Australia will compensate some survivors of a former assimilation policy that separated Indigenous children from their families.Members of the so-called Stolen Generations in the Australian Capital Territory, the region surrounding the capital, Canberra, and the Northern Territory will receive a one-time payment of $60,000.It’s part of an $800 million program to address the disadvantages faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as a result of the continued trauma of historic family separations.Most Australian states have their own reparation plans, but authorities in Queensland and Western Australia are being urged to do more to compensate survivors of the Stolen Generations.Tens of thousands of Indigenous Australian children were removed over several decades until the early 1970s. It was a deliberate policy to assimilate often mixed-race children into white society.Eileen Cummings, who taken as a child from her family in Australia’s Northern Territory, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that her memories are still vivid.“My mother was watching them take me away in the truck, but she could not say anything,” she said. “Here I am, this 4½-year-old kid on the back of a truck with a patrol officer, and where did they take me? To the Maranboy police station. When they took me away, I just kept crying because I wanted my mother and my people.”In February 2008, the Australian government formally apologized for forcibly taking Indigenous children from their families.Australia’s original inhabitants make up just over 3% of the population and suffer high levels of disadvantage.The government in Canberra last year said it would reset its efforts to improve Indigenous life expectancy, which is about 10 years less than the general population, as well as inequalities in education. 
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