Archie Roach, who has died aged 66, was an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist and writer, whose most famous song, Took the Children Away, described his own painful life story – and in the process helped to educate Australians about one of the darkest chapters in their history. It won him two Aria awards (Australia’s equivalent of a Grammy) and an International Human Rights Achievement award, and established him as one of Australia’s most distinctive and celebrated performers, who would tour alongside Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg and Patti Smith.
He was one of the stolen generations of Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families by government agencies for almost a hundred years, under protection era laws and policies. Aboriginal children were placed in homes and orphanages, or brought up by white foster families. The aim was that they should be assimilated into the white community, reject their heritage and language, and adopt white culture instead. Through his songs and later his powerful 2019 memoir Tell Me Why, Roach revealed the suffering that these policies inflicted on Aboriginal families for generations.
