Gunditjmara elder Richard Frankland signalled the need for sweeping reforms, particularly in the wake of the Don Dale youth detention centre scandal, to prevent the next generation of Aboriginal children falling victim to the social and health issues that have plagued their elders.

Speaking after a forum on intergenerational trauma hosted by the Healing Foundation in Canberra on Thursday, Mr Frankland said the pain, grief and loss passed down from generation to generation as a result of colonisation and the forced removal of children was a key driver behind the number of Indigenous youth in detention.

"The late Patrick Wolfe said invasion is a structure, not an event. It doesn't just happen and stop," Mr Frankland said.

"We're the most over-incarcerated, we have an incredible mortality rate, an incredibly high suicide rate, we're the most unemployed people in the nation, in fact it's more likely that a young Aboriginal man will go to jail rather than university."

The forum, which coincided with National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Day, addressed ways in which Aboriginal people could prevent the legacy of the Stolen Generation and colonisation from being visited upon the next generation.

North-East Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency legal educator Mark Munnich, who had relatives on both sides of his family forcibly removed as a part of the Stolen Generations, said the royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory sparked by the abuse of boys at the Don Dale Detention Centre could be an opportunity to address the intergenerational trauma cycle.

"You don't want to have a royal commission and let our young people down. We've been let down so many times and this is really our time to shine in terms of the royal commission," Mr Munnich said.

Mr Munnich, whose father was taken from his family as a baby, said his parents vowed their children would not be taken into the system.

"Those traumatic experiences they faced really trickled down into our family as well," Mr Munnich said.

"How it affected him and his brother and sisters were the parenting skills. They didn't have parents in their lives because they were taken away and all they knew was violence and abuse while they were in care. Those were the impacts."

Mr Frankland said more Indigenous representatives in parliament, more cultural awareness training in workplaces and schools and a more prominent placing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and history in the school curriculum could "interrupt" the cycle of violence.

"Essentially, we need to recognise Aboriginal people were here for some 2000 generations with a structure that was complementary to the land and was a peaceful system. Within 10 generations we've smashed that as a nation. We can rebuild elements of that but we need to be courageous," he said.

"We can't do that when we've got people pointing fingers over a cultural abyss. We can't do that when they're diminishing the voice of those who are most assaulted by the system."