The government of Australia has a very poor record when it comes to treatment of its Aboriginal citizens. Indigenous Australians were dispossessed of their land, despised for their culture, and marginalized, abused, and murdered. Perhaps most notorious of all the Australian policies were those that led to what has become known as the Stolen Generations. Under several federal and state programs that continued into the 1970s, the government forcibly removed Aboriginal children from their families and sent them to white families and church-run institutions for cultural reprogramming.