Australian singer-songwriter Archie Roach emerged in the early '90s. His ARIA-winning debut album, Charcoal Lane, was named one of Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 50 albums of 1992. It was centered around Roach's heartbreaking song, "Took the Child Away," a deeply affecting ballad about his own experience as one of the "Stolen Generations" of First Nations children who were often forcibly removed from their parents and communities and placed in non-indigenous institutions and homes. The song’s impact was immediate. It went on to receive a Human Rights Achievement Award, marking the first time that such an honor had been bestowed upon a songwriter and was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia collection in 2013.
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