Records Access, Truth and Healing: The Healing Foundation’s Visit to Queensland State Archives

For Stolen Generations survivors, records are not simply administrative documents. They can hold answers about identity, family, culture and belonging, and when accessed with care, they can support truth‑telling and healing.

Why records access matters 

Access to personal and family records is a long‑standing and critical issue for Stolen Generations survivors and their descendants. Records can help people understand what happened to them, where they come from, and how policies and systems shaped their lives.

Yet survivors frequently encounter complex processes, long delays, institutional language and a lack of culturally safe support. Nearly three decades after the Bringing them report, comprehensive and supported access to records remains unfinished business.

The role of Queensland State Archive’s First Nations team

The Healing Foundation visited the Queensland State Archives (QSA) to learn more about records, records access, and the importance of supported, trauma‑informed access for Stolen Generations survivors and their families.

During our visit, we learned about QSA’s First Nations Strategy team, which was established to strengthen First Nations perspectives in archival work and improve access to records connected to truth‑telling and healing. The team’s work focuses on making records more discoverable and accessible while recognising the trauma embedded in how records were created.

Many records relating to the Stolen Generations were produced without consent, within systems shaped by discriminatory laws and policies. Understanding this context is essential to providing respectful and trauma‑informed access for Stolen Generations survivors.

The team’s approach highlights the importance of:

• Providing time and flexibility when people engage with traumatic histories
• Ensuring staff understand the historical and cultural context of records
• Creating environments that feel welcoming rather than institutional
• Prioritising care, dignity and lived experience.
• Mob on Mondays: culturally safe access in practice

One example of a culturally safe approach is Mob on Mondays.

Mob on Mondays creates a dedicated, culturally safe space within the QSA Reading Room for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to access records with appropriate support. It responds directly to common barriers, including intimidating environments, unfamiliar processes and emotionally heavy material, by centring respect, context and care.

Through initiatives like this, archives can become places of connection and healing, rather than sources of distress.

A system that still needs reform

Despite promising initiatives, records access across Australia remains  fragmented and inconsistent. Survivors often need to navigate multiple state archives, child protection departments, adoption authorities and church or private collections.

A survivor’s ability to access their own story should never depend on where they live.

The Healing Foundation continues to advocate for a nationally consistent, survivor‑centred records access system, designed with survivors and grounded in trauma‑informed practice.

Learn more about records access and priorities for survivors.

Read our records symposium report.