expenditure going to out-of-home care (Productivity Commission 2024; SNAICC 2024). The lack of priority for prevention and kinship carers compared with non-kinship placements (Kiraly et al. 2020; Victorian Ombudsman 2017) contributes to the continued disproportionate removals of First Nations children, perpetuating systemic racism and structural oppression.

There has been some national intent to reduce the number of First Nations children in out-of-home care. The national Family Matters campaign, established in 2016, seeks to end our children’s overrepresentation in out-of-home care by 2040. In 2020, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap added a new 2031 target to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45% (Australian Government 2020). Despite almost 10 years of these campaigns and targets, overrepresentation is worsening, with First Nations children making up only about 6% of Australia’s total child population but representing approximately 41% of all children in out-of-home care (SNAICC 2024). Further, the national rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (0–17 years) in out-of-home care has increased, from 47.3 per 1000 in 2019 (baseline) to 50.3 per 1000 in 2024 (Productivity Commission 2025).

The ATSICPP was introduced in 1984 to give our children culturally safe out-of-home care options with First Nations kin/relatives. Its mandatory usage was one of the recommendations from the Bringing Them Home report, and its implementation has led to more First Nations children being placed with kin and extended family or First Nations carers. However, nationally, only 63.2% of First Nations children in out-of-home care are placed with extended family or other Indigenous carers; 26.9% with non-Indigenous non-relative carers; and 9% in residential care (SNAICC 2024). Further, by 2023, only 32.2% of First Nations children removed nationally were placed with First Nations relatives or kin, and over the past six years, this has not increased, remaining consistent at 32% (SNAICC 2024).

Irrespective of the ATSICPP, most children continue to be placed with carers who are not of their cultural or language background and Nation, perpetuating intergenerational trauma and cultural harm for children and families. This disrupts cultural identity, safety and security, which subsequently impacts the physical and mental health of whole families (AIHW 2022a; Murrup-Stewart and Truong 2024; Nikolof et al. 2025; Black et al. 2024). The Family Matters 2024 report found that the ATSICPP and current child protection systems continue to fail First Nations communities, often reinforcing trauma rather than alleviating it (SNAICC 2024). For example, the Northern Territory (NT) has one of the highest placements of First Nations children with non-Indigenous non-relative carers (SNAICC 2024). Yet in January 2025, the NT Government proposed changes to the Care and Protection of Children Act 2007, allowing courts to overrule the ATSICPP, thereby perpetuating policy-driven harm to children and families.

Children in out-of-home care are more likely to become involved with crime and justice systems, as demonstrated in the Indigenous Health Performance Framework. This found that, nationally, approximately 64% (2600 of 4055) of First Nations youth aged 10–17 on youth justice supervision in 2020–21 had contact with a child protection system in the past five years (AIHW 2022a).

First Nations children involved with child protection systems, especially those also involved with youth justice, experience poorer educational achievement and face persistent mental health, behavioural, cognitive and physical health disadvantages throughout childhood and into adulthood (Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study 2025; Public Health 2024; AIFS 2023; AIHW 2022a). These outcomes have been linked to early trauma, an experience of institutional care and systemic inequities (Emerson et al. 2015; AIHW 2023a; New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice 2022; Beaufils et al. 2025; Pacella et al. 2023).

Gerard and McGrath (2023) state that residential care environments exacerbate vulnerability, which can be one of the key stressors that escalate young people into engagement with the justice system. They further claim that young people in care can be over-policed and subject to criminalisation for minor infractions (Gerard and McGrath 2023), thereby increasing their likelihood of involvement with justice systems. Chamberlain et al. (2025) link the rising rates of youth incarceration among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to ongoing intergenerational and complex trauma that is rooted in colonisation, systemic violence and forced child removal.

The AIHW Child Protection Australia report 2019–2020 (AIHW 2022b) identifies that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are often removed from their homes for reasons linked to socio-economic disadvantage rather than intentional harm, and that substantiated sexual abuse among this group was lower than for the Australian population of children. Appalling housing, economic poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, ill-health and surveillance, all conditions created and/or exacerbated by government policies, practices and structural racism, then provide the reasons needed to justify child removal.

For example, in 2007, the NT Emergency Response was introduced by the Australian Government in response to concerns raised in the Little Children Are Sacred report (Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse 2007). The accompanying legislation, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007, suspended the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Parliament of Australia 2010). However, there was no evidence that child sexual abuse was more prevalent in Aboriginal communities than in the broader Australian population (Australian Crime Commission 2011). The Australian Human Rights Commission Social Justice Report (2010) later found that the Emergency Response was a dangerous politicisation of child protection issues that enabled increased political control over Aboriginal communities and families and reinforced a systemic culture of surveillance (Australian Human Rights Commission 2010).

Collectively, this evidence demonstrates that First Nations children growing up in families experiencing poverty and a range of social issues—created and perpetuated by intergenerational trauma stemming from government policies since colonisation—are more likely to be forcibly removed from their homes and placed in non-kin/relative/Indigenous care environments. From their experience in child protection, they are then more likely to enter the justice system, and have poor educational, health, social and economic outcomes, thereby perpetuating the generational cycle of overrepresentation of First Nations children in out-of-home care.

The policy and practice of child protection in Australia have devastated First Nations children and families. The ‘legacy of genocidal intent’ is experienced in enduring racism, differential treatment of First Nations children and overrepresentation in all forms of institutional systems (child protection and justice). From the Stolen Generations to the NTER, the system can only be assessed as a violation of fundamental human and cultural rights and protections. It is not a system that can be reformed, but rather a system that must be replaced if we are to protect and care for our children.

3.2. Foundations of Transformational Child Protection Systems Change

RQ 2. What sovereign foundations should underpin a First Nations transformation of child protection systems?

The very concept of a ‘child protection system’ is a colonial construct. The history of policies and practices outlined above, by their very design, places First Nations children at risk.

A First Nations transformation of child protection requires system and policy design guided by our cultural systems and authorising structures. This will ensure culturally empowered foundations, governance and practices at all levels. Such transformations can be achieved through land- and kinship-based governance, community-based empowerment, adequate and sustained resourcing, and centring our cultures and standards in systems design, delivery and evaluation (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003).

First Nations child care and protection has evolved over 65,000 years. While not comprehensively represented as ‘systems of child protection’ in peer-reviewed literature, First Nations practices are well represented through books, stories and oral practices (Turner 2010; Wallace and Lovell 2009; Rubuntja and Green 2002; Sorby et al. 2024). Child safety and wellbeing is achieved through a complex lived system of relational standards, ethics and obligations, driven by our own ways of knowing, being and doing (Turner 2010; SNAICC 2024; Martin and Mirraboopa 2003). These ways are embedded in Country, where language, law and culture are held. They inform who we are, how we relate to others and how we care for our children.

What does it mean for us to transform child protection systems through culturally empowered practices?

The Western system is based on a nuclear family model, rooted in individualism and external intervention that includes child removal to enable ‘protection’. By contrast, First Nations child safety and wellbeing is deeply embedded in a societal structure that is a collective and intergenerational system of care and accountability (Turner 2010; Wallace and Lovell 2009; Sorby et al. 2024; SNAICC 2024).

We know a strong cultural identity can protect our children against risk (AIHW 2023b; Verbunt 2021; Black et al. 2024). Our responsibility as First Peoples is to make sure that our current and future generations have this knowledge—to care for Country, for family and to pass this knowledge on to their children. This is central to their identity, safety and wellbeing as a First Nations person.

The attempted genocide of First Nations people disrupted our practice of Apmerengentyele. Violations of our apmere (land), ameke ameke (sacred sites), angkentye (language), arne and utnenthe (plants and animals), and kinship caused profound trauma to our anpernirrentye (people) and utnenge (spirit). There was disruption to our atywerrenge (law), atnengkerre (sacred song, painting and dance), awelye (medicines and healing), akaltye (practices of health and learning), apwelhe (ceremony), and akngerrapate, kwertengwerle and apmereke artweye (leadership and governance) (Turner 2023). Genocide, however, could not be achieved because of the strength and resilience of our ancestral and cultural foundations. Reestablishing the necessary conditions for our families and communities to revitalise and to strengthen our systems of care through cultural empowerment is the priority. This will require authorising our cultural governance, lores and practices (Green 2012; Liddle and Judd 2018; Penangke Alice 2024).

Arrernte1 Elder Dr M.K. Turner articulated Apmerengentyele (Figure 1), meaning ‘from the land’, as the Arrernte Altjerre systems of knowledge, law and ways of knowing, being and doing (Turner 2023). This was built on decades of work from many Arrernte Elders and authors, including, in the books The Town Grew up Dancing (Rubuntja and Green 2002), Listen Deeply (Wallace and Lovell 2009) and Iwenhe Tyerrte (Turner 2010). Collectively, these texts clearly articulated that Arrernte law, also known as Altyerre, is the central law governing Arrernte life and identity, which makes it foundational to how children and families are raised, cared for and protected.

Apmerengentyele represents Arrernte governance, authorities and practices that are critical to the identity and wellbeing, and the safety, freedom and dignity of our children and families as First Peoples. Apmerengentyele is a lived system, not something that can be translated into textbooks, articles or boardrooms. It is held by the land, our language and by the ancestors and Elders (Turner 2023).

Once developed, Apmerengentyele was reviewed by 70 First Nations people from more than 15 Nations across Australia as a framework for others to utilise in documenting, strengthening and revitalising their local first languages and cultural knowledge and practice systems.

To create safety and protection for our children across all Nations, we must hold, rebuild and strengthen the integrity of Apmerengentyele and how this exists for different Nations across diverse colonised realities. These cannot be transcribed into or replaced by Western policy instruments and systems. They must be upheld, practised and revitalised by First Nations peoples. If we do not allow First Nations people to centre culture, kinship and identity in child protection and care models, we will not prevent risk and harm, but rather we will be at risk of perpetuating the damage caused by the current systems (Beaufils et al. 2025; Krakouer et al. 2022; Douglas and Walsh 2013).

A new Child Safety and Wellbeing system requires sovereign control by Nations and communities. Each First Nation has its own articulation of Apmerengentyele with similar cultural and law foundations, but each is particular to an individual Nation. Critical elements, including governance through Elders and the land, are shared across Nations. The relationship between key elements of Apmerengentyele, as an example of cultural systems of care, and a First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system is presented here (Turner 2023).

Angkentye (Language): Anwerne-kenhe angkentye lyete atyeperre anthurre aneme. Angkentye tyerrtye arrpenhe mape-kenhe atyeperre aneme. Angkentye anwerne-kenhe anwerne apmere-le anyernetyeke re aneme atyeperre.

Aboriginal language is sacred for those who speak it; it is given to us by the land (Turner 2023, p. 74). So many of our adults who came through the Stolen Generations as children do not know their traditional lands or language. Our Akngerrapate (Elders) say that we must hold our language, because it holds our culture. This means that speaking, learning, reviving and strengthening our languages are critical to the identity and wellbeing of all First Nations people (Whalen et al. 2022; ANU 2025; First Languages Australia, and Mayi Kuwayu Study Team 2022). For those who have lost language, our old people say it is waiting in the land (Turner 2010; Zuckermann and McKenny 2020).

How is language connected to reforming our child protection systems? Language holds our identity and culture. Our laws and ways of doing and being, our protocols, our standards, practices and expertise in caring for our children are held deeply in our languages across different nations. Language is protective and empowering. A child’s ability to speak and develop their first language impacts their social, cognitive and emotional health and development (ANU 2025; Salmon et al. 2019).

Children learn better, are more self-confident and are less likely to experience frustration and failure when they have the freedom to learn and grow in their First Languages (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 2012, 2021; The World Bank 2021). First Language mitigates risk in education, social and emotional wellbeing and cultural continuity, all of which are preventative measures for child safety (The World Bank 2021).

Akngerrapate (Elders) and Arrekwelenye (Ancestors): The Akngerrapate (Elders) and Arrekwelenye (Ancestors) hold our authority, practices, knowledge and language through the land. Further, our Elders have a direct cultural responsibility to their grandchildren to pass on culture, language and law. They guide how that child is to be raised culturally by continuously teaching the parents, and also teaching and raising the children.

Our Elders are our authority and, therefore, must be the authority of any First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system. Our governance standards require collective leadership, checks and balances, rather than a singular authority (Watson et al. 2025). Key decisions in relation to a child’s safety require deep consideration, and must involve the right voices across our land and kinship structures, with our Elders holding the most senior oversight. A First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system would reflect the governance of the land, creating structures for authority and guidance suited to each region/community.

Anpernirrentye (kinship system): Our ways and systems of society centre our children within a broad kinship structure of care and accountability. From birth, care is shared across extended family and kinship relationships, thereby ensuring a safety net of cultural identity, belonging and oversight (Lonne et al. 2020).

Kinship comes from the land. It gives us our identity, our names (skin names) and the nature of our relationships and responsibilities with everyone in our society. It defines if we are brother, sister, mother, father, daughter, son, or grandparent. Through our kinship system, a child has many mothers and fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and siblings (Turner 2010).

In our system, the whole family has a responsibility to each child, and children are born knowing where they belong and the relationship they have with people, land, sea, animals, plants and countries (Turner 2010). This intergenerational system provides a sophisticated, transparent and structured approach to child development, wellbeing, safety and accountability. When uninterrupted/undamaged, it is protective, it holds our society and is fundamental to the care, protection, identity and sense of belonging for our children (Turner 2010; Kiraly et al. 2014; McConvell 2025). A First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system will have the cultural foundations to support extensive family kinship structures that will sustain the care and protection of children.

As noted earlier, the ATSICPP sought to maintain a child’s kinship connection. However, data and the experience of families show that having this single principle within mainstream child protection systems has not adequately protected First Nations children (SNAICC 2024). The current system denies First Nations systems of care, relatedness, identity and family practices (Wright et al. 2025), which creates inherent risk to our children and families (Walter and Andersen 2013).

Despite the serious overrepresentation of our children in care, current child protection systems fail to fully recognise, value, respect, resource and support kinship carers. The bureaucratic and administrative requirements can be complex, intrusive and culturally unsafe (SNAICC 2024; Funston et al. 2015; Kiraly et al. 2014).

The importance of First Nations kinship relationships connecting children to their Country and first language, and building their identity and family strength, cannot be overstated. Replacing current child protection systems with a First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system that centres and respects cultural kinship structures could drive transformational change in reducing child removals.

While many First Nations people across Australia do not live on their traditional lands for a range of complex reasons, they continue to uphold their cultural responsibilities and sovereign systems through protocols, kin relationships and custodial ethics. Despite this displacement, our identity and wellbeing are maintained through obligations to Elders, Country and knowledge systems (Usher et al. 2021; AIHW 2023b).

“The land, the people, the story—that’s our governance.” Dr M.K. Turner, OAM

(Turner 2023, p. 72).

4. Discussion

4.1. Decolonisation and Healing in Child Protection Systems

Since colonisation, First Peoples have been subject to genocidal intent and colonial instruments of control through threats, violence and pervasive racially shaped surveillance. Racial profiling continues to impact the overrepresentation of children and young people in child protection and justice systems (O’Brien 2021; Sentas et al. 2023). ‘Child protection’ systems have for centuries taken, stolen, threatened and abused our children. Breaking the cycle of harm being caused by historical and current Western systems requires a full systems lens that goes beyond child protection.

Replacing child protection systems for our children is necessary and possible. A commitment to design a system that holds law, policy and practice accountable to children and families across all levels of service and delivery, and that operates through both a First Nations and Western lens of safety and authority, is required.

Modern advocates argue for culturally based, human rights models that dismantle the colonial architecture of child protection, disrupt systemic racism and affirm self-determination (Krakouer 2023; Creamer et al. 2022; Libesman 2015). This is supported by Aboriginal practitioners and researchers who state that the key to transforming child protection is to shift from Western scripted systems to narrative, cultural care rooted in kinship and shared accountability (Wanganeen 2022; Libesman 2015; Atkinson 2002). Stubbs and Rice (2023) also argue that achieving lasting structural change requires dismantling token consultation and embedding Indigenous governance at all decision-making levels.

Today, our grandparents are often holding too much of the burden of care for our children, as so many of our fractured families struggle with the legacy of the ‘era of genocidal intent’. An important part of embedding self-determination in child protection requires a focus on the role and needs of grandparents. It requires a focus on healing and support as grandparents are simultaneously dealing with the trauma, pain and anger of their children and grandchildren, while trying to heal their own trauma (Atkinson 2013). For our men, historical and current racist and disempowering policies have too often eroded their confidence in carrying out their familial and cultural roles and responsibilities within our families (Anderson et al. 2012; Nahwegahbow 2014). As a result, our women have held our communities together. The Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices) report speaks to the burden, challenges, strengths and power of women across First Nations communities (Australian Human Rights Commission 2023).

Despite our strengths and resilience as a people, our children are growing up in a world where their families are living with the complex legacy and impact of intergenerational trauma and generational systemic violence (Atkinson 2013). Our cultural laws and practices are strong when they are upheld, and we must reclaim and strengthen our cultural knowledge, systems and languages for our people to heal.

By throwing a stone in the middle of a deep pool of water, the ripples will spread. Across the land and seas, we are all connected. Our children’s protection and care require whole-of-community healing and wellbeing, in every sense and across all generations.

4.2. A First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing System

To First Nations people, our ampe (children) are sacred; they are at the heart of every family. Children are regarded as equal individuals, not as dependent and submissive, but as part of the central foundation of our culture, society and future.

The foundation of a First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system grounded in our own child-raising practices is a key driver of prevention (Libesman 2015; SNAICC 2022). It will ensure that children at risk have care and support arrangements with and by the people in their family who hold responsibility for their physical, cultural and emotional safety and wellbeing. Such a system would prevent the cultural damage experienced by so many First Nations children placed in out-of-home care away from their cultural kinship structures and support.

Progress towards genuine culturally responsive and self-determined models has been slow and uneven. A fundamental barrier to culturally based reform is the persistence of colonial policy frameworks and legislative structures that prioritise Western models of family and risk instead of Indigenous relational and collective systems. This continues to pathologise Indigenous families rather than address systemic drivers of harm (Libesman 2015; Krakouer 2023), as evidenced by the inadequate implementation and resourcing of the ATSICPP in practice (SNAICC 2024).

Among the many scholars who evidence the need for First Nations self-determination in culturally based child protection systems reform, Stubbs and Rice (2023) emphasise that this relies on government recognition of Indigenous knowledge and authority. However, they also note that settler governance systems routinely fail to trust First Nations leadership (Stubbs and Rice 2023). Further, Paki Paki et al. (2024) show that First Nations-led child welfare services, designed through cultural frameworks and delivered in partnership, are vital to ensure accountability, restore trust and improve outcomes for Indigenous children. If we are to create a new post-colonial First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system in partnership with government, the translation of cultural and Western laws and policies into practice requires monitoring against an impact assessment framework in relation to integrity, respect, dignity, safety and rights.

Many of our cultural practices are sacred and not shared openly with non-Indigenous people (McConvell and Australian Anthropological Associates 2019). Many do not fully understand that we have comprehensive systems of care, protection and accountability to our children (Sorby et al. 2024; AIFS 2020; Lonne et al. 2020), and that these differ from Nation to Nation. We anticipate that this, coupled with the influence of a persistent colonial mindset and institutional racism, means the child protection workforce lacks understanding of, and respect for, kinship systems, cultural protocols and Indigenous healing frameworks.

Further, Western systems can often be foreign to First Nations people (Wilson 2008; Walter and Andersen 2013). Language and cultural barriers, as well as bureaucratic and compliance-driven structures that carry the legacy of colonial control and assimilation, create serious risk (Wright et al. 2025). Unlike Indigenous systems rooted in kinship, collective responsibility and Country, Western models privilege individualism and deficit narratives, reinforcing systemic exclusion (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003; Watson et al. 2025). This creates significant risks to our children, their rights and their protection. It also creates a situation in which there is no shared understanding between all stakeholders of a system that is responsible for protecting our most vulnerable at-risk children.

A self-determined approach to child protection also requires our people to be informed of all Western compliance and legal requirements. This then allows us to create a system that centres First Nations knowledge and practice alongside Western standards, and enables us to fully uphold the rights and safety of our children.

We recognise that replacing the current child protection systems will take time and investment to design, establish and build, and that there will be obstacles and challenges on such a journey. Critical to replacing the current system with a First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system is authorising our Elders and communities to implement the agreed cultural standards and compliance as created by their communities. ACCOs can be well placed to provide the organisational infrastructure needed to support Elders and communities to deliver culturally based child protection systems. However, many are operating within restrictive short-term, competitive tendering funding environments that undermine their autonomy (Krakouer et al. 2022; Stubbs and Rice 2023) and compel them to conform to Western performance metrics, thereby diluting their ability to deliver culturally based practice (Healing Foundation 2025).

The foundation of Apmerengentyele can inform the establishment of a comprehensive national First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing framework. This can be guided by an independent First Nations Elders/Cultural Authorities governance body (representing the diverse Nations across Australia) to develop and oversee the system. Local Elder and governing bodies, Nation by Nation, can then be established to guide a locally relevant system within their communities. Such a system can include an interface between cultural and Western accountabilities to encourage inclusive and collaborative governance in communities, Nations and governments.

Each day, First Peoples live with and are responding to political and racial forces and commentary that demonise our families and children (Thorpe et al. 2025). Governments have denied our legitimacy as Nations with knowledge and expertise (Watson et al. 2025). They have exploited our art, songs and culture for tourism and financial gain, where our worth is calculated as a commodity and our measure of success is based on Western values, while our culture and expertise and rights more broadly are violated (Ruhanen and Whitford 2019). This has created enduring and preventable harm for our children.

A First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system requires empowerment and reform at an individual, family, community, systemic, economic and political level. First Nations self-determination is fundamental to a genuine partnership with government to transform the system into one in which our women and men are empowered together. We need to be given the legitimacy, power and control to design and enact systems of child care and protection, and we must be deliberate in restrengthening these systems. We need to heal ourselves and centre our culture to heal our children and families.

Our children have the right and freedom to know their language, culture and identity. Their safety is paramount, and everyone—individuals, families and community—is accountable with roles and responsibilities so that our children can be cared for within the safety of their culture.

5. Conclusions

Our children’s safety is in our culture, held by our ancestors, our way of being. While our cultures have been under attack, they are the very reason for our survival. Coupled with the traumatic history of policy assault imposed by successive Australian governments under the guise of ‘child protection’, this paper concludes that only a self-determined First Nations Child Safety and Wellbeing system that is designed, governed, monitored and evaluated by local First Nations people—Nation by Nation—can embed human and cultural rights into a system of care and protection for our children.

We must reinvest in our cultures and the empowerment of our land, our men and women, our children and families, and our laws. It will be generations in the making, but the change is underway. This paper demonstrates how current Western child protection systems can be replaced with First Nations cultural foundations that are crucial for the care and protection of our children.

Self-determination is about giving visibility to and reestablishing our own successful systems and practices based on the enduring laws come from the land that we as First Nations peoples uphold. In doing so, we will regain full control and decision-making over the well-being, care and safety of our children.